Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 Blog
Thoughts on CS3 by Jeff Schell

Is Premiere Pro CS3 Worth the Upgrade?

The first two questions everyone asks when a new version of Premiere Pro comes out are: what?s new, and... is it worth upgrading? In this blog we?ll look at Premiere Pro CS3 inside and out, and discuss each new feature so you can decide for yourself if the cost of upgrading is worth the money.

Premiere Pro is now called Premiere Pro CS3, since it is being sold as part of the new CS3 suite of applications. (As if switching names a few versions ago wasn?t confusing enough!) In fact, Adobe is introducing new versions of just about every product they sell, and renaming them to fit into the ?Creative Suite 3? family. Adobe is rolling out three distinct bundles of their creative suites: CS3 Design (for print and layout needs), CS3 Web Premium (for web content creation), and CS3 Production Premium (for video and audio editing). Oh, and just in case you want them all, Adobe is selling all three bundles as part of their CS3 Master Collection.

Application Improvements (Under the Hood)

Visually, nothing much has changed to the look, feel, and behavior of the Premiere Pro CS3 graphical user interface (GUI) -- it's similar to that of the previous version. However, under the hood, the CS3 engineers have added many enhancements. CS3 will be Windows Vista compatible -- although it will run only in 32-bit mode, not the full-64 bit mode, which likely means it will not be able to gobble up as much memory as other 64-bit applications. But, not to despair, because CS3 now takes advantage of multi-core processors for rendering, which will greatly speed up key areas of your editing workflow. The engineers also addressed memory issues when working with many assets, so CS3 can handle larger projects than its predecessors.

Speaking of new operating systems, the entire application has been ported to the Mac platform. This was no small engineering feat and Adobe spent a lot of resources working on this. (Some would argue perhaps too many resources were dedicated to this -- but that's a blog for another day.) The Mac version will have nearly all of the same capabilities as the PC version, with the notable difference that you will not get HDV capture preview or HDV output on the Mac due to hardware compatibility. (The Windows version allows you to send HDV realtime output during editing to a second computer monitor.)

Speaking of HDV, CS3 now indexes HDV clips during capture, rather than after capture, which should shave a lot of time off HDV workflows. Also for HDV projects, the quality of down-converted HD sized video to standard-def DVDs is much improved. (The current version 2.0 produces noticeable ?softened? video when downconverting from HD to SD, so this is great news for you HDV users.)

Along the lines of video quality, CS3 now uses the same high quality frame blending found in After Effects -- which means field and interlace jitter are dramatically reduced, resulting in higher quality slow-motions.

For you hardcore Premiere users, this may mean something to you: audio for nested sequences is no longer required to be rendered. This is important because it means you can start cutting multicam sequences straight away without waiting for the audio to render. Another feature that may excite only the true Premiere aficionados: the size limit for still images is now 16mp, distributed however you like. (This is unlike the current version which has a 4096 x 4096 pixel limit for still images. CS3?s only limitation is that the width x height of the image may not exceed 16mp.)

Bell & Whistle Features

Topping the list of new bell and whistle features is Time Remapping. This feature smoothly accelerates or decelerates the speed of a clip over time. Adobe spent a lot of time with the user interface of their Time Remapping feature and they have produced one of the most intuitive interfaces for this otherwise complex task. (That's not just marketing hype -- it really is easy to grasp.)

CS3 now allows you to have multiple project panels open. When you double-click on a bin, the default behaviour opens the bin in a new floating panel; this behavior can be changed with a new option in the Preference menu. In addition, you can then dock the bin as a panel in the workspace or turn it into a tab along the top of an existing panel. CS3 also includes a new Find box in each project panel, which makes the task of managing a large number of assets much easier.

CS3 boasts a new ?Replace with Clip? feature that replaces any clip on the Timeline with any clip in your project, while preserving effects applied to the original clip. You can quickly perform this new feature by alt-dragging (Windows) or Option-dragging (Mac OS) a clip over an existing clip in the Timeline.

The Adobe Media Encoder in CS3 has received a handful of new export formats -- most notably support for new formats including hi-def Blu-ray discs and the H.264 codec (the en vogue format for YouTube, MySpace, Google Video and other online services). The Adobe Media Encoder also includes new presets for devices such as PSP, iPod, Zen, Zune, and other mobile devices.

