Remember the first time you heard about using your Macintosh to digitize and edit video? Although it represented an exciting prospect, the technology needed to evolve. Yet, while desktop video technology improved, many users were still not satisfied. Desktop video editing wasn’t practical, powerful, or just real enough for many. The new evolution of Adobe Premiere, version 4.0, just might come closer to satisfying those users.
Premiere 4.0 remains as solid and reliable as previous versions, and advances far and above its competitors with new and improved professional-level features.
Good video editing lies in the details: the frames that lead into and out of each clip. Since 99 percent of video edits are straight cuts from one clip to the next, the skill in selecting which frames to cut between is the core of good editing technique. Editors spend the majority of their time adjusting these edit points, adding a frame here, taking out a few frames there, all to present a project that plays smoothly and delivers its message effectively. Regrettably, desktop editing software hasn’t been able to provide the proper tool for this top-priority job — that is, until now.
The Trimming window in Premiere 4.0 allows you to use both ripple and rolling edits to fine-tune cuts between clips. The window shows two frame views: the current out point for the outgoing clip and the in point for the incoming clip. Eight trim buttons surround the frame views for trimming or adding to either side of the cut. You can trim or add from one to a user-defined number of frames at a time. Each trim button has a corresponding frame view that previews the frame you’ll have if you trim or add.
Even handier is the rolling-trim feature, which lets you quickly adjust a cut on the fly. You place the cursor between the out and in frames (indicated by A and B tracks on screen) and drag in either direction. We prefer to make a rolling trim first and then fine-tune the cut with a few clicks on the ripple-trim buttons. This way you can make audio and video edits quickly and precisely.
One challenge for video-editing software is to provide easy access to all functions and tools while keeping the interface simple and uncluttered. Premiere 4.0 accomplishes this in two ways: by consolidating many functions in a few new windows and by allowing you to define the main Construction window. By selecting options from the Windows menu, you can set icon size, track format, and track display. You can also snap the window edges together to create a console-style interface, and you can save your window design for future use.
The new Commands palette is a floating window for easy access and contains only those commands you use most frequently. Both the size and selection of this palette are completely user-definable. You select and add commands from a pop-up menu inside the palette window or from the Preferences option under the File menu. You can even adjust the number of columns in the window to make the palette fit better on your screen.
Premiere 4.0 also improves the file management of its Project window. A new hierarchy of folders and subfolders, all user-definable, enhances the organization of your clips and minimizes clutter. For replacing low-resolution work clips with higher-res real clips. Premiere offers the Project Trimmer. This tool recaptures the original clip at a higher res but only the portions of each clip you need for your project, to save hard disk space.
The Tool pop-up menu is an important enhancement to the Construction window. Rather than having to remember or look up keyboard shortcuts, you can choose all of Premiere’s tools in one pop-up menu in the lower-left corner of the Construction window.
The range select tool, which eliminates the tedious repetition of executing the same command on a sequence of clips one clip at a time, has become one of our favorite tools. Range select lets you select a sequence of clips and work with them as a group. If you select a sequence and move it, the entire sequence moves as a unit, each cut intact; or you can select a sequence of clips and apply the same filter to all of them at once.
Anyone who uses Premiere for graphic design or special-effects work will be thrilled with 4.0’s new filter capabilities. In addition to the filters provided in previous versions of Premiere — antialias, backward, camera blur — you can now apply Adobe Photoshop filters that ship with the software — such as emboss, solarize, and zigzag — to your video clips for unique impact. Once you select the clip you want to filter. Premiere displays a window in which you set the parameters of each filter. If you later forget just what filters you have applied to a clip, option-click on the clip and Premiere reminds you with a pop-up list. Audio filters include boost, fill left/right, and echo.
Still not enough filters for you? Try using the Filter Factory to create your own. From the Filters dialog box, select Filter Factory and click on Add. A Filter Factory Settings box appears, with a preview window and zoom and grabber tools. Once you have designed the filter you want by inputting mathematical equations and programming values, click on OK and it’s yours. Or click on Build and save the filter for later use.
Likewise, Premiere includes both a wdde variety of transitions and a new Transition Factory. Transitions range from a standard additive dissolve to the more spectacular gradient wipe. And the Transition Factory lets you design your owm unique effects. These factories advance Premiere’s effects capabilities beyond those of other desktop editing applications and challenge many bigmoney professional-level editing systems.
Which brings us to another new feature: uncompiled, or dynamic, previewing. In previous versions of Premiere, you could not preview your project or any segment of it without compiling the transitions and effects. Now you can preview without compiling by using either the Construction window, the Trimming window, or the new Controller window. You can also preview and print to video at the same time, with no delay, regardless of the size of your project.
And as for creating a professional-level project. Premiere 4.0 boasts support for true broadcast-quality video. To be considered broadcast quality, video must meet the NTSC standard of 29.97 frames per second. With the appropriate video hardware. Premiere 4.0 can capture video at this rate. You can now work in the Construction and Clip windows at 29.97 fps and output to tape at broadcast quality — again, with no delay.
Premiere 4.0 has several other new features. Stop-motion capture control lets you build an animated sequence a frame at a time. You can use the Show' Previous command to onionskin — that is, to view the current and previous frames to assist setting the position and motion of the figure you’re animating. Video makers who need to online (finish a project in a broadcast-quality format) can output a second edit-decision list (EDL) for the B-roll (usually used for dissolves) to eliminate conflicts with the A-roll. Finally, for clips containing window-burn time code. Premiere 4.0 can use OCR (optical character recognition) technology to convert it into an EDL, although OCR is still not totally dependable in any application.
Other features from 3.0 have been greatly improved: The EDLs now support four audio channels, and blue and green chromakeys now reduce the fringing effect of the background in a keyed composite image. Plus, the whole application is Power Mac-native, letting you take advantage of speedy filter rendering and smooth, 30-fps playback instantly.
The Last Word
While Premiere 4.0 is extremely powerful software on its own, professional-level digital video “for the rest of us” is still not a reality. Unless you have a workhorse CPU, lots of RAM, and very expensive disk arrays, you sacrifice video resolution, frame rate, or frame size. (We tested Premiere on a Quadra 950 with 20MB of RAM and a Radius VideoVision Studio 1.7, and also on a Power Mac 8100/80AV with 40MB of RAM.) The good new's is that if you ow'n the right hardware, you won’t regret investing in Premiere.
The most remarkable thing about Premiere 4.0 is the battery of exclusive features and functions that place it in its own class. The significantly simplified interface gives you greater accessibility to commands and functions. The Trimming window is a necessity long overdue, providing simple and precise tools for fine-tuning edits. The Filter and Transition factories give you full reign to design and store truly one-of-a-kind effects. And with the right hardware, Premiere can give the desktop video editor a broadcast-quality product with a minimum of compromises. Premiere 4.0 is not only a huge advance in desktop video software, it’s the new standard.
Running on real Amiga computer hardware, using the ShapeShifter Macintosh II emulator.
Footage was captured via a USB TV tuner.
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
191 / 
2014-04-14 / 
cfdaa57d23a9573f09a6e626809746229887ab82 / 
/ 
adobe_premiere4.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
