Premiere 6.5 First Look

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Premiere 6.5 title tool
Click for enlargement -- Premiere's new title tool offers new drawing options, rolls and crawls, and hundreds of styles and templates
Another new feature for Premiere 6.5 is Adobe's addition of its own titling tool, or character generator (CG). In the past, if you were using Premiere, you were stuck with its lame CG that dated all the way back to Premiere 1.0. Third-party CG software like Inscriber or Pinnacle TitleDeko were usually bundled with Premiere. But how long could Adobe continue to subject itself to that kind of humiliation? As a result, Adobe, champion of text artwork with its excellent stable of text-friendly software, decided to trickle down some of that power and expertise to Premiere. Acting like a new application, Premiere 6.5's new text editor reminds me a bit of Pinnacle's Deko line of CGs. It's easy to select text and move it around. And, rolls, and crawls are easy to create, too. Even more tricks are included, like adjustable leading, kerning, baseline shift, rotation, and slant, as well. And, borrowing from Photoshop and Illustrator, there's the Adobe-standard Pen tool, among other drawing tools never before seen in Premiere's neck of the woods, which lets you draw free-form vector shapes in any way, shape or form you desire.

If creating titles and other artwork is not your cup of tea, included in the box are hundreds of great-looking examples of canned text styles and templates for lower-thirds. Adobe also throws in 90 of its fonts in case you didn't have enough already. Adobe is number one when it comes to fonts and the handling thereof, so it's only natural that the company would emphasize all things text in Premiere 6.5. What took 'em so long? Bravo, Adobe, for capitalizing on your strengths in this new update!

Another of Adobe's strengths is its nearly industry-standard compositor, After Effects. You get five new After Effects plug-ins (now for a total of more than 30) in the Premiere 6.5 package, including Blend, Channel Blur, Directional Blur, Ramp and Lightning. I'm wondering if someday Adobe will break down and just combine After Effects and Premiere into some uber-editing-app that might be better able to hunt down and kill a lot of Apple's Final Cut Pro buzz and mindshare among digi-vid jockeys. But then, there goes all that revenue from selling two separate applications. You have to think, though, that Adobe can't be happy with Apple for turning around and competing with it with Final Cut Pro. No wonder it took so long to port Photoshop and Premiere to OS X. Possible foot-dragging aside, after all Adobe's done for Apple, this is the thanks they get? I say, combine the two, Premiere and After Effects (maybe call it Premiere Effects...?), and fight fire with fire. And guess who wins that battle? We do, the users, that's who! Anyway, I digress.
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Click for enlargement -- DVD export dialog box
Click for enlargement -- Now you're able to create DVD-ready files from the timeline. Here's the dialog box.
Another great addition for the Windows version of Premiere we tested is output for DVD from the timeline. Before, if you wanted to make a DVD, you had to export the footage to an external compression program like Cleaner to prepare the production for DVD burning. Before, Cleaner EZ was included in the Premiere package, and for some reason I had stability problems with that setup more often than not. Now all you have to do is select Export Timeline from the File menu, select Adobe MPEG Encoder, and a dialog box offers you compression powered by Main Concept. If you select the DVD box, it's a simple matter to set the compression wheels in motion. The dialog box also lets you choose between compressing the whole project you were working on or just the work area you designated. And, if you want to customize your settings, you're offered a huge number of settings parameters with which to compress your MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or DVD-specific settings, among many others such as settings specific to Super Video CD, and Video CD. It just about as extensive as the full version of Cleaner, and it's tightly integrated into Premiere. This is a major improvement, and could represent a big cost savings if you're one who would have purchased the $699 Cleaner for compressing your projects.

So, even though this is not a full review of Premiere 6.5, I can safely say that so far, I really like what I see. If you're not planning to accelerate your DV work with an add-on card, this new version of Premiere will represent a giant leap in productivity for you. If you use a DV accelerator card, you'll still appreciate the new character generator and DVD-from-the-timeline features. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of all: As processor speeds continue to leap forward on a regular basis, especially on the PC platform, this new version of Premiere will be able to take greater advantage of that than ever before.

Charlie White, your humble storytellerCharlie White has been writing about new media and digital video since it was the laughingstock of the television industry. A technology journalist and columnist for the past eight years, White is also an Emmy-winning producer, video editor and shot-calling PBS TV director with 28 years broadcast experience. Talk back -- Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.
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