The other major new feature for this release of After Effects is the Rotobrush.  Based on Photoshop image processing functionality, extended to account for the information made available from multiple frames, this is the closest thing you are going to find to magic in a current generation compositing application.  It allows you to automatically separate foreground and background objects in a video image, otherwise known as rotoscoping.  Of course it is not perfect, but it is a huge advance, compared to previous tools.  Automated tools like this are usually much more impressive if you aren’t expecting a miracle going into the process, but as long as you have reasonable expectations, Rotobrush can give you usable results in a rush, or a good starting point when more precise work is required.  Much of the “magic” of the new tool is in the processing of the automatically defined edges, and this capability is available without using the Rotobrush, in the form of the “Refine Matte” effect.  This effect can be used to polish the edges of standard keys, or manually rotoscoped footage.  Most of the other major feature enhancements for this release come in the form of integrated third party plug-ins, including Color Finesse for grading, Mocha for tracking, and DigiEffects Freeform for 3D simulation.  Each of these are feature rich plug-ins that include functionality that is beyond the scope of this overview, but are well worth experimenting with if you spend a lot of time working in After Effects.

There are quite a few new features in Premiere Pro CS5 that don’t hinge on the new Mercury Playback Engine.  These relate primarily to metadata and content organization, as opposed to the media itself.  Speech detection tools were introduced in CS4, and now those can be used in conjunction with the features of Adobe Story, to link your actual footage to your original plans, including scripts, storyboards, and shot lists.  Much of this footage processing links to OnLocation CS5′s features, which besides monitoring the technical details of a captured media signal, allow ingest of metadata during the acquisition process.  Building up as much information as possible during production, on a per-shot and per-take basis, will further streamline the organization process during editorial.  All of this information is searchable, with the intent being that an editor will have a much easier time finding what they are looking for, as this metadata is passed down throughout the post production workflow, based on source timecode.  This content logging metadata is not the only way that CS5′s handling of non-media information has improved.

Adobe has also been working hard to streamline the process of exchanging existing projects with Premiere from Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer.  They have further refined the FCP XML import and export functionality that was first introduced in version 4.0.1, which offers some interesting options for Mac based workflows.  Working at a PC based facility, I have had more opportunity to take advantage of Premiere’s support for exchanging timelines with Avid.  My current workflow is to use EDLs to move my sequences from Avid to Premiere, but with CS5′s improved support for AAF import and export, hopefully I will soon be able to leverage the additional functionality offered by AAF exchange.  (One caveat with using EDLs to move sequences, is that occasionally Avid adds spaces to the end of every line, and CS5 will not relink to the source footage automatically, unless you manually remove those spaces)  I have yet to find the optimal settings to switch to AAF files, but I have talked with people who have it up and running.  Combining this sequences exchanging feature with CS5′s support for DNxHD in both MXF and MOV wrappers, offers some interesting possibilities, but the truly revolutionary workflow will finally arrive when Media Composer 5 is released next month, allowing Avid to link to external QuickTime files thru AMA.  Hopefully this will allow Premiere Pro CS5 and Media Composer 5 to exchange sequences that all reference the same source files, without any conversions or transcoding.  Since Canon DSLR files will be supported natively both applications, this should totally streamline my current workflow.

Now why would someone want to move their project between different NLE applications?  An editor’s familiarity with a specific toolset is usually important to them, so certain offline creative editors are not going to switch their primary editorial app no matter what.  To its credit, Avid has a solid reputation for handling extremely large projects with no decrease in performance.  While Premiere Pro has taken a huge step forward in that regard, it is going to take a long time for it to build a stable reputation, since trust usually develops very slowly.  On the other hand, Premiere makes a perfect interactive online conform tool, especially compared to Avid.  It can ingest most digital formats in their native form, supports SDI capture and playback over a number of different hardware solutions, and scales to 2K and 4K resolutions, in RGB color space if desired.  It is compatible with DPXs for color grading, and can playback surround sound for reviewing final mixes.  The fact that Premiere can use Dynamic Link to ingest your visual effects changes from After Effects, and to output to Encore for adding interaction becomes an added bonus for this conform solution.

