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Home » Adobe Reveals Great New Video Chops at IBC 2017

Adobe Reveals Great New Video Chops at IBC 2017

Adobe unveiled a tasty bundle of updates to its Creative Cloud video applications at IBC 2017. The Amsterdam-based show doesn’t garner the same slew of new product intros that NAB does. But many companies big and small save their latest-and-greatest announcements for this Fall show for that very reason of a lowered PR frenzy.

Adobe didn’t disappoint that hankering for something new. The San Jose-based company’s ubiquitous video apps got a considerable tweaking. Something new and significant came throughout their range of video-specific software, including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Character Animator as well as Adobe Stock.

Adobe’s latest innovations include advancements in 360/VR video, animation, motion graphics, editing, collaboration, audio and productivity. As Adobe puts it, video is the fastest growing medium in communications and entertainment and they’re right. Video, once a novelty on the internet has become not only common, but a key way that information, entertainment and advertising is distributed and consumed by millions (maybe even billions) of people each day. It is an exciting time to be involved in video and Adobe is on the leading edge of this revolution.

The past few years has seen Premiere Pro emerge from being an also-ran to its position today as one of the leading editing platforms in the world. Many professional editors are using Premiere Pro these days, not just because it’s conveniently part of the Creative Cloud, but because it simply works great (not to mention that it is super fast and format friendly). Recent noteworthy productions that have been cut on Premiere Pro include An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Mindhunter, Only the Brave and 6 Below.

Motion Graphics Templates to be available through Adobe Stock.

It’s Easier With Templates

Motion graphics templates created in Adobe After Effects allow you to easily access great looking and professionally designed graphics for titles, lower thirds, bumpers and closing credits. In this release, editors who use Premiere Pro will now be able to access hundreds of motion graphics templates via Adobe Stock and through Creative Cloud libraries. Also, if you are a motion graphics artist, you will be able to sell your own generated templates for Premiere Pro through Adobe Stock.

Adobe stock, in case you didn’t know, is a comprehensive creative marketplace from Adobe that already has over 90 million assets such as photos, illustrations and vectors. It also offers access to over 4 million HD and 4K footage with the ability to search and scrub assets in Premiere Pro. Not too long ago Adobe added assets from Reuters, USA TODAY Sports, Stocksy, 500px as well as Pond 5 collections to Adobe Stock.

In addition, Adobe has updated the Essential Graphics panel in Premiere Pro with things like responsive design options which make it easier when working in multiple formats and ratios.

VR Lands in Premiere Pro

As I previously reported here, Adobe recently acquired Mettle’s SkyBox 360/VR technology. As expected, the fruits of this acquisition are starting to appear, one of which is a virtual reality viewing environment in Premiere Pro. This means that editors will be able to experience VR while editing by wearing the same VR head-mounts as their audience as they continue to use their keyboard and mouse to navigate the timeline while creating transitions, titles and graphics in immersive 360 video. Also, VR effects and transitions are now natively accelerated by the Mercury playback engine.

Both Premiere Pro and After Effects feature new tools for Immersive Video.

In addition, you will be able to add and modify audio in the VR environment by its orientation or position and export that audio as ambisonics audio for VR-enabled platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

Let’s work together

Adobe Premiere Pro now features improved collaborative workflows that let multiple users edit shared projects at the same time while allowing read-only access to others. This will allow teams working on shared projects hosted in the Creative Cloud to manage their shared projects more easily.

Open multiple Premiere Pro projects at the same time and edit between them.

However, one of the greatest new features in Premiere Pro the ability to open multiple projects, edit between them simultaneously and easily copy sequences and media between them by simply dragging and dropping from one project to another. That’s sure to be a really useful feature and a real time saver.

Enhancements to After Effects

Not to be outdone, Adobe After Effects also boasts its own list of new features and enhancements. There are new data-driven tools that let you automate the animation of graphics through expression-driven, customizable user-interface elements. That means you can build your own collection of expression controls like sliders and dials to control the various parameters of the desired effect and be able to easily keyframe them as you like.

