Adobe updates their video suite to enhance capabilities with virtual reality, animation and motion graphics

Adobe is adding a ton of new features to their video platforms (Premiere, After Effects, Character Animator and Audition) and the sheer number of improvements might outpace what many of us have seen in years. With a focus on virtual reality and better and easier animations and motion graphics, there is a ton to go over.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Make visually stunning videos with the industry-leading video editing software that offers powerful and efficient workflows for color, audio and graphics. The Fall 2017 update to Premiere Pro introduces deep collaboration features, immersive, end-to-end workflows for 360/VR, and Responsive Design time- and position-based controls for working with motion graphics.

Powerful collaboration features

Premiere Pro is the only NLE on the market that allows editors to work with multiple open projects concurrently while editing teams can work on a single project simultaneously over a closed or open network.

Multiple Open Projects 

Work on episodic content without repeatedly having to open and close individual projects. With the ability to open and work in multiple projects simultaneously, you can break up a large production into individual projects per scene, eliminating the need to open and close multiple timelines by accessing individual scene timelines via a tab-based structure. Freely edit and copy portions of one project into another with ease.

Project Locking

When working with multiple editors or assistants simultaneously on a single project, lock projects to alert others when a project is currently being edited so other users cannot overwrite edits. Assign read-only access to those that need it for viewing purposes only.

Cloud-based Collaboration with Adobe Team Projects

With Team Projects, users of Creative Cloud for teams and enterprise can work more effectively when securing projects. Hosted in the cloud and integrated right into Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Prelude, store source files locally or share lightweight proxies to make it easy for remote editors to collaborate.

New to this release is the ability to view the personal auto-save history, bring an asset from a previous auto-save into your current version, and create a new Team Project from an auto-save. Improved asset status badges let you know when edits are made by collaborators even before they share their changes. Collaborators also receive periodic reminders to share their changes and can access a more discoverable version history. Team Projects also supports the new Multiple Open Projects feature in Premiere Pro.

 

Motion Graphics templates enhancements

In the Spring of 2017, Adobe introduced a modern, intuitive way to create titles and motion graphics with the Essential Graphics panel and Motion Graphics templates. In this release, Premiere Pro introduces:

Responsive Design

The Essential Graphics panel in Premiere Pro now includes time- and position-based controls for building in Responsive Design to your motion graphics so that your graphics respond intelligently to changes in duration, aspect ratio, and frame size. For example, Responsive Design time-based controls give the ability to preserve the integrity of keyframes (e.g. an intro and outro) so they are not affected by changes made to the overall clip duration. Responsive Design position-based controls preserve the spatial relationship between layers and video frames when adding animation, changing the character count in a tile, or moving between different frame sizes or aspect ratios.

Manipulate multiple graphic layers

The graphics workflow in Premiere Pro also has been improved with the ability to select and manipulate multiple graphic layers simultaneously in the program monitor and Essential Graphics panel. A new font menu gives font previews and allows you to select favorites with filtering and improved search options.

Motion Graphics templates in Adobe Stock

Editors wanting to work with dynamic, professional graphics, or graphics packages created in After Effects such as titles, lower thirds, bumpers and closing credits, can now access Motion Graphics templates created by talented professionals in Adobe Stock. Access these templates through Creative Cloud Libraries right in Premiere Pro.

And more…

Get new format support such as Sony X-OCN and WAV files greater than 4GB. An enhanced getting started experience helps you be successful in Premiere Pro with new coach marks that walk you through a six-step editing process on start-up. Performance is optimized to allow you to access and implement in-camera look decisions directly from within the Lumetri Color panel. Eight additional color labels, as well as automatic gap removal, help you organize, navigate and make changes to your timeline faster. Adobe Media Encoder provides alerts for missing fonts, plug-ins and offline media.

Premiere Pro and After Effects (Features coming to both that work together)

Put the viewer into the center of the action. Immersive content—from 180 storytelling to full 360/VR—opens whole new worlds of storytelling for artists, designers, and filmmakers. Adobe Creative Cloud gives you the tools to craft and refine immersive video, offering a new level of immediacy for the viewer and transforming events, locations, and storytelling itself, into personal experiences.

