The latest update to Premiere Pro introduces a new technology for fast, intelligent color grading called Auto Tone. Replacing the Auto button in the Lumetri Color panel, Auto Tone builds on Adobe’scolor science expertise to help editors to develop their own cinematic style.
The auto button has always been somewhat of a joke for professionals. Regardless of the application, the wild and unpleasant results that auto color provides often make a bad situation worse. Adobe is looking to change that.
Image credit: Adobe
Auto Tone adjustments occur in the basic correction sliders at the top of the Lumetri panel. This provides a more nuanced result than previously available. An advanced algorithm analyzes the temperature, tint, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, and saturation of the images to produce the best-looking results possible with a single click.
The previous Auto button only made adjustments to the exposure of the images. It didn’t take into account the temperature or saturation. This prior method was just a shot in the dark for inexperienced editors.
Image credit: Adobe
The intention of Auto Tone is to familiarize new content creators with the adjustments available. It can also be a starting point for experienced editors who need to hit the ground running.
Lumetri Color was added to Adobe Premiere Pro following the end of Adobe Speedgrade, Adobe’s standalone color grading application. Lumetri Color provides editors with approachable and fast tools to breathe life into their stories by adding color.
Adobe’s commitment to continue making color grading easier is admirable. They see Auto Tone as a quick fix tool that can evolve into much more. Users can expect a more nuanced, automatic color grading experience as they refine the algorithm with each new update.
Adobe beta applications
Adobe makes beta versions of their software available for Creative Cloud Subscribers to try before their official release.
Simply launch the Creative Cloud application, navigate to Categories, and select Beta apps. Installing these apps will not overwrite the official version of the software. However, they are in beta so use them at your own risk.
The current implementation of Auto Tone analyzes unaltered source images and should be applied before adding any other color effects. It is also not currently compatible with log-encoded video or log-to-Rec709 LUTs.
Image credit: Adobe
Download the latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro Beta to start using Auto Tone right now.
What do you think about the new Adobe Premiere Pro Auto Tone feature? Is it a passing fad? Or, will all color grading eventually be done by an algorithm? Let us know in the comments below.
If you (still) use Adobe Prelude to manage your media assets before editing in Premiere Pro, this might be sad –albeit predictable– news: Prelude will be discontinued as of September 8, 2021.
Adobe Prelude was first introduced in 2012 as part of Creative Suite 6 (CS6). At the time, bringing clips into NLEs was a bit of a hassle, and Prelude provided a streamlined pipeline to effectively handle the process. Perhaps more importantly, you could work with your assets in a visual way instead of moving files around.
But over the years, managing media, logging, preparing it, and ingesting loads of clips into the NLE became much easier, and most of the tools were integrated into Premiere Pro. Other tools like DaVinci Resolve offer a dedicated media page for this very reason. More complex operations like transcoding or frame rate adjustment are a fairly simple task nowadays. External tools, such as Adobe Prelude are not required anymore.
Adobe Prelude
Watch the below video for a little time travel to 2012, where Adobe Evangelist Jason Levine shows how to ingest, log and create rough cuts with Prelude CS6:
So from September 8, 2021 Adobe Prelude will be officially discontinued, meaning you won’t be able to download it from Adobe.com any longer. However existing copies will still work of course. And although you won’t get any updates from that date on, Prelude will still work just like normal. Technical support will be offered to all active Prelude customers until September 8, 2024.
Adobe recommends to solely use Premiere Pro for any pre-production workflows you would normally use Prelude for since most of its features are integrated in the NLE anyways. Adobe also welcomes users to submit feature requests regarding pre-production: visit the Premiere Pro feedback page to vote for existing feature requests or submit your own.
Since 2012, Adobe Prelude has been a valued piece of video pre-production, and it’s taught us a lot. Your feedback is welcome as we continue to streamline and redefine pre-production workflows in Premiere Pro. Thank you for being a part of the Prelude journey.
Adobe
The last real update for Prelude dates back to 2018, so this move shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to most. But if you are still using Prelude, now is the time to move on!
Link: AdobeDo you still use Prelude? If so, what do you think about this move by Adobe? Share your experience in the comments below!
Adobe Premiere Pro 15.4 now offers the Speech to Text feature – an integrated and automated workflow for creating transcriptions and captions – and some more updates such as new titling and caption styling tools, color improvements, and more. Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, and Character Animator now offer native support for M1 Macs. After Effects (Beta) introduces new Multi-Frame Rendering for faster motion graphics workflows. Character Animator now includes a new body tracker and puppet maker.
After releasing the Premiere Pro Public Beta last month, Adobe is now releasing some new features to its Creative Cloud video post-production apps. This July update includes the NLE Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, After Effects, and Character Animator. Let’s take a look at what is new.
Adobe Premiere Pro – Speech to Text
New Text to Speech feature in Premiere Pro. Source: Adobe
According to Adobe, videos with captions are better for SEO as they rank higher in search results. With the new feature Speech to Text in Premiere Pro 15.4, Adobe wants to make the process of creating captions much faster and easier. As its name implies, the feature simply transforms spoken text into captions. As Adobe states, the new feature cuts the time needed to create transcription and captions by approximately 75% (according to Pfeiffer Report). Additionally, there is now a new way to search and navigate video sequences – double-click on a word in the Text panel, and the playhead moves to that position in the Premiere Pro timeline.
