Device
Central CS3
Device Central is another new program that’s
been added to the amazing lineup in CS3: Production Premium. This
allows you to accurately emulate what online content you create will look like
on mobile devices. Accuracy is assured by actually having the manufacturer’s
specs from the different sets on the market included with this program. While
not all phones are included out of the box, Adobe makes new device profiles available
all the time.
Above
the realism that the actual manufacturing specs these devices uses entails, you
can further test your video with real world conditions like no backlight, sunlight,
and a variety of reflections. This can seriously help folks who want to make their
films, trailers, and shorts available for the rapidly growing mobile market.
Device Central CS3 allows you to see exactly what footage will look like in real world conditions on a variety of mobile devices..
Performance
Our primary test machine was our 1.86 Ghz Core2 Duo with Windows XP Pro
x64, 3 Gigs of RAM, and the nVidia Quadro FX 1500 card (which was kindly provided
by the folks at nVidia). For our Mac test, we tested it on a MacBook Pro with
Intel Core2 Duo, Tiger 10.4.10, 2 Gigs of RAM.
Additionally, we did try installing this on a few less powerful PC laptops and an older AMD machine for comparison purposes, and could not get the programs to install fully. As such, make sure that you have a powerful enough machine according to Adobe's website and, if you are going to install it on an AMD machine, make sure that the AMD processor you are using will support SSE2 instructions.
While
the greater RAM on the XP x64 machine did yield faster results, the results were
still quite good on the MacBook. There were a few crashes on the Mac before the 3.0.1 upgrade came out. However, after it was installed, everything worked in a very stable manner.
Overall,
we noticed speedy performance on all the programs, with noticeable improvements
in PhotoshopCS3Extended and in After EffectsCS3 Professional, the latter of which features an onboard acclerator based on Grid Iron's original Nucleo accelator. (After doing base tests, we also tested the new GridIron Nucleo
Pro 2 accelerator on our XP x64 machine, which gave us access to background rendering, spec rendering, and seemed to run a bit faster than the included Nucleo module in After
Effects CS3.) For those unfamiliar with Grid Iron's Nucleo accelerator, it allows accelerated
processing from After Effects by opening up “ghost” versions
of AE which are powered by multiple-threads or processors.
The expanded 3D capabilities which can now be tapped in Photoshop CS3 Extended add extra power and value to the CS3: Production Premium package.
Value
In my review of Adobe Production Studio Premium, I said: “As microfilmmakers,
if we’re going to spend $1699 on something, it had better provide us with
everything we need to make our films. “ APSP lived up to that challenge
easily.
Now in
2007, Creative Suite 3: Production Premium is an even more amazing value
than Adobe Production Studio Premium was. For the same $1699 that APSP
retailed for, you get even more of what you need to make your films the best possible
quality, with a new focus on the side of production (OnLocationCS3),
a streamlined focus on audio for video (SoundboothCS3), a greatly
enlarged focus on special effects (Ultra CS3, PhotoshopCS3
Extended, and After EffectsCS3), and an improved focus on post-production
distribution and marketing (EncoreCS3 with Flash Export
and FlashCS3). While Mac users don’t get Ultra and have to use Bootcamp for OnLocation, they still get an amazingly complete package that
dwarves anything that’s currently available on the Mac.