Dynamic Link is now on its fourth iteration, and has matured into a functional tool, even at HD resolutions.  It is designed exchange media between apps, without having to waste time or disk space by rendering.  While it started as a method for importing AE comps into PPro, it became the backbone of PPro’s export capabilities thru Adobe Media Encoder as well.  While Media Encoder CS5 is a dramatic improvement from the previous version, Adobe also added back in the option to export files directly from within Premiere.  This is much quicker for rendering out small parts of large projects, avoiding the overhead of syncing the entire project with Media Encoder before rendering a couple of frames.  They also brought back the ability to easily export single frames from the timeline, a function that had been removed in CS4, an inexcusable oversight that has now been rectified.  Exporting a Premiere Pro sequence thru Media Encoder, while not transparent, is now a much faster and more stabile process than it was in CS4.  Media Encoder also now supports DPX sequences and AVC-Intra MXF files, for both input and output.  Still sequence support in both Premiere Pro and Media Encoder is still missing crucial options, for relinking footage in PPro and manually overriding the frame rate in AME.  Hopefully we will have more user control of these settings in future versions.

One thing that I would like to see handled differently in Media Encoder, as well as the Premiere exporter, is the default settings for each export plug-in.  Adobe is never going to be able to predict what settings every user is going to want, but it would be nice if it defaulted to whatever I selected last time I used that particular output option.  As it stands, Media Encoder defaults to the same output as the last file queued, but if I choose any other output (AVI, MOV, DPX) it returns all of the individual settings to the original default, which is usually DV based.  Now it is possible to save presets, but I hesitate to do so unless I anticipate using that exact configuration frequently, because sorting through too many presets can become harder than manually defining the individual settings.  On a relate note, be careful where you save your .prproj files, since selecting “Save As” does not default to the current project location as it should.  Instead it defaults to the folder containing the last piece of media that you imported.  I usually follow a strict project organizational pattern, but I have saved projects in the wrong folders daily since switching to CS5 thanks to this “feature.”  Hopefully this can be fixed in a minor update.

Now a subsidiary application to Premiere Pro, Encore CS5 is the next logical step in that application’s evolution as an interactive authoring tool.  The most significant new feature for larger productions would have to be support for DDP output, so that your Encore projects can now be replicated at a professional facility without any special hardware required on the authoring side.  Adobe has also continued to develop the Flash export options, allowing Encore users to output their interactive experiences directly to the web, now with most of the BluRay interactivity features, including the new multipage menus, supported as well.  Encore projects are now completely cross platform compatible, between the Mac and PC versions.  There is also better support for 23.976p and 24p source files, and an easier subtitling process.  AVCHD files can now be authored directly to BluRay discs without any transcoding, decreasing processing time, and increasing output quality.

Previous versions of Encore have used Dynamic Link to import Premiere Pro sequences as source clips, and more significantly in my opinion, to import After Effects compositions as motion menu backgrounds.  I was never really that impressed by Dynamic Link for Encore source clips, because your Premiere Pro sequence is usually finished by the time you make a DVD, and since you are going to have to transcode to MPEG2 at some point anyway, little time is saved.  Motion menu design on the other hand seems like a much better fit for the workflow benefits offered by Dynamic Link, since the menu needs to be edited in both Encore and AE during the authoring process.  Encore now also uses Dynamic Link to offload transcoding of those sequences, or any other incompatible source footage, to Adobe Media Encoder.  This will free up Encore to continue interactive authoring work, while asset transcoding proceeds in the background, and also allows third party accelerated encoding plug-ins that are compatible with Adobe Media Encoder, to be utilized for these internal transcodes.  While I am unaware of any CS5 compatible encoders, this was an issue with the Elemental Accelerator in CS4.  The files it generated at 24p were re-transcoded in Encore anyway, and Encore couldn’t utilize the accelerated plug-in directly.  Anyhow, while no CS5 version of Elemental Accelerator has been announced, Matrox’s CompressHD should be able to accelerate Encore’s BluRay H.264 encodes, once Matrox releases CS5 compatible drivers.

