Adobe premiere cs5
Adobe is leading the pack when it comes to system performance, and offers a much-improved NLE.
By Oliver Peters
Adobe is shipping its much-anticipated Creative Suite 5.
The video applications are available either as single products or
bundled in the Master
Collection or Production Premium suite. Most video editors will be interested in the latter,
which includes Premiere
Pro, OnLocation, Encore, After Effects, Photoshop
Extended, Illustrator,
Adobe Media Encoder, Soundbooth, Flash Catalyst
and Flash Professional.
The big story is native 64-bit operation for all of the applications,
which requires a 64-bit OS (Windows Vista/7 or Mac OS X "Snow Leopard")
running on a processor that supports 64-bit operation. The upside of
this is much better performance, but the downside is that you'll have to
upgrade all of your plug-ins to 64-bit versions.
Concentration on Performance
Adobe really honed in on performance. I'm running a late-2009 8-core
(2.26GHz) Apple Mac Pro with 12GB RAM. The change from CS4 to CS5
provided noticeably faster launch times and, in general, more
responsiveness in all of the Adobe applications—but Premiere Pro in
particular.
There have been quite a few "under-the-hood" workflow improvements,
but the general editing features have not significantly changed. If you
liked Premiere Pro before, then you'll really love CS5. If you weren't a
fan, then improved performance and the easy integration of RED and HDSLR footage might sway you. I've never had
any real stability issues with Premiere Pro, but one complaint you
often hear is that it doesn't scale well to large, complex projects. I
haven't tackled a large job with CS5 yet, so I can't say, but over all,
the application "feels" much more solid to me than previous releases.
Accelerated Effects
The highlights are the MercuryPlayback Engine, more native file and camera support and accelerated
effects. According to Karl Soule (Adobe Technical Evangelist, Dynamic
Media), "The Mercury Playback Engine is made up of a number of different
technologies that use the latest hardware in computers. The three main
technologies are 64-bit native code, multi-core optimization and GPU
acceleration. 64-bit code means that Premiere can access more RAM than
before and can process larger numbers much faster. Multi-core
optimization means that Premiere Pro will take full advantage of all
cores in multi-core CPUs, splitting processor threads so that the load
is balanced and distributed evenly. GPU acceleration uses both OpenGL
technology for display playback and [Nvidia's] CUDA-accelerated effects
and filters for color correction, chroma keying and more."
Sean Kilbride (Nvidia Technical Marketing Manager) continues, "By
moving core visual processing tasks in the Mercury Playback Engine to
CUDA, the [Adobe] team was able to create highly efficient
GPU-accelerated functions with performance gains of up to 70 times."
Adobe has certified several CUDA-enabled Nvidia graphics cards,
including the Quadro FX 5800/4800/3800 series and the GeForce GTX 285.
Since the Mercury Playback Engine is more than just GPU-based
hardware acceleration, you'll see the benefits of increased performance
even with other cards. Karl Soule points out, "On my 17-inch MacBook Pro
laptop, I can edit clips from my Canon DSLR camera natively, without
any need to transcode the footage ahead of time. I can also play back
somewhere between five to seven layers of formats like AVC-Intra with no
problem."
The Mercury Playback Engine is designed to accelerate certain effects
(like color correction, the Ultra keyer or picture-in-picture layers)
and formats (like RED or HDV), and generally delivers more composited
layers in real time. As part of this redesign, the available Premiere
Pro effects are marked with icons to let you know which offer hardware
acceleration, 32-bit and/or YUV processing.
I was able to test CS5 using both my stock GeForce 120 card and a
loaned Nvidia Quadro FX 4800. Clearly the FX 4800 offers superior
performance, but operation wasn't shabby with the GeForce. For example,
if most of your work consists of "cuts-and-dissolves" projects shot on
P2, then you'll be very happy with a standard card.