The most comprehensive toolset for immersive content

Edit the way you’re used to with VR video mode in Adobe Premiere Pro and the new VR Comp Editor in After Effects, which transforms equirectangular 360 footage into familiar, flat rectilinear images. The Adobe Immersive Environment in Adobe Premiere Pro allows you to watch the way your audience will, via a headmount display, and scrub and playback content freely.

Immersive display

Editors can now experience the immersive qualities of the content they are editing, review their timeline and use keyboard driven editing all while wearing the same VR head-mounts as their audiences. Navigate the timeline and shuttle playback while using Oculus Rift or HTC Vive and use the keyboard for actions like trimming and adding markers in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Audio Editing

Edit VR content using orientation-based audio, which increases the immersive quality of VR content exponentially. New functionality will enable audio that is determined by your orientation or position to not only be edited but also exported as ambisonic audio for VR-enabled platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. Much like VR video in Premiere Pro, the audio will be an explorable 360 representation.

Immersive Effects 

New effects include VR Blur, VR Glow, VR Sharpen, VR De-noise, and VR Chromatic Aberration and add artistry and refinement to immersive footage in both After Effects and Premiere Pro. Designed to work with spherical 360 imagery, the new effects deliver clean results across stitched content, including stereoscopic media, without artifacts or seamlines. After Effects also offers new VR Color Gradients, VR Digital Glitch, and VR Fractal Noise effects.

Immersive Video Transitions

Powerful new VR transitions in Premiere Pro extend the editing toolkit for immersive content. VR Transitions help influence the viewers gaze and include VR Iris Wipes, with position and feathering controls, VR Mobius Zoom, which conveys a sense of movement from one setting to another, and VR Spherical Blur, which spin the viewer fluidly to the next scene. With VR Gradient Wipe, you can customize the transition using your own equirectangular images or videos, which can be anything from a simple gradient to a complex logo design. Use stylistic transitions, like VR Random Blocks for customizable block dissolves. Play with light using VR Light Rays, VR Light Leaks, and VR Chroma Leaks transitions to apply subtle touches or dramatic effects to immersive content.

Adobe After Effects CC

Deliver cinematic visual effects and sophisticated motion graphics with industry-standard animation and compositing tools. The Fall 2017 release of After Effects improves the efficiency of motion graphics creation by streamlining your ability to create data-driven graphics and deliver high-quality VR and 3D results. And it does it all faster with GPU performance enhancements.

New ways to animate content

Data Driven Animations

Build show promos, communicate schedule changes, present motion capture data, or generate the same graphic but deliver it in multiple languages with new Data Driven Animations. Import two types of JSON data files to develop automatic charts and graphs. Like traditional JSON files, the new Motion Graphics JSON format can be imported as footage in the project window and added  to a composition as a new data layer type. Twirl open the new data group and use After Effect’s pick-whip to quickly link parameters in your comp to the data stream values in the file. Interpolation is done automatically.

Animate with path points using expressions 

Control your graphics like never before using powerful new expression access to Bezier path points on masks, shape layers, and paint brush strokes. Link the path points to effects or layers so that they follow the motion, or go the other way and let the path points drive the action. You can even skip writing the expressions yourself by letting the new Create Nulls from Paths script build a framework of nulls for you. A new world of possibilities opens up by linking path points with the new data-driven animation functionality.

Enhanced 3D pipeline with Cinema 4D

Work with 3D elements faster with Cinema 4D Lite R19, now included with After Effects. Get viewport improvements with enhanced OpenGL and the Cinema 4D Take System. Get support for Parallax Shader, Vertex Color, BodyPaint OpenGL, as well the ability to import of FBX2017 and Alembic 1.6 files.

Motion Graphics templates in Adobe Stock and working with Premiere Pro

Motion graphic artists who create titles, lower thirds, bumpers, and closing credits in After Effects can now sell Motion Graphic templates for Premiere Pro through Adobe Stock. These Motion Graphics templates can be used without After Effects installed on the same computer as Premiere Pro, but they must use the Classic 3D renderer, use only Typekit fonts, and not use third party plug-ins in the composition. Artists interested in creating Motion Graphics templates for sale on Adobe Stock can get information by emailing amograph@ adobe.com.

