Depth of Options
Rather than trying to give sweeping descriptions of all the changes in one fell swoop, I’ll essentially give little overviews of each program, featuring the most impressive improvements or new features in each program.
The complete redesign of OnLocation is really impressive, especially now that it's available on Mac as well as PC.
OnLocation CS4
Perhaps the greatest reason for Mac users to rejoice is that OnLocation is now natively available for both PC AND Mac! Finally, our Mac brethren don’t have to be cut out of the great ability to record their footage in the field on a Mac OS laptop. (The past version could be used in Bootcamp, but most Mac users weren’t fans of having to run it in this way.) Additionally, the entire layout has been streamlined and integrated much more closely with the Adobe design structure. This is a wonderful improvement for all of us who felt that the VERY analog style controls of OnLocation CS3/DVRack 2 were very clunky and counter-intuitive for modern digital people.
In addition to improving the look and performance of the interface, new abilities have been added to make OnLocation even more necessary in your production workflow. You now have the ability to create placeholders BEFORE you go to your production for each take and type in metadata notes to jog your memory when you’re at the shoot. This can be a great way to make sure you don’t miss anything important when you’re on set.
For more information on OnLocation CS4, check in next issue when Eric Henninger will delve deeper into it in his Premiere Pro review.
Premiere Pro's new media browser makes it much easier to navigate through video files, especially in P2 and other hard-drive based formats!
Premiere Pro CS4
Premeier Pro CS4 has a lot of improvements. We’ll start with some of the workflow improvements, then get into some of their newest additions, and then conclude with their latest CS4.* upgrades.
Depending on which workspace you use, when you first load up Premiere Pro, the first thing you’ll notice that’s new in CS4 (besides a little more streamlined file creation setup) is the new Media Browser. Looking fairly similar to the content browser found in the much less user-friendly Sony Vegas, the new Media Browser allows you to easily roam through your hard drive, looking for content. If you come to a folder created from a Tapeless workflow, like P2, XDCAM EX, or AVCHD, the browser interprets all the information in the folder and shows you only the actual video clips. This makes locating your footage amidst all the XML and XMP data a snap!
Another cool feature is the new “opposing” dynamic link in Premiere Pro, which I mentioned briefly in the “Ease of Use” section. This allows you to lasso an entire selection of video from your film and then export it to After Effects as a Dynamic Link document to do FX or titling work on it. The multiple clips you selected in Premiere Pro are now replaced by a single AE timeline, as though you had originated the entire video clip in AE with Dynamic Link. And, just like with normal Dynamic Link, you can adjust things with a few simple clicks if you don’t like the timing or placement of something.