Real Time
Premiere Pro CS5 now hosts many native formats, so you may typically see
a yellow or red line over a timeline, but rendering isn't a "given." A
red render bar indicates a section that probably must be rendered to
play back in real time at full frame rate. A yellow render bar indicates
that the clip may not need to be rendered. If you are exporting to
tape, you will need to render these sections; however, in most cases
these sections will play smoothly enough to not interrupt your creative
flow during editing.
Premiere Pro launches a version of Adobe Media Encoder when you
choose to export the sequence to a deliverable file. It's a
full-featured encoder capable of compressing to a variety of formats for
masters, Web, BD/DVD and more. Mercury Playback kicks in here as well,
because all rendering and encoding from Premiere Pro takes advantage of
GPU acceleration whenever possible. Depending on the format and the
effects used, rendering with a CUDA-enabled card will be faster than one
without this architecture. In order to maintain maximum quality,
Premiere Pro CS5 encodes exported files by accessing the original source
media. You have the option to use render files as part of the export,
but generally these are considered temporary preview files.
A Potpourri of Formats
Some of the native
formats handled by Premiere Pro CS5 include AVC-Intra, H.264, Apple
ProRes and REDCODE RAW. These formats all play smoothly under the right
system requirements and Premiere Pro includes a number of corresponding
project presets. (Some of these won't be accessible in a trial mode.)
Premiere Pro's newfound performance doesn't negate the need for a fast
drive array, especially with native RED files.
card. All played at least one stream in real time on either card, but
quality varied with the type of media. Premiere Pro throttles
performance through its display resolution settings—typically full,
half, quarter, etc. The FX 4800 clearly excelled with native RED 4K,
playing more smoothly and at a higher resolution setting than the
GeForce.
RED is a
special case, of course, because, thanks to the RED SDK, CS5 adds
native control over the RAW colorimetry settings. You can actually edit a
4K sequence in Premiere Pro CS5! In fact, it's less taxing to work in
native 4K than to place the 4K media on an HD timeline, since less
scaling is involved this way. Although you can work with native REDCODE
RAW—and Premiere Pro handles it well—I wouldn't really want to edit a
project this way. For instance, going through the SDK doesn't give you
access to the curves control, as you do in RED's own software. Second,
it's still a bit touchy. I had problems playing this media with either
card in a full screen mode. Lastly, you can change the raw setting by
opening and adjusting the source settings for the file, but then it is
very slow to update the look within the Premiere Pro project. For RED,
I'd still opt for an offline-online editing workflow.
Adobe has been working closely with the BBC to tightly integrate
Premiere Pro with P2 media and metadata. AVC-Intra performance was
especially impressive. This is a computationally-intensive codec, but
even though I was playing from a striped pair (RAID 0) of FireWire 800
drives, 1080p/23.98 files (100Mb/s AVC-I) played and scrubbed as if they
were DV. Hybrid DSLRs like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II are hot, which
Adobe has taken that into account with CS5. H.264 files from a Canon 5D
or 7D play quite smoothly in Premiere Pro CS5, so even Final Cut Pro
fans may find themselves using Premiere Pro as the first choice when
working with these projects.
Premiere Pro's Media Browser is a handy feature, that lets you find
and review native-format camera files on your drives. Navigate to P2,
XDCAM or RED media folders on your hard drive. It uses the
format-specific folder/file hierarchy to hide the extraneous metadata
and proxy folders that are associated with that specific format.
Pushing the Mercury
I put the Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 through its paces. I was easily able to
build up eight layers of native RED media on an HD timeline, complete
with accelerated color correction effects and 2D picture-in-picture
layering. The timeline stayed yellow as long as I was in the
GPU-hardware-accelerated render setting. Remember, these are native 4K
RED camera raw files, so there's a ton of scaling happening!
Since I was only playing the media from my FireWire 800 stripe,
clearly the drives couldn't keep up for long playback, but it did work
and would have been better with a beefy drive array. As a general rule,
when I could play native RED files at half-resolution with the Quadro
card, the GeForce would have to run the same file at quarter-resolution
to get acceptable playback.