Performance & navigation enhancements

Since the Spring of 2015, the After Effects team has been committed to making After Effects faster and more intuitive. Building on this trajectory of innovation, the team has focused on user feedback and are deploying the following improvements for After Effects.

Render layer transformations and motion Blur on the GPU 

Render layer transforms, motion blur and more effects on the GPU when the option is set to Mercury GPU acceleration.

Keyboard Shortcut Mapping

Quickly find, adjust, and customize keyboard shortcuts using a visual map like the one used in Premiere Pro and Audition. See which keys have been assigned and which are available for assignment while a tool tip reveals the full command name when you hover over a key in the Keyboard layout. Assign shortcuts by dragging a command onto the keyboard layout or onto a modifier combination for the currently selected key displayed in the Key Modifer List. After Effects will automatically detect the keyboard hardware and display the appropriate keyboard layout. Assign application-wide or panel-specific shortcuts with warnings to indicate conflicts when they appear.

Helpful start screen and composition settings Navigate After Effects quickly by knowing where to start just after opening the application. A new start screen offers easy access to tutorials online. For getting started quickly, an updated import composition from footage and create new composition dialog screen greets you when you open the application—enabling you to get to work in fewer steps. If multiple footage items are selected, they are imported into the same composition and placed on your timeline in the order they are imported.

Updated font menu with live previews 

A new font menu, like those found in Photoshop and Illustrator, allow you to set fonts as favorites or filter to see which are available via TypeKit. Easily select the style for the font family including Regular, Italic, and Bold.

Adobe Character Animator CC

Working directly with experienced and aspiring animators coupled with extensive research and development Adobe has created a new approach to animation. Character Animator, now officially out of Beta, is a unique and powerful application for intuitive 2D character animation. Create characters in Adobe Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC and bring them to life by acting out your movements and recording your voice using your webcam and microphone. Character Animator will track your facial expressions and motions in real time.
Having captured the hearts of not only animators who wish to go live with their characters, as seen on the Late Show or The Simpsons, Character Animator also offers designers a simple way to animate their dormant characters. The latest update to Character Animator further simplifies the animation process while giving artists the flexibility they need to deliver expressive, high-quality animations.

Animation Features & Improvements

Like After Effects for Motion Graphics and Photoshop for Design, Character Animator is revolutionizing and democratizing animation enabling users of all levels to not only create beautiful animation fast and easy but for the first time in history also deliver live animated characters.

Triggers Behavior & Panel

Trigger artwork with easier setup of custom-named triggers that can reference layers in different groups. These named triggers are listed in the Triggers panel, where you can assign a key to a trigger, view the list of layers controlled by a trigger, and even associate a MIDI note to trigger artwork using a connected MIDI device. Individual triggers hide layers by default, but show them when a key is pressed or MIDI note/controller is invoked, such as pressing H to show a hat on a character. A swap set of triggers shows only one of a set of triggers at a time, such as for different hand gestures, and is usually associated with a group of layers within a puppet. Each trigger in the set has its own trigger key or MIDI note, and one of the triggers can be a default.

Controls panel 

The new Controls panel helps you pose and animate your characters like never before. Expand beyond the limitation of the keyboard by assigning graphical buttons for triggers, and sliders and knobs for numeric behavior parameters, and laying them out in a customizable, visual interface. You can also assign these controls to buttons, sliders, and knobs on a MIDI device. The customized layout of controls is associated with each puppet so you can share visual trigger and parameter controls with other people.

Eye & Eyebrow Improvements

Tracked pupil movement for a puppet now darts to nine common positions (up, down, left, right, four corners, and straight ahead) by default and you can control eye darting with the Arrow keys or by dragging on a touch-enabled display. Eyebrows can tilt as you raise or lower them for more expressiveness, such as tilting inward at the low point to accentuate a scowl, or tilting outward at the high point to enhance a surprised look.

Pose-to-Pose Animation

Automatically create stylized animation with a pose-to-pose look from your live performances. Characters can smoothly transition from one held position to another, giving a hand-animated look to both live and recorded performances.

