The major problem with subscription-only software is not only that they suck funds from your account but also that it is easy to miss when their significant newer version arrives. However, you don’t have to make this same mistake with new Adobe Premiere Pro CC as it is better and has great usability along with collaboration improvements. This version also has better support for 360-degree video editing features.
Let’s first look into the usability and the collaboration improvements of this software.
1. Now you can easily open more than one project at the same time.
Before, in case you wish to reuse the assets which were created in one project within a newer one, you would require importing the older project. This could easily get messy. Now you just have to open both projects and then simply copy and paste between them. You can also grab the elements from the one sequence’s timeline, and when you paste them into another project’s sequence, their related file references automatically come with them.
2. Another vaguely related is the new facility of Shared Projects.
This software has had a team project capability through the Creative Cloud storage for some time, but the Shared Projects are now designed for collaboration using communal storage on a given local network. A user can now easily lock a project that is already loaded from a given central storage repository, say SAN or NAS so that other workstations can only go forward to open it in the read-only mode. Once Project Locking has been duly enabled in the Premiere Pro Preferences, you can give your workstation a username within the same dialogue. Then you can create Shared Projects, and also can use a little padlock icon down in the bottom-left hand corner to toggle to the read-write mode or even release a project for others in order to work on.
3. Another major area of improvement is for creating 360-degree Virtual Reality or VR content which is labelled as Immersive Video by the Adobe.
There exists a selection of 360-aware effects along with transitions which derive from the acquisition of Adobe of the Mettle SkyBox Suite. However, Adobe hasn’t included the SkyBox Suite’s 360 stitching tools into this version. Even though you can apply 2D effects already, it also introduces unwanted artefacts right along the stitching lines. However, the new effects are seamless and also include chromatic aberrations, blur, colour gradients, digital glitch, de-noise, glow, fractal noise, projection, plane to sphere, rotate sphere and sharpen.
Its plane to sphere effect is quite useful as without this, whenever you import a 2D image, it will actually look curved automatically. Apply the VR plane to the sphere and the image will instead appear just like a 2D placard within 360-degree space along with tools to adjust how it looks and orientation. Even better thing is that all these effects are now GPU-accelerated, so they gain performance advantage through the graphics hardware.
The VR rotate sphere effect allows you to correct the orientation issues with the 3D sphere and you can also add keyframes in order to animate the default view direction right within the 360-degree space. The VR Projection tool is quite handy as it makes it quite easy to use the footage shot on various 360 cameras on the same timeline.
4. The other remaining effects are 360 aware versions of their 2D counterparts.
Its immersive transitions include a gradient wipe, iris wipe, chroma leaks, light rays, light leas, Mobius zoom, spherical blur and random blocks. All these eight use the 360-degree space in quite an interesting way to move between the clips, and all of them are welcome additions since most 2D transitions introduce many unwanted visual artefacts. Premiere Pro also works in VR now which means you can easily edit while wearing a VR viewing device like HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.
There are a few other major new features. The Essential Graphics Panel which was introduced with the Premiere Pro CC 2017 in order to replace the legacy titles, is quite improved by the introduction of Responsive Design. The Time elements allow you to pin a range of intro as well as outro keyframes at the beginning as well as the end of a motion graphics clips that are preserved when you make ripple edits. It also includes a rolling credits feature.
5. The Position elements allow you to pin a graphics layer to any other layer or the video frame.
The graphics layer will then respond to all the changes to the pinned layer or the video frame, so when these layers are added to a sequence with a separate aspect ratio, they will then maintain a relative position.
Pros
- It provides better support for the 360-degree video.
- It is quite easy to use.
- It can easily load multiple projects.
Cons
- It lacks 360-degree stitching tools.
Conclusion
There is a wide range of smaller improvements which include the ability to preview the fonts as well as edit the motion graphic templates which are created in After Effects. There are eight new label colours to help in clip organization. But extended VR support, shared project controls and the inherent ability to load multiple projects are the best new features. It has great improvements that the previous versions. It has a plethora of features which serves the requirements of the users. Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 is not only easier to use but also a great solution for creating 360 content.