CS3 Ups, Downs and the clash between idea and execution
There has been much fanfare over the recent CS3 production suite from Adobe, largely glowing in praise. In particular the levels of integration between applications that Adobe have achieved are quite astounding and make the integration offered by competitors such as Apple, Avid and Sony seem positivity lame by comparison.
But amid all the trumpet peels of new features and functions it strikes me that there has been some imbalance in that praise with some of the much lauded features having major drawbacks and some of the least discussed features heralding a bold future. Let me point out one of each.
I have written much previously about the future (or indeed the forward thinking present) of media production being about integrated and holistic processes rather than traditional linear and hierarchical ones. On a practical level we see this is the moves by creative software developers towards integrating production elements together in either singular systems or parallel systems that communicate fluidly and flexibly. This would seem, on the face of it, to be exactly where the new CS3 is positioned with direct project file exchange between applications such as Première, After Effects and Encore. But whilst this might sound good there is a serious flaw in the plan. A composition is assembled in After Effects - several layers, filters, keyframes. That comp can then be imported directly into Première unrendered as if it where a singular clip and placed onto the timeline whilst retaining its full edit capabilities simultaneously in After Effects. In theory this is perfect integration exchange right?
There's a catch - certainly the comp can be imported and used on the timeline of Prem Pro but Première has virtually no ability to play the file with any sense of real time. The playback engine of both Première and After Effects are rather inefficient and do not scale very well to account for system load. The result is that invariably you bring the AE comp into Première but then spend a huge chunk of time rendering the comp on the PP timeline just to see it playback. This of course brings you back to a traditional workflow of rendering out of After Effects and brining the clips into the NLE complete. The playback of PP is so inefficient on nested AE comps that it really does make the integration largely pointless.
My own engagement with this workflow recently on a brand new quad core system not lacking in power certainly drove home to me the big let down of the promise that CS3 integration held for After Effects and Prem Pro. But, that said, this is not say that all is for naught. I would argue strongly that Adobes approach is absolutely the right direction and the current performance issues are passing issue and the vision for the future is correct but just that it currently outstrips technology's ability to make it truly functional.
On the flip side one of the advancements of CS3 that seems to have attracted for less attention than it deserved is the evolution of Encore DVD to Encore. The lack of the DVD moniker heralds much more than just semantics of title. No longer dedicated solely to the crafting of DVDs Encore has evolved into a much more holistic focused 'authoring' system. The addition of BluRay authoring might be seen as simple progression on from SD Dvd but the inclusion of the ability author a Flash video interactive micro site directly from the same system is a huge step forward that embraces the concept of multi-platform scalable delivery i the most tangible of ways. As I have discussed previously the future is Not HD, the future is AD - All Definition. Encore at this point is leading this notion by a long mile and i have little doubt that its perspective will become the standard approach of authoring apps of the future.
Posted at 01:00AM Aug 30, 2007
by Mike Jones in video |