New Behaviors: Collision Physics, Layer Picker, and Fader Behaviors

In Character Animator, control a puppet through the behaviors that are applied to it. Face tracking is an example of a behavior, and so is the automatic wiggling of vectored artwork. Each puppet automatically gets the following behaviors by default: Physics (which includes Dangle and Collision), Eye Gaze, Face, Keyboard Triggers, Lip Sync, and Transform. You can add and remove behaviors as needed and each behavior has adjustment parameters to fit your needs.

The Layer Picker behavior triggers a specific layer in a puppet or group. Choose the layer by index number, percentage, microphone, keyboard, mouse, touch-enabled display, or a combination of any of these. Each layer can have Cycle Layers applied for more complex triggering of layers. The Fader behavior allows you to show or hide a specific part of a puppet by fading the opacity of that part over time. The part will fade in and out when triggered. Collisions, as part of the new Physics behavior, allows scene layers to bounce, collide, and interact with each other or with your puppet. For example, if a puppet is holding an open umbrella above its head, raindrops would fall along each side of the umbrella instead getting your puppet wet.

Audio Waveforms and roundtrip support with Adobe Audition

Get a visual representation of audio amplitude with a new audio waveform display. Waveforms now appear on audio tracks to help adjust the timing of a puppet’s entrance on a scene as well as the takes and the visemes. Edit your audio with the full power of Audition and immediately see the changes in Character Animator after saving.

Lip Syncing improvements

A new lip-sync algorithm powered by Adobe Sensei more accurately picks the right mouth shapes to correspond with spoken sounds. Automatic lip sync data created in Character Animator can now be copied & pasted into After Effects (and other applications) as keyframes.

Rigging and UI enhancements

Rigging a puppet with independent parts is now streamlined with automatic attachment of these independent groups to their parents (e.g., arms, legs, or other parts that overlap a torso). For newly imported artwork, position the group’s origin to where you expect it to attach—no more manual stapling or extra staple handles. New visualizations in the Puppet panel show how independent groups attach to their parent group’s mesh, which now includes a yellow outline to indicates the selected layer in the Puppet panel. Clipping masks let you use the content of a layer to mask the layers above it.

Adobe Audition CC

Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation (DAW) provides a comprehensive end-to-end audio production environment, along with deep Creative Cloud integration, to post-production and online content professionals. The Fall update to Audition CC introduces features for professional audio post-production workflows. Editing and performance enhancements; new flexible workflows and organization options; and expanding support for hardware, formats, and displays make Audition more powerful and customizable than ever before.

Auto-Ducking in the Essential Sound panel

Automatically lower the volume of music when dialogue and other sounds are audible.  Leveraging the advanced algorithms of Adobe Sensei, Audition will measure content loudness and generate dynamic volume envelopes so your dialogue or sound effect stand out above the background music, even as you make additional edits and changes to your timeline. Adjustments for sensitivity and fade responsiveness provide additional control over the results, and an option to fine-tune the results by manually adjusting the generated keyframes means the perfect mix is always within reach.

Editing and performance improvements

Improvements to performance and editing empower you to work faster with power and flexibility. Mixdowns are up to 400% faster than the last release, and more editing operations can now be performed without interrupting fluid playback. Enhancements to surround panning ensure better positioning and accuracy, and new time selection commands support quickly marking time ranges around selected clips. Advanced crossfade capabilities ensure smooth blending of stacked clips, and new modifier controls support symmetrical, mirrored fades and locked fade shape or duration.

Smart Input Monitoring allows talent to hear the most relevant audio source at the most appropriate moments, such as when matching cadence and delivery of existing recordings when adding changes using punch-in recording. And modification of audio file Channel Labels supports new device formats and destination settings that all editors face.

Maintain full-screen video preview between sessions or when switching between applications, and see precisely where you are in a project with the new Timecode Overlay display which supports custom sizing, position and timecode sources. Support for the Mackie HUI protocol gives Audition users access to modern control surfaces and consoles, including support for HUI-enabled timecode display and control devices. And when working with large audio recordings, RF64 WAV files now support XMP Metadata.

These updates fulfill professional audio-for-video feature requests and offer important hardware and workflow compatibility for those coming to Audition from competitive DAWs.

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All these updates are coming later this year to Adobe CC members. Adobe will preview these advancements at Stand 7.G27 in the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center and at 140 partner booths from September 15-19 at IBC.