Last week, I and a handful of others got to visit the Adobe office in San Jose to receive some face time with the many people behind the Adobe Production Suite.

High on my list of “must sees” was a personal and personable demo with Premiere’s , Al Mooney - which included me getting to bug Al regarding what’s new/fixed in the NEXT version of Premiere.

Before I go over my last years FEATURE REQUEST LIST , I wanted to add that Al Mooney surprised me with Premiere’s new CLOSED CAPTIONING feature addition. Reading, Displaying and Editing Closed Captioning and the ability to both bake CC data into Quicktimes and save data as a separate (and multiple flavors) file. In addition to witnessing Adobe Anywhere, this was an amazing unexpected surprise!!!!

Now last year I made a pretty large wish list of wants for the next version of Premiere. You can revisit the whole list if you like HERE.

I also believe we are to be calling this new version Adobe Premiere Pro NEXT at this time. I may have a Premiere CS7 mention in the video but it should now be refered to as Adobe Premiere Pro NEXT.

So onto the list…

NEW and/or FIXED from my last year WISH LIST:

A QUICK VIDEO of PREMIERE PRO NEXT (not called CS7)

15. BLADE TOOL ***SUPER ANNOYING**** needs to have SNAPPING TO ability and not ALWAYS be free position roaming. Kills the purpose of using it, right? ADD THIS PLEASE!

FIXED/ADDED: Snapping visually works AND we get THRU EDIT INDICATORS, DUPLICATE FRAME INDICATORS AND HEAL/REMOVE THRU EDITS!!!! Can you say, YES!!!!! (SEE ABOVE VIDEO)

28. *** BIG ONE FOR ME**** BEING ABLE TO MOVE CLIPS in TIMELINE UP and DOWN tracks with keyboard shortcuts. JUST COPY FINAL CUT PRO ON THIS - it works great. Also, just moving tracks to other timelines seems to slip slide-y if snapping is off. Need a modifier key to control this better as well.

FIXED/ADDED: Can map this exactly to work like Final Cut Pro 7! A BIG SUPA' YES to this!!!!! (SEE ABOVE VIDEO)

14. Is there an OPEN ALL TRACKS to LARGER shortcut or do we have to do this MANUALLY?

FIXED/ADDED: NEW scroll wheel / mouse to expand a track larger AND mappable keyboard shortcuts for ALL tracks as well!! YES!!!!! (SEE ABOVE VIDEO)

1. RECONNECT CLIPS needs major help. It’s just not easy for more than one clip and at the least there’s not a smart search function like in Final Cut Pro. It’s too basic for many of today’s workflows.

FIXED/ADDED: It seems to work well with first tinkering. If you add new folders and organize folders inside that root folder, Premiere smartly relinks in the background for you. COOL!

NOTE: I weirdly tried doing this organizing inside a folder on the desktop and that seems to be a “no no” gotcha. We need to keep crap off our desktops anyway, right?

Also included is a META DATA Search by NAME, TAPE, MEDIA START and description or shot etc as entered in PRELUDE. It’s on par with Final Cut Pro’s reconnecting feature and potentially better with added metadata searching - although that I have to test this part out completely. More to come here though… (SEE ABOVE VIDEO)

5. PASTE ATTRIBUTES just pastes EVERYTHING. In order to remove things you didn’t want to paste you have to PASTE ALL — THEN REMOVE elements. That’s like inviting everyone to a party then telling the people you don’t know to leave once they’ve arrived. Silly.



FIXED/ADDED: Even better actually you can paste and select what to PASTE or what to PASTE OR NOT PASTE. Same with REMOVE ATTRIBUTES as well. Nice.

10. DISABLE CLIP needs to look more DISABLED - especially when the the Track is OPENED larger it is difficult to tell visually especially with other color labels in the mix.

FIXED/ADDED: DISABLED CLIPS now look… DISABLED !

12. When using the ARROW POINTER to lower audio levels, please make this ICON much easier to see and use. Seems too difficult. You have to OPEN AUDIO triangle to assist and grabbing the YELLOW line wants you to be way to precise.

FIXED/ADDED-ish: It's definitely way improved with a NEW FX click box vs the words written there in CS6. I still think the precise-ness of grabbing the volume line needs to be even looser to activate though. I’d like just a little more attention to this based on editing speed as the main thing. This is a task we do often and it should be “like butter”. It’s so much better now though.