A more realistic experiment was six layers of Apple ProRes LT (with
effects on each layer). This played fine in full screen at half
resolution using the FX 4800, but started to drop frames at full
resolution. Another variation was a single ProRes LT layer with four
filters (fast color corrector, Gaussian blur, noise and
brightness/contrast), which played fine in full resolution as a full
screen image. The same clip had to be dropped to half-resolution with
the GeForce card.
As an example of how well the FX 4800 handled AVC-Intra, I built up
nine layers of a two-minute long 1080p/23.98 clip. This played at
full-resolution without dropping frames for the full length of the clip.
Only when I added an accelerated effect to each of the nine layers did
it start to drop frames, requiring me to drop to half-resolution for
error-free playback.
Some Bumps
One of the big selling points Adobe offers Final Cutand Avid editors is to use Premiere Pro as a conduit to get into
After Effects. Once inside Premiere Pro, Adobe's Dynamic Link offers
superb integration with After Effects. Like CS4, Premiere Pro CS5 can
import XML and AAF files. In actual practice, I haven't had good luck
with this. I've never been able to successfully bring in a Media
Composer sequence, and my success with Final Cut XML files has been
spotty.
I was able to successfully import an FCP sequence only after I
stripped out all effects filters, but then still had odd audio sync
issues. The timeline clips were linked to ProRes LT and AIFF files that
were originally converted files from a Canon 5D camera and Zoom handheld
audio recorder. Picture clips were perfectly positioned, but audio sync
seemed to come from different sections of the audio files.
Inexplicably, when I opened this same Premiere Pro project a day later,
the sequence was perfectly in sync. Then the third day, back to random
sync. My suspicion is that the double-system sound files from the Zoom
might be the issue here.
Premiere Pro writes cache files for each piece of media, including
database files and waveform caches. Adobe Media Encoder, Premiere Pro,
Encore and Soundbooth share a common media cache database, so each of
these applications can read from and write to the same set of cached
media files. Premiere Pro also "conforms" all non-standard audio files
to uncompressed 48kHz. This includes any compressed audio, like MP3
files, or audio with other sample rates. In the case of the handful of
files I've been using for these tests, Premiere Pro has already consumed
1.5GB of space for conformed audio. This is by merely linking to files
that already exist elsewhere on my hard drives. These files had 44.1kHz
audio, requiring Premiere Pro to write new 48kHz audio files, which are
used in the project. Generally 10GB of free space will be adequate for
cache files and preview render files.
Conclusion
I've barely scratched the surface, but you can see there's a lot in
Adobe Creative Suite 5. Aside from my few nitpicks, this is very healthy
upgrade that provides a number of feature enhancements, but truly
delivers on the side of performance. Premiere Pro's Mercury Playback
Engine contains more than 30 image processing effects that take
advantage of the Nvidia GPU's CUDA processing power, but you'll enjoy a
significant performance upgrade even with a non-CUDA graphics card.
If you're choosing a nonlinear editor without any preconceived
notions, then clearly Adobe is an outstanding choice on either a Windows
or Mac workstation or laptop. In addition, vendors including AJA,
Blackmagic Design and Matrox currently (or later this year) will provide
CS5-compatible hardware support with their I/O products. Even if you're
happy with another NLE, you'll find plenty for reasons to pick up CS5
Production Premium and add it to your toolkit.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
SCORE:
PROS: Takes advantage of modern 64-bit operating systems. Enhanced real-time performance through the Mercury Playback Engine. Additional performance boost with certain NVIDIA cards using CUDA technology. Native REDCODE raw support including 4K timelines.
CONS: Some improvement needed in reading P2 metadata, XML and AAF import do not work consistently well.
BOTTOM LINE: Adobe is leading the pack when it comes to system performance. It offers native support for a wide range of camera formats. Noticeably better, more stable and more responsive editing than previous versions.
MSRP: Premiere Pro CS5 $799 / CS5 Production Premium $1,699 / CS5 Master Collection $2,599
Adobe is leading the pack when it comes to system performance, and offers a much-improved NLE.
