The Editblog

Adobe Premiere Express is not to be confused with Adobe Premiere Elements. AP Express is web application for video editing and it’s being used on the new Hyundai Genesis Coupe campaign. Head over the the Editblog on PVC for the scoop and a link to where you can use it to edit your own Hyundai Genesis Coupe spot!

Adobe’s CS4 Production Premium suite of applications was packed full of big new features. There’s mocha for After Effects, native RED .R3D editing in Premiere Pro and After Effects, XML import of Final Cut Pro projects, a unified interface among the applications, better dynamic linking and a lot more. And there is also the ability to automatically transcribe video and audio clips. For editors doing documentary work or a lot of talking heads then this could be a killer feature. Automated transcription almost seems to good to be true … and you know what they say about something that is too good to be true…

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I couldn’t let the day get by without giving the new native RED .R3D import and editing function a quick test. My first thought after playing around with this functionality is that this is by far the best implementation of native .R3D editing and it blows the Final Cut Pro support out of the water. I won’t go into a lot of detail on setting it all up as all the info is available other places and in a document that comes with the RED Adobe CS4 installer. There’s also some initial reactions from Noah at Twenty398 as well as the best way to learn about this new workflow: a 30 minute video on AdobeTV.

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I was recently having an email conversation with Shane Ross of Little Frog in Hi Def about Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. It was discussed on episode 2 of That Post Show by myself, John Flowers and Paul Zadie. Most of us really liked what we’ve seen of Premiere Pro CS4 thus far, but that was admittedly the shiny new features and just (at least for me) limited playtime in the application. Shane asked the hard questions that many other editors I’m sure are asking. Does the app have “all the basics that I as a storyteller crave?” I knew some of the answers, but not all of them so I dug around a bit deeper with Premiere Pro CS4 to try and find out.

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Hot on the heels of Adobe’s announcement that the Premiere Pro CS4 update 4.0.1 would natively support RED’s .R3D files, RED has released the RED Final Cut Studio 2 Installer. From the RED website:

For Intel-based Apple Macintosh systems with Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 or above. The Final Cut Studio RED Installer provides the RED QuickTime Codec (v3.7.0), Log and Transfer (v1.0.0) functionality to import REDCODE RAW clips as either native REDCODE media (R3D’s) wrapped in QuickTime or the option to transcode them directly to Apple’s ProRes 422 codec. There is also a new specialized functionality for color grading native QuickTime wrapped R3D media in Color using the original RAW parameters (REDCODE plugin fro Color v2.7.0). Located in the download is a whitepaper PDF describing in detail this new, advanced way to edit REDCODE media, color grade and finish inside Final Cut Studio.

That means there is a Final Cut Pro update coming to get the app to 6.0.5. There is actually a white paper in the download (which really has been a long time coming) that details this new workflow. There it is in the whitepaper, the FCP Log and Transfer tool supporting Native RED files:

The Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 update includes a number of things. From the Apple documents:

Improved High-Precision Rendering

If you render sequences using the high-precision video processing setting, make sure to update to Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 for improved reliability when rendering still images and footage in high-resolution formats.

Extended Metadata Support for the Panasonic AG-HMC150 Camcorder

Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 captures the additional metadata for footage recorded with the Panasonic AG-HMC150 professional AVCHD camcorder.

Improved Support for the Panasonic HDC-SD9 Camcorder

Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 provides enhanced precision and reliability when ingesting files from the Panasonic HDC-SD9 camcorder.

Improved Support for Metadata Imported from P2 Cards

Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 provides support for extended metadata that is captured on P2 cards.

So that’s few other things. There’s also updates to Compressor, Color and Shake. It’s good to know the Final Cut Studio teams hasn’t been totally asleep lately. This isn’t entirely breaking news since this has been demoed in public before. And this is a wrapping of the .R3D files in a QuickTime wrapper as opposed to a drag and drop of .R3Ds into the FCP browser. And of course you can still transcode to ProRes. I think what is surprising is that it dropped today when Adobe was releasing their Premiere Pro update. According to Adobe, RED was to post a plug-in on their support site to enable native Premiere Pro workflow. As of 6:45 pm, November 20 that plug-in hasn’t been posted and instead RED posted this FCP software. Interesting developments in the RED editing world today huh?