The Interface of Premiere Pro

The main interface of Premiere Pro. The timeline has changed considerably since version 6, although very little since Premiere Pro 1. The only major change is the way you drag windows around on screen and the permanent audio meters. So if you are used to Premiere Pro 1 you will feel at home in version 3.

On the picture here we can see:

1. The project window - fairly similar to most project windows with a series of bin for you to catalogue your footage.

2. The source window- drag clips in here to set in and out points. You can also see any sound clips in a waveform mode - allowing you to see them very exactly or just choose to see the audio-waveform part of any clip and cut on that.

3. The destination window - this shows the edit on the timeline.

4. The timeline where you layout everything.

5. Information, history and effects windows - showing information on a clip, a history of past actions so you can jump back and undo the last 5 things you did if you want, and the effects window showing all the effects available. This list is huge, but thankfully you just enter the first few letter of the effect you want and all the effects with those letters appear - enter "time" for example and you see all your time based effects.

6. Audio meters - a small version of the full mixer not shown here, on screen permanently and the tools for trimming, selecting. chopping, adding keyframes, rate changes etc..

The interface was completely re-vamped between Premiere 6.5 and Premiere Pro 1. Although it is still Premiere, the whole program has a much better feel. You can change the size of the tracks on the timeline as you like, rather than 6.5’s preset sizes, turn picons on and off easily, and zoom in and out while playing. The major change between Premiere Pro 1 and 2 is that all the windows are now interlinked, so drag one and the one next to it gets smaller. This means you never end up with wasted real estate on screen. You can still have windows floating on their own if you prefer and, of course, you can save your favourite layouts and apply them instantly.

The timeline has changed considerably since version 6, the project window has a tidier icon view, and you can have multiple sequences in one project as you can see from the tabs above the timeline.

The Premiere Pro timeline. 

No A & B tracks

Premiere has not had A & B tracks since Premiere 6.5, however the change is still worth mentioning.

Premiere 6.5 had two tracks, the A and B, between which you could place transitions.  Now, like every other editing application transitions are placed between two clips on any track.  This makes adding a simple thing like a cross dissolve to a title very easy; in 6.5 you would have to add two points onto a “transparency track” below the clip, now you just press the “add cross dissolve" button. 

If you miss the A and B they are still available in the “Effects Control Window”.  Here you can see the A and B and the overlap between the two. If there is not enough media then Premiere Pro will repeat the first or last frame of the clip - so the video freezes - but at least you will still have a picture of some kind rather than complete black.  The ECW shows there is not enough media by having a "cross hatch" pattern on the section of transition with no media.

Now we only mention it here because it is still raised by some customers and we feel the need to say that we think the new way is great and on the whole better that the way Premiere used to work. Of course if you don't like it you don't really have much choice since no one else support this anymore and if you want to take advantage of the new features of the editing programs, such as better sound support, HDV editing and better quality rendering, then you have to change to single track editing. But having worked this way for over a year we can say we don't want to go back and really dont like the old method at all!

The Effects Control Window

Using concepts from the After Effects ECW, this can be constantly open and gives you much greater control over keyframing and effects. If you are familiar with After Effects you will be instantly at home.

Each clip automatically has several attributes - 2D motion, scaling, opacity, flicker removal and volume. If you want to change the size of a clip you just click on the click and adjust parameters in the ECW. You can even just click on the clip in the destination window and wireframe handles appear around the picture - just pick it up and resize away!

The ECW also has a huge amount of control - including various ways to change the way the picture moves through the keyframes. You can have auto bezier which adds an automatic ease in and out as it moves through each point - or choose a mode where you have bezier handles which allows you to control the curve and flow of the motion.

The keyframes are actually pinned to an exact point on the clip - so trim the end of the clip off and you may trim off the final keyframe, again this can be very useful.

Because this mimics the After Effects control window, if you copy a clip from the Premiere timeline into AE which has motion attributes attached then these are still there when you are in After Effects. This means you can layout basic effects in Premiere, then open the timeline in After Effects and tweak them to your hearts content until you get exactly the result you want.

If you have the Adobe Production Studio then you can take you final AE compostion and put it back onto the Premiere timeline, without rendering through a feature called Dynamic Link. The composition then gets rendering in Premiere Pro with all the other effects. The beauty of this is that if you fancy changing anythinhg about the composition back in After Effects, then your changes are automatically shown when you pop back into Premiere Pro - no more render and replacing every time you make even a very small change!

Picture In Picture Effects

Settings for 2D motion, opacity and clip volume are always there. More effects are then stacked up below, can be turned on and off and keyframes copied and pasted between effects.

Nest timelines

Nearly all programs can now nest timelines, since the launch of Canopus Edius Pro 4. Premiere Pro could do this from version 1. This is very handy - you can group several clips together clips and apply the same effect to all.  So if you want a picture in picture in the top left hand corner for example, make a sequence of the clips that go in the PnP with transitions, effects and titles as required and then drop this sequence into another sequence and apply a motion path to all the clips at once.

Or you can have many versions of the same edit in one place - meaning you can edit, keep the original version and work on a copy, play around with the edit but easily return to the original.  Very useful. 

Capturing Improved

Between Premiere 6.5 and Premiere Pro the capturing was totally re-vamped with much better machine control. Scene detection is built in unless you are capturing HDV with Premiere's native capture module. Capturing DV or HDV footage using just the software, or all the possible variations of footage you can capture with a Matrox card in the system, is all done using the same capture utility.

The timecode is always captured with the footage meaning that if the media is lost you can always go back to your tapes and re-capture the clips to remake the project. A nice little touch with Premiere Pro 2 is that when a new tape is inserted into the deck Premiere notices immediately and prompts you to insert a name.

If you add the Matrox RT.X2 or Axio to a system you will also get a new window which shows the audio levels whilst capturing. This is not so important for DV capture, where you cannot change the level until after capture has finished, but very important for analogue capture.

Adobe don't tell you this as they cannot guarantee that it will work on any given system, but you can actually start the system capturing and then do something else - browse the internet, check your emails, whilst capturing. Most capture programs just stop when you move onto another window. However we would not like to promise this would work every time because it really does depend what you ar doing!

A couple of other small points with HDV capture. Using just software you don't see the picture on the PC screen whilst capturing. This is intentional as capturing HDV takes more effort than DV. However add an RT.X2 or Axio and not only do you see the picture on screen, but you also see it in full HD quality through the card's component output.

Other Details

• At last you can define the keys to be exactly what you want and these can be saved to load on other workstations.  Presets are already includes for Avid Xpress users and Final Cut Pro 4 users.
• Support for High Definition is built-in.
• Other plug-ins will ship with the final product. Already 2D/3D have announced that a cut down version of their image stabilization plug-in will be included.Many other effects are built-in and all will attempt to play in realtime through FireWire.  The list is too large to put here completely but it includes-
• Track mattes, lightning effects, various blur effects, Lens flares, transforms, ripple, lens distortions, corner pin, colour pass, tint, colour replace, keying, basic 3D, Alpha glow, texturize, echo, edge feather, flip and roll, field interpolate and much more.

Slow motion

Premiere Pro’s slow motion has been improved and it can now blend frames to produce a smooth result.  Although it previews in realtime you will have to render for the best results.  Matrox slow motion is better and is available when you have a system with either the Matrox RT.X100 or RT.X2 installed.

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