The one thing still missing from the Adobe package is a good intermediate format for exchanging files between other applications, systems, or facilities.  This capability is available from 3rd parties like Cineform or Matrox, but until Adobe integrates support for one directly into the suite, there will not be a single universal standard format, that can be counted on to be compatible everywhere.  It needs to be compatible with both Mac and PC, and store at least 10 bit HD footage with sufficient compression to playback smoothly on a laptop.  Apple and Avid have both recognized this need, and developed ProRes and DNxHD respectively.  AVC-Intra is Adobe’s current recommendation to meet those workflow needs, but that format has a complicated file structure, and is not a codec optimized for smooth playback.  This universal format would tie in well with OnLocation, if Adobe ever added support for HD-SDI capture capabilities.  That would allow ingest, either live or from tape playback, into a compressed format for editorial, with log notes entered in real-time similar to their current tapeless solution options.  And if a professional selection of scopes could be viewed of the SDI input signal, you would have an all-in-one onset workstation solution.  OnLocation CS5 currently offers most of these capabilities, but is limited to HDV, XDCam, and P2 acquisition for most of its features.  Oh, and if it supported my Canon DSLR, that would be pretty cool too; maybe next time.

As a whole the CS5 release is a major turning point for Adobe, especially with the problems their users experienced with CS4.  While I don’t yet fully utilize many of the new features, CS5 has already revolutionized the way I work.  Premiere Pro CS5 has replaced After Effects CS4 as central application from which I manage my projects.  I was lucky enough to be on the beta team, so most of the major issues I encountered with the software in my specific workflow, have already been resolved during the development process.  While CS5 is by no means perfect, it is a huge step forward that will begin to rebuild user confidence in Adobe products.  Once third party hardware and plug-ins have had time to be updated to be compatible with the new 64bit native applications, I see no other disadvantages or caveats to upgrading to CS5, which I highly recommend.

FTC Disclosure: I have been on Adobe’s beta team for many years, and Adobe has provided me a copy of CS5 for this review.  My only admitted personal bias is my preference of Windows over OSX, because I like full control over every aspect of my computing experience.  If for some reason that bothers anyone, there are plenty of other sources of information on the internet, but I try to provide unique insight on how each of these tools fits into the larger post-production picture.  Any relevant critique or response is welcomed.

The second possible complication is brought to you by the fact that lots of HD footage is now being shot and edited at 24 progressive frames per second.   One solution is to make 24 frame progressive DVDs, which can work if you do everything perfectly.  I have yet to see this done properly, but Encore is adding more 24p support with every version.  I believe you can import and burn 24fps MPEG2 files to regular SD-DVDs in Encore, even though there are no presets for it.  I have yet to see a fool-proof flawless system for doing this, so I still add the pulldown myself for maximum compatibility and stability.  To do this, you once again need to use AE to convert a master HD export of your finished piece.  Import it into AE and leave it progressive with no interlacing interpretation, but reinterpret to 23.976fps if it is true 24p.  Insert the footage into a DV widescreen 23.976 comp and scale it, as described above.  Add to render que and use the same encoder settings as above.  In the render settings dialog, you still want to set the Field Renderer to Lower-Field-First, but you also want to add pulldown, in the dropdown menu directly below.  You will want to set that to the last option which is “WWSSW”, although honestly any of those would work fine for DVD.  You should see the output framerate change to 29.97 when you select a pulldown option, and you should be all set to render.  Hopefully this points people in the right direction in regards to getting the highest possible image quality to DVD from your high definition video projects.

Everything listed above is geared toward NTSC based production.  The first set of steps will also work for PAL, going from 1080i50 to 576i50, but your output render should be Upper-Field-First.  There is no pulldown option to go from 24p to PAL.  It can be done instead by increasing the footage framerate, but this causes the audio to need to be sped up by 4.2%.  Usually the speed change is not perceivable, but the final product will be a shorter duration than the original.  It also is not possible to generate any true PAL interlacing information from 24p footage with this method.