By Oliver Peters
Adobe is shipping its much-anticipated Creative Suite 5.
The video applications are available either as single products or
bundled in the Master
Collection or Production Premium suite. Most video editors will be interested in the latter,
which includes Premiere
Pro, OnLocation, Encore, After Effects, Photoshop
Extended, Illustrator,
Adobe Media Encoder, Soundbooth, Flash Catalyst
and Flash Professional.
The big story is native 64-bit operation for all of the applications,
which requires a 64-bit OS (Windows Vista/7 or Mac OS X "Snow Leopard")
running on a processor that supports 64-bit operation. The upside of
this is much better performance, but the downside is that you'll have to
upgrade all of your plug-ins to 64-bit versions.
Concentration on Performance
Adobe really honed in on performance. I'm running a late-2009 8-core
(2.26GHz) Apple Mac Pro with 12GB RAM. The change from CS4 to CS5
provided noticeably faster launch times and, in general, more
responsiveness in all of the Adobe applications—but Premiere Pro in
particular.
There have been quite a few "under-the-hood" workflow improvements,
but the general editing features have not significantly changed. If you
liked Premiere Pro before, then you'll really love CS5. If you weren't a
fan, then improved performance and the easy integration of RED and HDSLR footage might sway you. I've never had
any real stability issues with Premiere Pro, but one complaint you
often hear is that it doesn't scale well to large, complex projects. I
haven't tackled a large job with CS5 yet, so I can't say, but over all,
the application "feels" much more solid to me than previous releases.
Accelerated Effects
The highlights are the MercuryPlayback Engine, more native file and camera support and accelerated
effects. According to Karl Soule (Adobe Technical Evangelist, Dynamic
Media), "The Mercury Playback Engine is made up of a number of different
technologies that use the latest hardware in computers. The three main
technologies are 64-bit native code, multi-core optimization and GPU
acceleration. 64-bit code means that Premiere can access more RAM than
before and can process larger numbers much faster. Multi-core
optimization means that Premiere Pro will take full advantage of all
cores in multi-core CPUs, splitting processor threads so that the load
is balanced and distributed evenly. GPU acceleration uses both OpenGL
technology for display playback and [Nvidia's] CUDA-accelerated effects
and filters for color correction, chroma keying and more."
Sean Kilbride (Nvidia Technical Marketing Manager) continues, "By
moving core visual processing tasks in the Mercury Playback Engine to
CUDA, the [Adobe] team was able to create highly efficient
GPU-accelerated functions with performance gains of up to 70 times."
Adobe has certified several CUDA-enabled Nvidia graphics cards,
including the Quadro FX 5800/4800/3800 series and the GeForce GTX 285.
Since the Mercury Playback Engine is more than just GPU-based
hardware acceleration, you'll see the benefits of increased performance
even with other cards. Karl Soule points out, "On my 17-inch MacBook Pro
laptop, I can edit clips from my Canon DSLR camera natively, without
any need to transcode the footage ahead of time. I can also play back
somewhere between five to seven layers of formats like AVC-Intra with no
problem."
The Mercury Playback Engine is designed to accelerate certain effects
(like color correction, the Ultra keyer or picture-in-picture layers)
and formats (like RED or HDV), and generally delivers more composited
layers in real time. As part of this redesign, the available Premiere
Pro effects are marked with icons to let you know which offer hardware
acceleration, 32-bit and/or YUV processing.
I was able to test CS5 using both my stock GeForce 120 card and a
loaned Nvidia Quadro FX 4800. Clearly the FX 4800 offers superior
performance, but operation wasn't shabby with the GeForce. For example,
if most of your work consists of "cuts-and-dissolves" projects shot on
P2, then you'll be very happy with a standard card.