New Text to Speech feature in Premiere Pro. Source: Adobe
Currently, Speech to Text supports 13 languages. When changes are needed, such as correcting the spelling of names, users can easily edit the text in the transcript. When the transcript is ready, Speech to Text automatically creates captions on the Timeline. Once the words are on the Timeline, captions can be customized using the design tools in the Essential Graphics panel. Speech to Text is included with a Premiere Pro or Creative Cloud all apps subscriptions at no additional cost.
Premiere Pro 15.4 – Additional Updates
The new Premiere Pro 15.4 offers more updates. There are new titling and caption styling tools such as the ability to add multiple shadows to text layers, the ability to change attributes of text backgrounds, and expanded font substitution with support for 28 different international alphabets.
New Titling Tools in Premiere Pro. Source: Adobe
Users can now upgrade legacy titles. They can be converted into Source Graphics within the Premiere Pro projects. Source Graphics are displayed in the Project panel, where users can track and sort them like any other project item.
Premiere Pro 15.4 also introduces label colors and clip names that change the source media on the project panel which can be useful when working on productions. There are also some new color improvements such as tetrahedral LUT interpolation that offers a more precise interpretation of color information for better consistency when grading footage with difficult lighting conditions, such as strong shadows and highlights in the same shot and reducing the chances of introducing banding during post-production. Adobe also brings colorized vectroscope in Premiere Pro (Beta) that provides more detailed image analysis for color grading.
Legacy Titles Upgrade in Premiere Pro. Source: Adobe
Last but not least, Adobe claims the new Premiere Pro brings some performance improvements such as faster scene detection, automatic audio device switching. The CUDA and OpenCL support on macOS is now discontinued. Team Projects workflow got faster as well.
Native Support for Apple M1 Macs
The M1 Macs from Apple introduced a different CPU architecture (ARM) than what Intel or AMD CPUs use (x86). That’s why M1 Macs users can either run regular x86 apps over Rosetta emulation or use the native M1 versions that, of course, offer better stability and performance. While some apps had the M1 version ready almost at the launch, other software companies need a bit longer.
Adobe started releasing the native M1 Mac versions of its video apps in April 2021 with the Premiere Rush and continued in May with Audition. This July update brings native M1 support for Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, and Character Animator. According to Adobe, After Effects will get the native M1 support in the Public Beta version later this year. The good news is, that After Effects integration features within Premiere Pro, such as Dynamic Link and Motion Graphics templates, have already been optimized for M1 Macs. Adobe states that with native support for M1 on Mac, Premiere Pro runs nearly 80% faster than comparable Intel-based Macs.
After Effects (Beta) – Multi-Frame Rendering
New Multiframe in After Effects. Source: Adobe
With Multi-Frame Rendering, the After Effects architecture can better take advantage of multi-core CPUs for up to 3x faster performance, according to Adobe. The After Effects (Beta) has added Multi-Frame Rendering for Previews, providing faster on-screen rendering and an overall more responsive experience. In addition, with Speculative Rendering, After Effects automatically detects when the system is not active and uses that time to render compositions. Also new in the After Effects Public Beta is the remote notifications for rendering.
Character Animator (Beta) – Body Tracker and Puppet Maker
New Body Tracker in Character Animator. Source: AdobeBody Tracker feature (in Public Beta) now makes it possible to animate the puppets in the app by using your own body movements and gestures. Users can simply move their bodies in front of a camera and the puppet will move along with them.
New Puppet Maker in Character Animator. Source: Adobe
Puppet Maker (Public Beta feature) enables quick and diverse character creation for basic users. There are no Photoshop, Illustrator, or rigging skills required. Users can choose from a variety of character styles and then customize them with hairstyles, skin tones, accessories, and more via a simple interface.
Price and availability
All these new features are available for existing Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions at no extra cost. The current pricing of the Creative Cloud subscription varies between $10 per month for Premiere rush and $53 per month for all video apps. More information on different plans can be found here.
Do you use Adobe Creative Cloud video apps for your work? What do you think about these new features? Let us know in the comments section underneath the article.
Adobe has just published some benchmark results of its upcoming Adobe Premiere Pro software for Apple M1 Macs. Compared to similar Intel-based laptops, the 13-inch Apple M1 Macs proved to be close to 80% faster in editing, rendering, and transcoding tasks. Let’s take a closer look at what we could expect soon!
Adobe has just released a couple of new Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects update. Over the last couple of months, the company released Adobe Premiere Pro 15.0 and After Effects 18.0 with performance improvements.
Aside from “traditional” releases, Adobe is putting a lot of work to support Apple M1 Macs, with a new Adobe Audition version specifically optimized. Also, since December 2020, Adobe Premiere Pro is in the Beta stage for M1 computers.