Control complex animations with data driven expression controls more easily in After Effects.

However, another important update to After Effects, possibly my favorite and something that I have personally wanted for a long time, is the ability to control individual mask and shape points with expressions. The ability to gain access to individual vertices on a path or a shape via expressions will open up lots of creative possibilities not only for motion graphics but also for character animation and rotoscoping work. This is a feature that I, for one, am eager to try out. Like Premiere Pro, After Effects will also see new tools for working with 360/VR video.

Character is Important

Adobe Character Animator, The Creative Cloud application that is designed to simplify the creation and animation of 2D characters has gotten some love in this release as well, with changes to its core and custom animation functions. This includes pose-to-pose blending, physics, and new puppet controls. In addition, Adobe Sensei, a kind of artificial intelligence/machine learning framework, helps with lip syncing by automatically matching mouth shapes (otherwise known as phonemes) with recorded audio dialog.

Enhanced controls for character animation in Adobe Character Animator.

Character Animator also includes new ways to customize character triggers via your keyboard or other controller, as well as better pupil and eyeball controls.

Audition Time

Adobe Audition is a comprehensive audio production and post-production tool that is useful for all kinds of dialog, sound effects and music applications. Not only can it do things like process and edit audio, but also record it. You can even record a whole multi-track musical session as you would with a DAW, only there is no MIDI.

The new version of Adobe Audition includes HUI support for control surfaces.

New features to Audition include auto-ducking which automatically lowers the output level of music when other audio, such as dialog, is present. There is also auto scrolling during playback and continuous playback even while editing the waveform.

Final Thoughts

While other companies try to offer alternatives to the sprawling interconnected Ecosystem of applications and Stock Footage collections known as the Creative Cloud, it is safe to say that almost every professional artist or studio seriously involved with motion graphics and video production owns a CC subscription and turns to it every day to get their work done. Adobe’s products are simply indispensable for those who communicate ideas through images and the new announcements revealed at IBC 2017 show that Adobe is committed to improving them.

About Joe Herman

Joe Herman is a filmmaker, artist and post production specialist and writes often about the industry. You can reach him at joe[at]legendmultimedia[dot]com. Or reach and follow him on Twitter @JoeHermanTweets.

Community & Partner Links

How Sony’s New Virtual Sound Technology Can Change How We Hear Films

Kami Asgar and Jessica Parks are post-production heavyweights who work with major studios, namely Sony. As a sound designer (Asgar) and as a post executive (Parks), their collective resume touches on everything from Apocalypto to Grandma’s Boy to Venom.

Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

NJ – Governor Murphy signs $14B Incentive Program Bill – the NJ Economic Recovery Act of 2020

 Film tax credits — amending existing programs to include provisions for so-called New Jersey film partners and New Jersey film-lease partners and allowing an additional $200 million of tax credits annually over 13 years.

Click this link if you want to read the full article on the Lexology site. http://bit.ly/35NtDx6

Film Commish announces date for production restart

In her December 18, 2020 news update, MOME Commissioner Anne del Castillo announced that the Film Office is now accepting permit applications for production activity that begins on July 27th.

She also announced awards now (Awkwafina) and more. To read all of the Film Commish’s bloggy sort of news column, click here.

Stimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts Venues

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

If you want to start production, here’s the latest news from the Mayor’s Office

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

Nikon to Stop Making Cameras in Japan

Nikon has fallen on hard times as of late as its camera sales have cratered, and now there’s a new indicator of how dire its financial situation is: the company is reportedly pulling the plug on making cameras in Japan after over 70 years of doing so.

To read the full article on Petapixel’s site, click here.

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

 

 

 

Union Health Plan Dodges Film Workers’ Suit Over Virus Relief

Law360 (October 9, 2020, 5:22 PM EDT) — The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan’s board can’t be sued under ERISA for allegedly flouting its duties when it relaxed plan rules in response to COVID-19, a California federal judge has ruled, nixing a proposed class action filed by two cinematographers who still couldn’t qualify for benefits.

In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

Russo Brothers Received Close to $50 Million From Saudi Bank

Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.

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