Real Time
Premiere Pro CS5 now hosts many native formats, so you may typically see
a yellow or red line over a timeline, but rendering isn't a "given." A
red render bar indicates a section that probably must be rendered to
play back in real time at full frame rate. A yellow render bar indicates
that the clip may not need to be rendered. If you are exporting to
tape, you will need to render these sections; however, in most cases
these sections will play smoothly enough to not interrupt your creative
flow during editing.
Premiere Pro launches a version of Adobe Media Encoder when you
choose to export the sequence to a deliverable file. It's a
full-featured encoder capable of compressing to a variety of formats for
masters, Web, BD/DVD and more. Mercury Playback kicks in here as well,
because all rendering and encoding from Premiere Pro takes advantage of
GPU acceleration whenever possible. Depending on the format and the
effects used, rendering with a CUDA-enabled card will be faster than one
without this architecture. In order to maintain maximum quality,
Premiere Pro CS5 encodes exported files by accessing the original source
media. You have the option to use render files as part of the export,
but generally these are considered temporary preview files.
A Potpourri of Formats
Some of the native
formats handled by Premiere Pro CS5 include AVC-Intra, H.264, Apple
ProRes and REDCODE RAW. These formats all play smoothly under the right
system requirements and Premiere Pro includes a number of corresponding
project presets. (Some of these won't be accessible in a trial mode.)
Premiere Pro's newfound performance doesn't negate the need for a fast
drive array, especially with native RED files.
- Supported
video formats in Premiere Pro CS5
card. All played at least one stream in real time on either card, but
quality varied with the type of media. Premiere Pro throttles
performance through its display resolution settings—typically full,
half, quarter, etc. The FX 4800 clearly excelled with native RED 4K,
playing more smoothly and at a higher resolution setting than the
GeForce.
RED is a
special case, of course, because, thanks to the RED SDK, CS5 adds
native control over the RAW colorimetry settings. You can actually edit a
4K sequence in Premiere Pro CS5! In fact, it's less taxing to work in
native 4K than to place the 4K media on an HD timeline, since less
scaling is involved this way. Although you can work with native REDCODE
RAW—and Premiere Pro handles it well—I wouldn't really want to edit a
project this way. For instance, going through the SDK doesn't give you
access to the curves control, as you do in RED's own software. Second,
it's still a bit touchy. I had problems playing this media with either
card in a full screen mode. Lastly, you can change the raw setting by
opening and adjusting the source settings for the file, but then it is
very slow to update the look within the Premiere Pro project. For RED,
I'd still opt for an offline-online editing workflow.
Adobe has been working closely with the BBC to tightly integrate
Premiere Pro with P2 media and metadata. AVC-Intra performance was
especially impressive. This is a computationally-intensive codec, but
even though I was playing from a striped pair (RAID 0) of FireWire 800
drives, 1080p/23.98 files (100Mb/s AVC-I) played and scrubbed as if they
were DV. Hybrid DSLRs like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II are hot, which
Adobe has taken that into account with CS5. H.264 files from a Canon 5D
or 7D play quite smoothly in Premiere Pro CS5, so even Final Cut Pro
fans may find themselves using Premiere Pro as the first choice when
working with these projects.
Premiere Pro's Media Browser is a handy feature, that lets you find
and review native-format camera files on your drives. Navigate to P2,
XDCAM or RED media folders on your hard drive. It uses the
format-specific folder/file hierarchy to hide the extraneous metadata
and proxy folders that are associated with that specific format.
Pushing the Mercury
I put the Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 through its paces. I was easily able to
build up eight layers of native RED media on an HD timeline, complete
with accelerated color correction effects and 2D picture-in-picture
layering. The timeline stayed yellow as long as I was in the
GPU-hardware-accelerated render setting. Remember, these are native 4K
RED camera raw files, so there's a ton of scaling happening!
Since I was only playing the media from my FireWire 800 stripe,
clearly the drives couldn't keep up for long playback, but it did work
and would have been better with a beefy drive array. As a general rule,
when I could play native RED files at half-resolution with the Quadro
card, the GeForce would have to run the same file at quarter-resolution
to get acceptable playback.
