Adobe’s professional video editing software has been popular among professionals and amateurs for over 30 years. One reason for the program’s longevity is the consistent addition of new features. Today, Adobe has announced major updates for timeline editing, video playback, and audio editing.
The additions to Premiere Pro are the result of Adobe’s acquisition of Film Impact, a company that previously offered cinematic add-on effects, modern transitions, and graphic animations for the program. Subscription plans had ranged from $15 to $25, but beginning today, these tools will be available to Premiere Pro subscribers at no additional cost.
According to the press release, Adobe has incorporated user feedback into its implementation of these plug-ins. The company promises “more responsive timeline playback, beautifully dynamic visual waveforms, and smoother, GPU-accelerated editing.” The goal is to allow the creator to focus on telling great stories rather than navigating a complex interface. Effects are designed to play back in real time. Adobe assures users that red render bars are a thing of the past.
Users logging into Premiere Pro today will find dozens of new dissolves, blurs, and wipes that are useful in the editing stage. These include earthquake effects, visual glitches, color distortion, and VHS damage, among others. For the color grading stage, users have access to glows, blurs, photorealistic bokeh, halation, dazzling glints, and vignettes. The new camera shake feature is designed to accurately simulate the look of a shoulder-mounted documentary camera.
To ensure a smooth workflow, Adobe aims to keep users working in Premiere Pro without needing to visit After Effects to modify effects. Static 2D text can be animated into 3D motion graphics within Premiere Pro. One addition that will be interesting to experiment with is the “Surprise Me” button, which creates endless variations of the effect or transition, allowing for explorations of options that might never have occurred to the user.
To access the new additions to the program, users should visit the Effects panel and select “Film Impact Dashboard” in the Extensions menu for an interactive panel with live previews of every tool. For more information about these updates, as well as information on new audio improvements, visit Adobe’s Premiere Pro blog.