Premiere Pro CS6
Publisher: Adobe
Platforms: PC & Mac
Description: Video Editing Software
MSRP: $799 (Full), $149 (Upgrade), or $49.99 per month (via Creative Cloud Subscription)
Expected Release: Available Now
Official Website: http://www.adobe.com
Samples: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html
Demo: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html
Special Discount: N/A
Critique Issue: Issue #76 (07/12)
Critiqued By: Mark Colegrove
Final Score: 9.0
“We want to make Premiere the Photoshop of video.” That’s a pretty bold statement from Adobe Production Premium Product Manager, Bill Roberts. But if Premiere Pro CS6 is any indication, things certainly seem to be heading that way following Apple’s botched release of Final Cut Pro X. In the time since, most professionals have either been jumping on the Adobe or Avid bandwagon, with most actually choosing Premiere Pro due to its tighter integration with Adobe’s other software: most notably, After Effects.
Editors new to Premiere Pro will find a lot of great features, and for previous users (especially those who held off on getting Premiere Pro CS5.5 because of the relatively few updates over CS5) now may be the time to upgrade, as Premiere Pro CS6 offers up many new slick features designed to speed up your work flow.
Ease of Use
Without dumbing their product down, Adobe has managed to streamline many things in this release, mostly pertaining to the workspace, that not only will help you edit faster, but also may make Premiere a bit more accessible for newer users as well.
The new default workspace maximizes the amount of space for your video
The first thing you’ll notice is the new default workspace has changed to a “2-up” look. Both monitors reside on the top half of your screen and the bin has defaulted to thumbnails. The goal of this layout is to maximize the viewing size of your video, and really take advantage of the new “hover-scrubbing” feature in the Project Panel.
With hover-scrubbing, just by rolling your mouse over any clip in the bin, you can scrub through it quickly to identify the clip you need. In the day and age of bringing in tons of short clips from CF & SD cards (as opposed to the good old days of digitizing a tape the whole way through, creating one big hour-long clip), I found this feature to be a godsend in terms of being able to identify my media much more quickly. To boot, you can set your in and out points right in your project bin and bring them to your timeline without having to go to your source monitor.
Scrubbing through your clips and creating in and out points in your bin speeds up the editing process a good deal.
In the Source and Project panels, many buttons (that were rarely used by ANYBODY) have been removed, giving you a bit more room for your image. However, you can still bring back any buttons you may need in these windows however.
You can customize the buttons below each monitor.
Not to deter older users, switching back to the old workspace is easy enough. I actually find myself switching up relatively often depending on what I’m doing. For some reason a few of the keyboard shortcuts have changed as well, so I found myself going back to the CS5.5 presets just as easily. My only minor gripe as a dual-monitor user, is that there are no default workspace presets for 2 monitors. But, once you customize your workspace, it will stay that way every time you restart the program.
Depth of Options
Since going 64 bit and adding ultra-fast GPU acceleration with the CS5 release, Premiere Pro has been my go-to option for cutting video. Anything and everything you need to do for the basics of cutting video is here, and now there’s more!
Being a DSLR user, I was really psyched for “Rolling Shutter Repair,” which fixes the skewing you get when you quickly pan a DSLR camera, and it works great! Another handy new tool is the “Warp Stabilizer” which has been ported over from the last edition of After Effects. It does an amazing job of steadying your shots. You can even create an easy “Steadicam” effect with it.
In addition, some enhancements have been made to the multicam as well. Creating a multicam sequence is easier, and you’re no longer limited to 4 cameras. You can add as many as you want (or as many as your processor allows you to at least).
Performance
In addition to all the new bells and whistles, Premiere Pro seems to run better than ever. I’ve been running it for about a month now, using it just about every day or so, and haven’t experienced a single crash yet. To boot, the new hover-scrubbing feature doesn’t seem to really drain any additional RAM. CS6 runs just as fast for me as CS5.5 did.
It should also be noted that a lot has been done to take into account many new formats that have popped up over the last year or so. When you go to Media Encoder to export a file, you’ll see TONS of new presets that take all the latest tablets and smart phones into account.
Value
Interestingly enough, Adobe has introduced a new pricing option. It’s called Creative Cloud, and it’s subscription based. It’s $50 per month (or $30 for students and educators). At first I was a bit skeptical about moving to a fee-based license, but when you do the math, it’s a pretty good deal. The Creative Cloud subscription gets you full access to ANY program in the Creative Suite. You’ll get 2 licenses as well, so you can install products on multiple machines, and when the next iteration comes out, you’ll be ready to upgrade instantly at the same monthly price. For businesses this may be the most attractive option actually, and Adobe has said that they’re working on even bigger “team” based plans for Creative Cloud down the road.
Of course the standard retail versions are available as well. $800 gets you the stand-alone version of Premiere Pro, and upgrades start at $150. This also includes Encore (Adobe’s DVD/Blu-Ray authoring software, which integrates well with Premiere Pro as well as Photoshop for menu creation), and Media Encoder. (Which lets you export your files from Premiere Pro in a queue)
The individual price is a bit steep, and my recommendation in the past has always been to go with the “Production Premium” bundle, which also gets you After Effects and Photoshop as well as Audition (Adobe’s pro sound editing program) and two new programs: Prelude and SpeedGrade. Prelude helps you ingest and log footage from card-based media, while SpeedGrade is a high-end color correcting program. At $1899 for the full “Production Premium” bundle or $375 for an upgrade, you’ll really be getting more bang for your buck. I’ve always considered After Effects and Photoshop both pretty essential parts of my video work. Yeah, the price is a bit steep, but if you can swing it, you’ll get more out of it.
Final Comments
Premiere Pro CS6 is a truly great release that capitalizes big-time on a streamlined workspace and speeds up your editing work-flow a good deal. Since CS5, one of Premiere Pro’s major strengths has always been the ability to edit footage in its native format without spending time re-transcoding files, and of course that’s still here, with even more new formats taken into account. It’s good to see them not only catering to folks using the Red Epic, but those using DSLRs as well.
If you still haven’t made the jump from Final Cut 7 to something new, once you see how quickly you’ll be able to work in Premiere Pro CS6 you’ll wonder why you waited so long!
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Breakdown
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Ease of Use
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10.0 |
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Depth of Options
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9.0 |
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Performance
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9.0 |
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Value vs. Cost
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8.0 |
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Overall Score |
9.0 |
Mark Colegrove
Mark Colegrove is the director of 2008's horror/comedy Isle of the Damned, which is self-distributed through his production company, Dire Wit Films. Based in Maryland, he currently produces corporate video and is working on his second feature, Driven to Succeed, a driver's ed comedy.
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