Video Apps Can Handle Emerging Formats, Transcribe Speech Files as Metadata

As Adobe last week started shipping CS4, the latest iteration of its popular, comprehensive suite of production and post-production software, the package was poised to become a workhorse in a wide array of workflow scenarios – including Panasonic's highly efficient AVCHD format, which is migrating from consumer-oriented camcorders into the pro space.
That means that, when you create a new sequence in Adobe’s editing application, Premiere Pro, you’re now offered presets for AVCHD timelines in both 1080i (PAL and NTSC) and 1080p (24p and 25p) formats at full 1080p (1920×1080) or anamorphic (1440×1080) resolutions. Premiere Pro CS4 also has presets for DVCPRO HD files recorded to P2 memory cards, as well as for Sony’s XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD formats in various flavors. And a still-in-gestation plug-in promises to adapt Premiere for native RED workflows. (See this workflow story from HD Studio sister publication Film & Video for info on how a beta-test of that workflow panned out.)

Premiere Pro has grown into a fairly mature application, but it does have at least one new trick up its sleeve in this edition – the Speech Search feature, which analyzes audio files to turn spoken words into text metadata. (The process actually takes place in the Adobe Media Encoder application, which frees you up to continue editing while the job is pending.) Soundbooth, Adobe’s audio editor for video editors, has the feature enabled, too. The results vary – some files yield a reasonably close transcript, others read like free-verse poetry – but the idea isn’t necessarily to be perfect, but rather to get close enough that some keyword searches become useful, making it easier to find the bit of a long clip that you’re looking for.

Integration among the applications in the suite has also been tweaked and improved, with an eye toward duplicating some functionality across apps. For example, new video and 3D features have been enabled in Photoshop, some editing tricks have been added to After Effects, and Premiere Pro handles multi-layer Photoshop files with video and blend modes. You can also copy formatted text from Premiere’s titler into Encore and other Adobe applications such as After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator CS4, making it easier to maintain styles across different steps in the content-creation process. Project management has also been overhauled.

The Master Collection, which includes Adobe’s entire portfolio – including design-oriented apps like InDesign and Illustrator – is $2499 new, or $899 for an upgrade from previous versions. The Production Premium suite, geared toward post-production, is $1699 new, or $599 for an upgrade.

For more information: www.adobe.com