(Also, SELECTED CLIPS display as just WHITE. Definitely notice this but I don’t know if I personally dig this look yet over a different shade of root color - if I’m being picky :P )

13. TARGETING TRACKS still feels like too many steps. This is way outdated.

22. PASTING has to have proper tracks patched other tracks turned off to work right. Again, the track selection thing.

FIXED/ADDED-ish: Scaled down and simplified now.

Still need to use for pasting (and selecting MATCH FRAMES on a clip in the timeline) but it’s far easier to do now without the double patching process of CS6. I still vote more attention here especially to match frame based on selection override but it’s a HUGE improvement nonetheless.

32. TRACK SELECT requires holding Shift key to select all tracks and not just one track AND annoyingly you must continue to hold the SHIFT KEY down during the move or it will default back to one track only. I don’t mind them being two separate tools - I use the ALL TRACKS SELECT and never use just the single track select at all.

FIXED/ADDED: Adobe has now reversed and fixed this. Track select selects all and now holding SHIFT selects one track only. The icon still reflects single arrow always though.

33. XML EXPORT exports everything… all sequences even if you don’t want them. (@editblog pointed this out to me)

FIXED: SPECIFIC SEQUENCE(S) NOW!

36. PANNING AUDIO should be super simple in the timeline… and it isn’t. Also should be able to keyboard raise and lower audio db in + or - increments of at least 1.

FIXED/ADDED: Definitely better than before and in some ways perhaps for some users “easier” than FCP7. You can map LR panning into the expanded view of AUDIO TRACK AND you can use CLIP MIXER as opposed to TRACK MIXER now. You can also map a KEYBOARD SHORTCUT for GAIN popup and use arrows to lower and raise as well. CLICKING the L pans hard left. CLiCKING R pans hard right and CLICK the CENTER DIAL and it CENTERS. EASY!

(We now have a CLIP MIXER AND TRACK MIXER. A CLIP MIXER is more important because CLIP values are what come thru in a OMF export)

(ABOVE CLIP AND TRACK MIXERS sloppily opened next to each other)

37. Can Premiere’s AUTOSAVING take place in the background instead of popping you out of another program you might be working in to show you that Premiere is saving for you?

FIXED/ADDED: Yay!

39. Adjusting CROSSFADES displays amount of frames you are adding NOT how long the crossfade actually is… how about both perhaps? Also, can you make the crossfade ICON occupy the size of the whole top to bottom of clip - not just the little top part?

SEE IMAGE BELOW OF CS6 ITTY BITTY CROSSFADE ICON :-(

FIXED/ADDED: It is way better now and you can double click to adjust length. See…

(I would like to see the fade START AT THE CUT - MIDDLE OF CUT - END AT THE CUT based on which direction the Smart Tool currently is pointing for extra points ADOBE)

48. Adobe started out strong with the SPEECH ANALYSIS feature but it’s not really accurate enough to use…STILL. If this really worked it could be amazing for users or interested potential users.



THIS IS REALLY NOW SOMETHING SUPER CONNECTED WITH ADOBE STORY… which becomes like Phrase Find and Script Sync all in one. I have seen this demoed but not used yet. Its potential feels amazingly cool.

50. (A reminder from @pauldv) Set IN and OUT and copy and paste that IN and OUT elsewhere into timeline. Currently, it highlights obviously, but you can’t copy/select and/or paste it. Bonk.. hit to the head!

FIXED/ADDED: IT WORKS NOW!!!

51. How do you load a SEQUENCE in the Source Monitor and insert it into the timeline NOT nested? Like in FCP we’d have to hold the CMD modifier key for instance. Is this possible? Also, could maybe the default not be NESTED? Do any of us really need nesting in this case?

FIXED/ADDED: Now you can choose to NEST or NOT to NEST a sequence when inserting it into a timeline AND you can load the sequence you are currently working with into itself. (it’s a little icon choice at the top of the timeline left of SNAPPING) NOTE: Matching back matches back to CLIP NOT the CLIP IN THE SEQUENCE from which it came from like it did in AVID though. Just saying.

I’m definitely feeling happier about Premiere and Adobe. I love the forthcoming relationship with users about the software’s future and their continuing interest in our needs and our constant bitching and rants. They are being both innovative and humble…

This is the first time I feel I can actually start to transition away from the dying FCP7 to Premiere Pro NEXT…

Sadly, I do have another simpler wish list in the works…

*But with a subscription service in play vs BOX RELEASES we can get fixes and features as soon as they become available!!!!

STAY TUNED….MORE NEW-NESS TO COME…