Adobe Premiere Pro for Apple M1 Macs
Adobe released a couple of Adobe Premiere Pro benchmarks comparing Apple M1 Macs to similar Intel laptops. More precisely, they used a 13-inch M1 Macbook Pro with 16Gb of RAM and 2TB of SSD and a 13-inch Intel Core i5 laptop with the same amounts of RAM/SSD. Also, both computers were connected to an Apple Pro Display XDR.
According to Adobe, “the benchmarks were executed using Pfeiffer Consulting’s Methodology for Productivity Benchmarking, which has been fine-tuned over more than a decade and measures the time experienced operators take to execute specific tasks.” Below are their findings.
Image credit: Adobe
Every video editor out here could tell you that XAVC-S files (H.264 compression) are hard to edit/playback correctly, even with a powerful computer. Indeed, these files are not meant to be edited straight out of the camera.
As you can see, these results seem promising! For example, the M1 Mac was over two times faster to encode a XAVC 4K25p clip to ProRes 422 than the Intel one. The same goes for XAVC import and playback performances.
However, as Adobe mentions:
For features that rely heavily on GPU acceleration, however, an Intel Mac with a discreet, powerful GPU can still outperform the current generation of M1 Macs in some areas.There is little doubt that Apple will address this in the future as new generations of M1 Macs close any remaining gaps with new Apple Silicon-based Macs
Adobe
Let’s hope that Adobe Premiere Pro for Apple M1 Macs will come out of the Beta stage soon so we can all run our tests and see how newer Apple computers can help content creators save time in the editing room.
Did you already try Adobe Premiere Pro Beta on an Apple M1 Mac? What do you think about these benchmarks’ results? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below!
Chinese lens manufacturer TTArtisan recently launched a new lens compatible with APS-C and Micro 4/3 cameras: the TTArtisan 50mm f/1.2. This entirely manual lens is available in Sony E-mount, Canon M-mount, FUJIFILM X-mount, and MFT lens mount. Let’s take a closer look!
TTArtisan is a young Chinese company that specialized in affordable photography lenses. At the moment, their lineup consists of an 11mm f/2.8, 21mm f/1.5, 35mm f/1.4, a 50mm f/1.4, and 50mm f/0.95 lenses for Leica M-Mount cameras. Some lenses like the 11mm f/2.8 are also available for Nikon Z, Canon RF, Leica L, and Sony E-Mount cameras.
The company recently introduced a new lens for APS-C and Micro 4/3 cameras, the TTArtisan 50mm f/1.2.
The TTArtisan 50mm f/1.2 is a compact (62mm x 60mm – w x h) and lightweight (336g) compatible with APS-C and Micro Four Thirds cameras. With a maximum aperture of f/1.2 – the aperture ring is not de-clicked – this entirely manual lens could be a nice addition to your kit for low light situations.
Image credit: TTArtisan
The lens design of this lens consists of seven elements in five groups. The minimum focusing distance is 50cm, and the front filter is 52mm to attach filters. The aperture diaphragm consists of 10 blades, which should give you a nice bokeh.
Price and availability
The TTArtisan 50mm f/1.2 is available now for $98 in Sony E-Mount, Canon M-Mount, FUJIFILM X-Mount, and Micro Four Thirds lens mount. Please note that the lens mount doesn’t seem to be user interchangeable.
With such an aggressive price tag, I don’t expect massive optical performances at the maximum f/1.2 aperture. Still, if you’re a fan of really shallow depth of field, this lens can have some character at an unbeatable price.
Netflix has been pretty busy lately certifying new cameras for their “Netflix Original” label. The latest approved make and model is the Sony FX6. Let’s dive into the specifics of this latest approval.
Hot on the heels of the certification of the Canon C70 and Panasonic BGH1 cams, the certification of the Sony FX6 marks a new game of sorts with affordable cine-cams making their way into high-end productions on Netflix.
Not long ago a “broadcast quality” camera wasn’t something you would (or could) buy on your own, and we’re talking SD quality here.. interesting times, indeed!
Sony FX6 now Netflix approved
It’s almost too perfect: What’s between you and a gig with Netflix is not the price tag of your camera anymore. It’s just your personal network and creativity, really. It’s nice to see that affordable cams appear to deliver decent image quality that makes it onto the big stage.
Recommended settings for the Sony FX6. Image credit: Netflix
The one thing, this approval does not include is the anamorphic mode of the Sony FX6, since that mode just crops into the 4K sensor. And as a result, the recorded footage would not meet Netflix 4K standards anymore. But that’s it really, other than that you can grab an FX6 and off you go – creativity, some funding and lot’s of good people around you assumed.
Here are the details of this latest Netflix approval:
Recommended exposure values, high speed and RAW settings. Image credit: NetflixStick to that daily APR routine! Image credit: Netflix
As mentioned above, the anamorphic mode on the FX6 is not approved but other than that this is a pretty capable (and compact!) camera for documentary work or even as “A”-cam on bigger productions. If the choice of lenses and lighting is good, this little Sony is a more than decent choice I’d say.
Where to get Sony FX6: Link
Link: Netflix What do you think? Are you ready for your first Netflix show? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
