HD For Indies

It is late and I'm going to bed, but wanted to put out a quick note on this exciting topic (thanks to Bruce Allen for tipping me off on this). Update - Mac version 3rd quarter. Drat.

Adobe - Premiere Pro CS3, Upgrade from Premiere Pro 2.0, 1.5, 1 - make Blu-ray discs! Optical flow time remapping.

Adobe - Adobe AfterEffects CS3: Complete feature list - not as much new as I'd have liked. Bummer. But: shape layers, better color management, puppet tool looks interesting and creative; purportedly improved multicore CPU support and GPU acceleration, better disc caching. See this for new features.

DV Rack is now this: Adobe - Adobe OnLocation CS3

So I expect we'll see it at NAB but it won't be shipping from what I've been led to believe, but I haven't read all the news from today.

-mike

UPDATE

The above snippets were snarfed from an email from Bruce Allen of Boa Cinema as we back-n-forthed it. I asked for, and he was kind enough, to send in this longer explanation of features:

Mike:

Overall: I think we all wished for more features than we got here. The value here is in the bundling and integration, methinks. And, of course, it all being Intel-native if you're on Mac.

Premiere Pro CS3: - now works on Macs too (Intel only) - smoother time re-maps (using optical flow morphing, probably the same technology used in After Effects, which is from The Foundry) - supposedly some workflow improvements, doesn't look like anything too major DOWNSIDES: No mention of realtime multiple formats on the same timeline or anything like that. It's still behind Avid and FCP for editing, IMHO. That's sad, because with Premiere's ability to export the project intact to After Effects, you have a nice solution for doing a high-quality finish of your Premiere Pro project at minimal cost.

OnLocation CS3 - this is a rebadged DVRack (recap of features: turns your laptop into a hard drive recorder / broadcast monitor with nice bonuses, such as motion-activated recording, pre-record buffers, image flip for 35mm adapters, etc) - only advance is supposedly better integration with Premiere Pro, so you can quickly get clips recorded in OnLocation into your edit DOWNSIDES: The same as DVRack - PC only (Macs must use Bootcamp), HDV inputs have a delay, you can't record synched audio from a separate source and unless you are using a Blackmagic Intensity card in a SFF pc, you are still recording compressed.

Encore CS3: - now makes Blu-Ray discs and Flash. So you can have one project that can pop out a DVD, a Blu-Ray and Flash version of your reel, I guess... DOWNSIDES: No HD-DVD. No mention of more advanced Blu-Ray interactive authoring features.

Photoshop CS3: - fuller HDR support, masking tools, Live Effects layers (covered in the Beta, though) - the Vanishing Point tool has matured and now you can export your work as an After Effects 3D comp when you're done. This might make a nice way for doing 2.5D matte paintings, or it might not. Let's try it. - can import 3D objects and paint on them DOWNSIDES: This seems pretty solid, actually

After Effects CS3: - graph editor sucks less (you can edit x, y, z curves now) - faster - eg better cache system and multi-core rendering (hmm, did they buy Nucleo or do their own optimiziations?) - individual text characters now can move in 3D (great, the titles I did in a 3D program for the Ocean's 13 teaser have been reduced to a Text Animation Preset) - character animation tools and supposedly shape animation tools too. Cute. - the ICC color-managed workflow seems improved over 7.0, which took too long to set up - the Dynamic Link feature debuts on the Mac, which is nice - you can move After Effects projects into Premiere and Encore DVD with minimal rendering. DOWNSIDES: No 3D Objects. You can have true textured 3D objects in Photoshop, but not After Effects? This is sad. Also, the flowchart still sucks.

Adobe Soundbooth CS3 - designed for audio cleanup and recording voiceovers. Probably too weak for anything else, kinda like when Apple bundled PeakDV with FCP 2.0 - has a nice spectral view where you can see your frequencies mapped out and you can actually paint out glitches a la Photoshop (and higher-end audio restoration tools) - supposedly has some kind of AutoComposer scoring system. I don't know how well this one'll work for us. DOWNSIDES: Cannot do multitrack mixing or anything like that.

One big thing I skipped here is that CS3 seems to be trying hard to help filmmakers working on new media / interactive / internet projects. The tools are maturing - I mean, Flash video has closed captioning support now! If you're trying to make a film series that people can watch on their mobile phone or video device, you are in luck with CS3. More traditional filmmakers making stuff for the big screen will be a little disappointed, though.

Bruce


Thanks Bruce!

A few follow up comments of my own after reading his commentary:

-Soundbooth is called "Soundbooth" and not "Mixing Stage" - it seems they are aiming it at what it does OK - working with the human voice, not so much for music handling.
-After Effects - yeah, I would have like some more coolio new features
-Encore - OK, so at the moment, it appears if you want to make HD-DVDs, you're on Macs and Final Cut, if you want to make Blu-ray discs, you're on Premiere Pro on Windows for now, Macs later. The good thing about CS3 coming to Macs is that you'll be able to author either format on a Mac with (presumably) at least decent authoring tools for each. At least, I assume Encore is heading over, I know Premiere Pro is
-Premiere Pro/AE combo - should make it possible to do some really nice high color space 4:4:4 stuff. Bummer no codec & size mix/match on same timeline - that keeps popping up as a major feature we NEED these days. Higher end Avids can do it, Premiere Pro and Final Cut (at present) can't. My gut says both of these latter two will ship after NAB, Adobe first and Apple several months later.

OK, NOW I'm to bed (1:30am)

-mike

also, release dates:

Adobe CS 3: Bundles, shipping dates, prices - ProCreative - Macworld UK: "Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Standard, and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Standard will begin shipping in April 2007.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection for Mac OS X on Intel-based systems and for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms will begin shipping worldwide in the third quarter of 2007."

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