 AXIO 3.1 has few major improvements.  Besides overall stability improvements and bug fixes, Canon’s 25f HDV mode is now supported for you PAL folks, and AXIO systems are now compatible with Omneon media servers.  Nothing significant that effects the workflow of the other 95% of their users.

 Sony’s new HDV Cameras have a couple of interesting features.  The HVR-S270U is shoulder mount camcorder while the HVR-Z7U has the more usual ‘Handycam’ formfactor.  Both cameras use a similar imaging solution to the HVR-V1U, with three CMOS imagers at 1920×1080.  The larger HVR-S270U supports full sized DV cassettes, for over four hours of continuous recording, and has an HD-SDI output.  The smaller HVR-Z7U has a cheaper HDMI output instead of the SDI, and is limited to standard 1-hour MiniDV size cassettes.

The biggest feature that sets these two cameras apart is that they both use interchangable lenses.  Previously, the Canon XL-H1 was the only HDV camcorder to support this.  This is the primary feature that is missing from the new SxS flash media based XDCam camcorder, the Sony EX1.  Speaking of flash based recording, both of these cameras also support a new solid state recording accessory, the HVR-MRC1.  This little iPod sized device attaches to the side of the camera, and records the HDV stream directly to solid state CompactFlash memory cards, bypassing the tape entirely, but not the HDV compression.  CompactFlash cards are significantly cheaper than P2 or SxS cards, so I can see this becoming a very popular accessory.  Supposedly it interfaces directly with the new camcorders, but existing HDV camcorders can take advantage of it through the iLink or IEEE1394 firewire port, which transmits the HDV compressed stream live.  This would be similar to the disk based Firestore products, but with the added advantage of being a solid state solution.

Technology has come a long way in the last two years, especially in the CPU processing aspect of the equation.  A well equipt laptop can be purchased now that has more processing power than the highest-end Windows based workstations of two years ago, thanks to the Core2 Duo.  I bought a Xeon workstation in 2005, and one year later, bought a 12″ notebook for LESS money, that has MORE CPU power.  With the upcoming release of quad core mobile CPUs, we can remove processing power from the list of limitations that mobility imposes.

Next is RAM, and we are in a unique situation in that regard.  Most systems still use 32bit OSes, and are limited to 4GB of RAM.  This software limitation has allowed notebooks to catchup with desktops in this regard, as demand has not climbed as much past 4GB in the desktop sector, and notebooks were under no similar limit until they caught up.  4GB of notebook RAM can be had for under $200.  Obviously mobile solutions will not be limited by the maximum available RAM. (Any more than a desktop)

The first area where we encounter trouble is with storage, in both capacity and transfer rate.  While there are solutions that allow uncompressed HD speeds and capacities on a laptop (ExpressCard to CalDigit HDPro), that solution is not very portable.  The capacity issue can be solved via 1TB drives connected via firewire, or internal RAIDs or 2.5inch hard disks in large laptops, but there is currently no way to provide the required transfer rates for realtime uncompressed high-resolution editing, in a mobile solution.  This leads to a need for a different solution.  We can utilize the extra CPU now available by using a compressed video format to decrease the strorage requirements.  (As an aside, my FREE IDEA of the day is: A mobile array of 8x250GB 2.5 inch disks with an external PCIe interface for use with x1 PCIe or ExpressCards would offer 2TB at 250MB/s.  It would be an interesting solution, and if a company decided to create it, all the technology already exists.)

 Since there are no reasonable storage solutions for uncompressed, we must examine compression options.  The first standardized option is HDV.  The advantages are low-bitrate, wide support, and firewire I/O, which most laptops already have available.  The disadvantages are lower quality, 8bit 4:2:0 MPEG encoding, and a 1440 horizontal resolution limit.  The next option is a very recent one for Premiere Pro users, with DVCPro-HD, made possible by the release of the 3.1.0 update this week.  With datarates of 5-12Mb/s, this format is will within the 30MB/s capabilities of a single 2.5inch laptop drive.  The horizontal resolution is even more limited, to 1280 pixels wide, but it encodes 8bit 4:2:2 with DCT compression, and in general a higher bitrate should improve quality.  Since it doesn’t use MPEG compression, it should be less CPU intensive to playback and edit, leading to better performance.  The next step would probably be one of Cineform’s products.  AspectHD is limited to 1440 at 8bit, but it still the highest quality solution yet, usually at around 9-10MB/s, using Wavelet compression, which allows efficient low resolution playback as an added bonus. 

