Adobe’s CS4 Adds Value to Assets

Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 Production Premium software (CS4), a tightly-integrated pre- and postproduction toolset for Windows and Intel-based Mac OS, was announced September 23 just 18 months after CS3 was unveiled. CS4 combines full new versions of After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Soundbooth, OnLocation and Encore and will be available before the end of the year.

“It was a pretty short product release cycle,” acknowledges Giles Baker, group product manager for editing workflows. “The key message around CS4’s video tools is adding more value to assets. We’re responding to customers’ needs to create content that’s distributed to lots of different places – broadcast, DVD, the web, mobile devices – and make money from that content.”

CS4 offers new metadata support, powerful Speech Search technology for text transcripts of interviews and documentaries, and support of next-generation tapeless workflows.

The Adobe-sponsored XMP standard now permits CS4 users to associate metadata with their video and audio assets from the production process through to distribution “creating more value for assets” as they’re delivered to a host of different platforms, says Baker.

Full integration with tapeless acquisition has also made advances. “In building CS4 we wanted to do more than say we can support tapeless cameras by bringing in content you can edit from,” he notes. “When you plug a Panasonic P2 camera into your laptop [running CS4] you can see the clips inside Premiere Pro, browse the content within the editing application itself and begin editing directly because we support the P2 format natively, along with XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX and AVC HD.

“Panasonic and Sony are very happy about this; they’ve been very supportive and have helped us with testing. They’re aiming P2 and XDCAM at an industry that still has a lot of tape-based equipment. If they can demonstrate an amazing new workflow, it really helps them.”

Adobe is working closely with RED Digital Cinema on support for the RED ONE camera. Premiere Pro users will be able to access RED’s Raw files so they don’t need to devote disc space to or deal with separate proxy files; high-resolution export will be easy and direct.

CS4 also includes batch encoding, a feature customers have been asking for, which is performed as a time saving and efficient background application. Blu-ray discs and web versions of interactive projects may now be authored with Encore by a single click of the mouse.

Baker expects CS4 will accelerate the use of Premiere Pro which already greatly expanded its customer base when the BBC adopted the entire suite of CS3 applications. “They made Premiere Pro available to every creative desktop in their organization – thousands and thousands of people,” he points out.

In addition, the release of CS3 last year marked the introduction of Premiere Pro for Mac. While Baker doesn’t see Final Cut devotees abandoning that software for Premiere Pro he notes that “it makes sense for them to buy the Suite and use Premiere Pro when they’re looking for close integration with After Effects for certain jobs. CS4 can complement Final Cut as an alternate editing system.”

 

Avid DS 10 Debuts

Avid has begun to ship Avid DS 10 (it’s no longer called DS Nitris), the latest version of its popular, high-end turnkey editing solution which updates and adds a number of features to the previous DS 8.4 release. The new system is tagged with the “10” designation to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the introduction of DS.
“On a daily basis the bulk of the system’s postproduction work has been conforming, finishing and on-line VFX for music videos, programming, commercials, cinema spots, trailers and promos,” says Angus Mackay, product marketing manager for Avid's editing products. “If you want one system to handle a broad array of work – from a Standard Definition project one day to a high-resolution film trailer the next – you’d do very well with DS 10. It now gives customers more opportunities to do a greater variety of work and address more types of customers.”

Avid DS 10 is built on a new platform designed to offer customers a significant increase in performance and speed resulting in greater productivity and more creative flexibility. The system is powered by the HP xw8600 with dual-quad 3.0GHz CPUs with 8GB RAM, the NVidia QuadroFX 3700 (G92 GPU) and a dual-link I/O card.
A new real time processing framework is designed to empower the GPU to handle a majority of processes and effects in real time, speeding workflow, providing more time for experimentation and creativity and improving overall productivity. As a result of customer demand, Avid DS 10 now has 4:4:4 capabilities for improved keying and image processing “and beautiful final images,” Mackay reports.

The new system supports a wide array of new HD YUV 4:2:2 formats including 1080p 50, 1080p 59.94 and 1080p 60. Several DPX 2.0 improvements have been made to support RGB and RGBA formats including Filmlight's RBGA. Additionally, Avid DS 10 can perform file-based DPX conforms from AFEs (Avid File Exchange) originating from Avid Media Composer and Avid Symphony systems.

Avid has also enhanced its color management tool to support the most commonly used Look Up Tables (LUTs) including 3D LUTs and extended 1D LUT support to tape-based capture. Avid DS 10 delivers real time advanced secondary color correction tools previously only available in Avid Symphony products. “Beta users have been particular pleased with that,” Mackay notes.

Integration with Avid shared storage solutions permit customers to access media via the same indexer as Avid Media Composer, streamlining the workflow between the two applications. Node builder improvements allow users to isolate certain elements of a composite for more creative control.

The new system also supports stereoscopic 3D images. Its stereoscopic container permits customers to create 48i sequences and set up left and right eyes with output through the 2Ke dual-link card.

“Many of the introductions to DS 10 are based on listening to customers,” notes Mackay. “There are more than 150 bug fixes in this release.

“We believe customers from boutique post houses to broadcasters to large facilities will embrace Avid DS 10 with equal enthusiasm.”