Ultra CS3 utilizes Vector keying, it’s designed to be able to get
more precise keys than other types of keyers on the market. Unfortunately, in
our tests of it (which you can read about in our greenscreen roundup), we didn’t
find it to be as powerful as some of the other keyers on the market. However,
it allows you to live preview what your camera is seeing via firewire and see
how a chromakey background will key before you record. While you can’t record
directly into UltraCS3, this is a very useful function that makes
Chromakey production much easier. Additionally, if you want to place chromakeyed
talent into virtual sets, Ultra makes it very simple to do so with pre-created
3D sets. Twelve sets are included with the package and you can purchase additional
packages of sets if you want them. (Unfortunately, each pack of 12 sets is fairly
pricey at $399 a pop and, right now, there are no plans to allow people to download
individual sets at a more manageable single-serving price.) While only a few of
the sets would be of particular interest to most filmmakers (as they tend to resemble
news and infomercial sets), they do represent a nice ability.
While
I have heard some discussion that Ultra will be combined with After
Effects in the CS4 release, I think it more likely that Ultra
will be incorporated into a more Adobe-styled version of OnLocation in
the CS4 release. After all, the live preview ability of Ultra seems strangely
pared down without OnLocation’s ability to actually record footage.
The combination of these two SM products into one package would make them run
more efficiently and give you more of the benefits of an actual chromakey studio.
FlashCS3
Sporting a number of new improvements, FlashCS3
has been heavily improved. While simplifying video export is a great help, Flash
users will be most impressed by the extremely efficient direct import of Photoshop
and Illustrator files. Now that Adobe has a chance to really integrate
Macromedia tools with Adobe tools, the ability to bring these files in with all
their layers intact can be the difference between hours of work.
Despite
all the great improvements in Flash as a program, I still have an issue
with Flash in the Production Premium package. Let me explain.
When
I got a chance to be part of Adobe’s Reviewer’s Workshop in San Jose,
I got to sit in a room with a number of other video journalists and learn about
the new FlashCS3. While I have over ten years of filmmaking and
video experience under my belt, most of the people in the room easily dwarfed
my experience. However, when the Flash presenter went up to talk to us
all about Flash, I could literally feel our collective IQs drop as we all
suddenly had difficulty following the Flash tutorial (which I have no doubt
was embarrassingly simple). This was not because the presenter was bad, because
he wasn’t, nor was it because Flash is bad, because it’s not.
I realized the issue came instead because Flash is a completely different
animal than most video software. It comes from the core of the Macromedia world,
which bears far more resemblance to the likes of Authorware than After Effects,
and its vector basis gives it a greater resemblance to Illustrator, which
is also not as intuitive to video people as Photoshop. Flash causes
video people to become confused because it simply doesn’t make as much sense
to us as it does to the web programmers who cut their teeth on it. That’s
why, when Adobe announced that EncoreCS3 would allow you to export
an entire DVD as a Flash website, a roomful of video journalists rejoiced
because they wouldn’t have to try to program Flash for their websites.
As
such, for CS4: Production Premium, I would love to see them create
a video-person’s Flash program, similar to the way they created a
video-person’s audio program in the new Soundbooth. That way they
could keep Flash for the programmers and vector designers that are used
to it, but they could have a video-friendly Flash site creator for video
people. Ideally, I think this new program should be called: Promoter. After all,
most video people use Flash for some form of promotional material, from
Flash ads, to a promotional website for their production house, to an online
showcase of their films. It could be very different from the Flash export
in Encore by having presets for things like Flash Ads, online Flash
games, Flash sign up forms, and other common film/video/production house
promotional materials--plus it could support the variable video rate codecs and
adjustable size sites that Encore’s Flash export does not.
Bridge CS3 now supports video playback, which makes previewing clips before dropping them into Premiere Pro or After Effects a breeze.
Bridge
CS3
Bridge is the universal connectivity area that was introduced
in APSP to keep track of all the different files you may need in your varied
media files. In its CS3 incarnation, it boasts increased metatag abilities,
which can now be searched in the different programs within the CS3 suite,
and the ability to watch video clips directly in Bridge. Additionally, an expanded
Favorites area makes it much easier to get to different folders for different
projects that you are working on. These little improvements make Bridge even more
useful.