 Blackmagic Design released a MotionJPEG codec a while back that allows full 1920×1080 files at 8bit 4:2:2 to be used with a data rate of around 12MB/s.  The advantages are that it can be used for free, with out any limitations that I am aware of, but it is designed to be used with their I/O hardware for acquisition and preview.  The only disadvantage is not really a disadvantage comparedto the options below it, but image quality will not be as good as Cineform, and is limited to 8-bit.  Cineform’s higher-end product ProspectHD has few limitations, allowing 10bit 422 at full1920x1080 to be edited at around 15MB/s depending on settings.  This is easily sustainable on internal laptop disks, while an external firewire drive could increase performance and capacity.  Currently Cineform is the solution I would recommend if you need high end HD editing in a portable form factor.  The next question that Cinefrom prompts is, how high can I go, and currently 2K 444 RGB is possible at 30-40MB/s, meaning an internal RAID 0 would benefit playback on a laptop.  There is even talk of 4K realtime playback with the release of the RedOne, so it seems that the sky is the limit.

Other solutions that I am aware of, but don’t seem ideal are: Matrox MPEG I-Frame files from AXIO or RT.X2 at 12MB/s with the Matrox M.key in desktop mode, which I use, but the performance is not good for creative work without the hardware acceleration.  In the non-Adobe world, FCP offers DVCProHD, and now recently ProRES, a full frame 10bit 422 codec that runs about 15MB/s at 1080p I believe.  I have no familiarity with Avid, but XpressPro or Media Composer with DNxHD might be a portable HD option as well.

Laptops have done a lot of catching up recently, and the concept of ”desktop-replacement” is a much more legitimate now than it was two years ago.  The most important aspect we have not yet examined is HD I/O for portable solutions, especially for portable acquisition, which I plan to go over next time.

I will try to explain with this analogy.  Most HDV cameras allow you to capture HDV recordings to downconverted DV files in realtime, for backwards compatibility with older NLEs.  Imagine you shot footage in HDV, but you want to offline in DV, and online in HDV.  You capture your HDV footage into a DV project one full tape at a time, and are left with bunch of DV avi files.  You edit the entire piece, and export the final audio, and a DV guidetrack.  Now that you have the final edit in DV, you are ready to conform it at HDV quality.

There are a number of approaches you could take to accomplishing this.  You could throw away the project file and recapture everything in HDV to do an eye match to the DV guidetrack, withno other reference.  That would obviously be a tedious process. Alternatively, you could offline all your media in Premiere Pro, and recapture every entire tape, starting and ending at the exact same timecode values as your DV captures were, giving you an identical set of AVIs, that are at the higher HDV resolution.  This is more efficient, but still requires a lot of storage if your online format is 100 times larger than your offline (not true with HDV) and capture time.  Once finished capturing, there would be very little more work to do. (Resize titles, etc.) You could do a “Remove Unused” in Premiere to totally skip any tapes that were not used in the final edit.  This could save you some space, but only if you have a lot of captures you never ended up using at all.  The next option is to use the project manager to create an offline trimmed project, and recapture only the required parts of clips from HDV (usually with handles).  This process works in Premiere even with high end HD-SDI projects, but will not yet work with data centric workflows.  The alternative that SHOULD work for the Red RAW 4K workflow, among other tapeless formats, is very similar.  In our DV to HDV example, we export an EDL from our DV project and import that EDL into an HDV project to recapture only the needed material.  This allows us to easily capture only the required segments of higher resolution footage, saving tima and disk space.  The new captures will already have a project sequencing them in the correct order, so all that remains is to redo any titles and graphics or effects at the higher resolution, and the project will be ready to send to color correction or whatever the next step in your specific workflow is.