There a few bell and whistle video and audio effects that are new to CS3, and believe it or not, some of them are actually -- gasp -- useful! On the video side of things, there is a new Difference Matte which is used to key out a static background from an image. CS3 also has a new Time Warp effect, which as the name implies, allows you to warp how a clip plays in time. (The Time Warp, while more powerful, is not as user friendly as CS3's built-in Time Remapping feature.) The Audio effects list has been bolstered with six new effects: Chorus, DeClicker, DeCrackler, Flanger, Phaser, and Spectral Noise Reduction.

Rounding out the list of bell and whistle features, CS3 includes: new keyboard shortcuts for accessing panels, and a new preference that lets you set the default audio channel mapping of imported or captured A/V clips.

New Integration Features

Premiere Pro CS3 now ships with Encore CS3. That?s right -- your purchase price includes the entire Encore CS3 application. CS3 also boasts tighter integration with Encore; there is now a menu choice that lets you export a CS3 Sequence directly to Encore. (However, the files are first rendered to the MPEG or H.264 format, so it's not like your sequence magically appears in Encore with each individual clip. A minor complaint.) Once your rendered video is open in Encore CS3, you can burn a DVD without menus, or use Encore CS3's full-featured DVD authoring capabilities. With the integration of Encore, support is extended to dual-layer DVD discs and hi-def Blu-ray discs. Adobe did away with Premiere Pro?s built-in "diet" DVD authoring abilities in favour of using Encore's full blown, authoring abilities.

Beyond the new DVD formats supported by Encore CS3, you can now export to Flash Video for the web. Your DVD menus authored in Encore CS3 can be exported as Flash menus complete with ready-to-upload html and all necessary embedded media.

CS3 also ships with Adobe's OnLocation software, which allows you to record directly-to-hard drive instead of recording to tape, and also provides field monitors for checking levels. (This application used to be called DV Rack when it was sold by Serious Magic; those who have used it know exactly how useful this app is.)

For your audio editing needs, Adobe is bundling a completely new audio-editing application called Soundbooth CS3. Adobe says this application is designed specifically for "Flash and video professionals... [and] Soundbooth CS3 focuses on audio tasks Flash and video pros care about most." In non-marketing terms, it's basically a more user-friendly version of Adobe Audition -- which is no longer being bundled with the video production suite, by the way.

Soundbooth CS3 has far fewer tools than Audition, yet it retains the most popular tools. (At least say the Adobe marketers.) In addition, Soundbooth CS3 comes with royalty-free music loops and sound effects that you can use to score your video projects. Adobe is also introducing a new "Resource Central" in Soundbooth CS3, which is an online library to thousands of royalty-free Adobe music samples and sound effects. (An internet connection is required to access Adobe?s online library.)

Similar to Premiere Pro's past integration with Audition, you can launch Soundbooth CS3 directly from within Premiere Pro CS3. As a standalone application, Soundbooth CS3 lets you import video files, and preview the video as you edit the audio for improved audio-video synchronization. Soundbooth CS3 is not being shipped as part of Premiere Pro CS3, as are Encore CS3 and OnLocation, but it will be part of the Production Premium CS3 bundle.

Is It Worth Upgrading?

The cost of upgrading to CS3 from the previous version of Premiere Pro is US $299. Included in that price are Encore CS3 (formerly $349), and OnLocation (formerly $499). Users who need dual-layer or Blu-ray DVD capabilities will definitely find the upgrade worthy. Likewise, users who can take full advantage of OnLocation for field monitor will certainly see the value in upgrading.

But what about the rest of us? Sure, features like Time Remapping, multiple project panels, and H.264 encoding are nice, but other video apps on the market already have these capabilities, so should that count as a full version upgrade? Then again, the improved HDV handling, high-quality slow-mo frame blending, and full use of dual/quad core CPUs are all technical improvements that will improve and speed up your workflow. And, after all, time is money.

Posted at 09:58AM May 26, 2007 by Jeff Schell in Status  |  Comments[8]