Adobe Production Suite is rock solid

Adobe seeks to reclaim the title of best of breed PC Video application with the release of their new Adobe Production Studio Premium -- an almost dream suite of applications, but at a stratospheric price. The old adage you get what you pay for certainly applies in this case.

This new suite of applications is loaded with all of Adobe's top line editing tools including Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, After Effects 7.0 Professional, Photoshop CS2, Adobe Audition 2.0, Adobe Encore DVD 2.0, and Adobe Illustrator CS2 software with the workflow features Adobe Dynamic Link and Adobe Bridge.

The top line headline with this set is Premiere Pro 2.0 finally supports MPEG editing and encoding right out of the box. No longer do you have to go out and purchase a plug-in -- that barely worked, in order to edit in Premiere. Adobe's adherence to the .avi uncompressed video codec always stopped me from using its applications. While .avi is the codec for true professionals, its large file sizes makes it impractical for the video enthusiasts.

What Adobe is selling, isn't just a suite of applications, but a "way of life." Workflow is the buzzword for all of Adobe's various bundles and this video bundle is no different. It boasts seamless and intelligent integration between each other.

You can open up Photoshop, create and clean up a group of images, click a button and turn them into video composites in After Affects, then import them directly into a Premiere Pro timeline to manipulate the video, then export into Adobe encore to create a professional level DVD, complete with animated motion menus that you can create from templates or use original images created in the rest of the applications.

At any point in the process you can clean up the audio track or create new audio for your projects by simply clicking the audio timeline, it'll open up Adobe's excellent audio editing application Audition.

With an application this large and diverse, it's hard to kick the tires on everything, so the application that I spent the most amount of time with was Premiere Pro 2.0, and it's almost worth $1,700 admission price, alone. Oh Premiere, how much do I love thee?

Beyond finally adding support for Mpeg editing, Premiere 2.0's performance has increased 100 fold, the product is now rock steady and not bug infested like the previous version. It also features software based live timeline previewing. On my Pentium 1.8 machine I was able to easily and consistently watch my project on the fly, with almost no stutters or jerkiness. This meant that when I went to do the final render, I didn't have to worry about mistakes getting into the final output.

Premiere 2.0 now features multi-camera editing so you can view different angles and switch between multiple tracks on the fly. It now supports complete native HD editing along with HD capturing, support for Macromedia flash files (which the entire package now supports) and includes a few minor other enhancements. Beyond the major MPEG support upgrade and performance improvements this version is essentially the same as the previous, but these two new enhancements makes 2.0 the editing app to get.

I was a little disappointed that it includes the same text templates and lower 3rds as before; I love how Premiere makes creating themes easier. I just wish they would improve the quality of them. Most of them are fairly simplistic and cheesy, but with the integrated theme editor, you are really only limited by your imagination.

Using any Adobe product isn't for the weak at heart. It's very intimidating, not a tool for novices and the learning curve is steep, but once you invest the time and pick up on the Adobe way of doing things then migrating and learning new and other tools from Adobe becomes fairly simple and easy. The trick is finding the time to sit down and learn that first application. Once you do you are in for powerful and fairly simple tools -- again, it's only "simple" once you figure out Adobe's icon based interface, which is standard across all of Adobe's product line. To help you along the way, Adobe includes very nice tutorials, easy to follow manuals that include big images, step by step instructions, and videos.

Adobe's Creative Production Studio is probably the best video production suite you can purchase for a Windows based machine or any machine really. It's available for both Windows and Macs.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Related stories:

Dell unveils XPS One system
Dell today unveiled the Dell XPS One – an all–in-one premium consumer electronics system. The elegant, simple and space-saving XPS One effortlessly combines multimedia computing with high style, high-definition television and entertainment, and is a distinctive addition to any room in the home.
Sony Unveils 4x Blu-Ray Disc Writer Drive
Sony Electronics today announced its second generation internal Blu-ray Disc (BD) writer drive for the computer aftermarket, which boasts 4X BD-R and 16X DVD+R recording speeds.
Adobe CS3: What You Get
Which bundle is right for you? We break down some of their key new tools, suite by suite.
Broadband Report: YouTube plays with NBC
It's amazing how far the social video Web site YouTube has come in such a short time. In less than 12 months YouTube has reportedly had 9 million people a month visit the Web site, making it one of the largest and most trafficked video sites on the Internet, only being beaten by MSNBC. That's a pretty big accomplishment and a sign that online video is the next big thing in the Web.
Broadband Report: Urge opens
This week Microsoft released its brand new beta of Windows Media 11, the beta will come bundled with the beta test of Microsoft's brand new URGE venture, which is Microsoft's long awaited answer to iTunes.
Nokia unveils latest mobile Nseries
Nokia unveiled a new range of its Nseries multimedia mobile computers.
Epson Develops New High-Resolution LTPS LCD
Epson today announced the development of a 4-inch high-resolution low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) TFT LCD featuring Photo Fine Premia technology, which boasts both a wide viewing angle and a wide color range. The display produces beautiful images even when viewed from an angle of 80 degrees from the top, bottom, left, or right and covers 94% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. The new display is featured in the P-6000/7000 photo viewers to be released worldwide in early September 2008 by Seiko Epson Corporation.
Intel and Yahoo! to Bring the Internet to Television
Intel Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. today previewed plans for the Widget Channel, a television (TV) application framework optimized for TV and related consumer electronics (CE) devices that use the Intel Architecture. The Widget Channel will allow consumers to enjoy rich Internet applications designed for the TV while watching their favorite TV programs.

News discussion:

Technology news