A more realistic experiment was six layers of Apple ProRes LT (with
effects on each layer). This played fine in full screen at half
resolution using the FX 4800, but started to drop frames at full
resolution. Another variation was a single ProRes LT layer with four
filters (fast color corrector, Gaussian blur, noise and
brightness/contrast), which played fine in full resolution as a full
screen image. The same clip had to be dropped to half-resolution with
the GeForce card.
As an example of how well the FX 4800 handled AVC-Intra, I built up
nine layers of a two-minute long 1080p/23.98 clip. This played at
full-resolution without dropping frames for the full length of the clip.
Only when I added an accelerated effect to each of the nine layers did
it start to drop frames, requiring me to drop to half-resolution for
error-free playback.
Some Bumps
One of the big selling points Adobe offers Final Cutand Avid editors is to use Premiere Pro as a conduit to get into
After Effects. Once inside Premiere Pro, Adobe's Dynamic Link offers
superb integration with After Effects. Like CS4, Premiere Pro CS5 can
import XML and AAF files. In actual practice, I haven't had good luck
with this. I've never been able to successfully bring in a Media
Composer sequence, and my success with Final Cut XML files has been
spotty.
I was able to successfully import an FCP sequence only after I
stripped out all effects filters, but then still had odd audio sync
issues. The timeline clips were linked to ProRes LT and AIFF files that
were originally converted files from a Canon 5D camera and Zoom handheld
audio recorder. Picture clips were perfectly positioned, but audio sync
seemed to come from different sections of the audio files.
Inexplicably, when I opened this same Premiere Pro project a day later,
the sequence was perfectly in sync. Then the third day, back to random
sync. My suspicion is that the double-system sound files from the Zoom
might be the issue here.
Premiere Pro writes cache files for each piece of media, including
database files and waveform caches. Adobe Media Encoder, Premiere Pro,
Encore and Soundbooth share a common media cache database, so each of
these applications can read from and write to the same set of cached
media files. Premiere Pro also "conforms" all non-standard audio files
to uncompressed 48kHz. This includes any compressed audio, like MP3
files, or audio with other sample rates. In the case of the handful of
files I've been using for these tests, Premiere Pro has already consumed
1.5GB of space for conformed audio. This is by merely linking to files
that already exist elsewhere on my hard drives. These files had 44.1kHz
audio, requiring Premiere Pro to write new 48kHz audio files, which are
used in the project. Generally 10GB of free space will be adequate for
cache files and preview render files.
Conclusion
I've barely scratched the surface, but you can see there's a lot in
Adobe Creative Suite 5. Aside from my few nitpicks, this is very healthy
upgrade that provides a number of feature enhancements, but truly
delivers on the side of performance. Premiere Pro's Mercury Playback
Engine contains more than 30 image processing effects that take
advantage of the Nvidia GPU's CUDA processing power, but you'll enjoy a
significant performance upgrade even with a non-CUDA graphics card.
If you're choosing a nonlinear editor without any preconceived
notions, then clearly Adobe is an outstanding choice on either a Windows
or Mac workstation or laptop. In addition, vendors including AJA,
Blackmagic Design and Matrox currently (or later this year) will provide
CS5-compatible hardware support with their I/O products. Even if you're
happy with another NLE, you'll find plenty for reasons to pick up CS5
Production Premium and add it to your toolkit.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
SCORE:
PROS: Takes advantage of modern 64-bit operating systems. Enhanced real-time performance through the Mercury Playback Engine. Additional performance boost with certain NVIDIA cards using CUDA technology. Native REDCODE raw support including 4K timelines.
CONS: Some improvement needed in reading P2 metadata, XML and AAF import do not work consistently well.
BOTTOM LINE: Adobe is leading the pack when it comes to system performance. It offers native support for a wide range of camera formats. Noticeably better, more stable and more responsive editing than previous versions.
MSRP: Premiere Pro CS5 $799 / CS5 Production Premium $1,699 / CS5 Master Collection $2,599
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