Adobe Premiere CS3 - My favorite new tools.

I've been a Adobe Premiere user for about 5yrs now and every new version always has some new cool tools (i.e. 6.0 automate to timeline, 6.5 real time preview and title designer), but this time Adobe has really outdone themselves.

There are ton of new features in Adobe Premiere CS3, but I'm just going to cover my favorites:

1) Blue Ray and Flash export - Wow! All new export options in Premiere CS3. It's been a longtime coming (for Flash at least), but it only makes sense now that Adobe and Macromedia have joined forces. With the advent of video on the net and Flash the standard for internet video, this definitely solidifies Premiere's position as an all-in-on suite. All your projects -exporting to DVD or the Web- can now be created and exported in and from Adobe Premiere.

Blue Ray is hot! Depending on what side of the fence you sit, you might say Blue Ray is slowly winning the HD (yes, it's called HD) war. With HD starting to become mainstream, having the capability to provide HD formatted content is a must if you want to stay ahead of the pack (if not just keep up).

All you need now is an HD camera, a Blue Ray burner AND blank Blue Ray disks ($25 each..ouch!)



2) Adobe Encore - It's included now! Yessss! Now your projects can go from start to finish with one product - Premiere Pro CS3. Although going back and forth isn't much of big deal (usually once you've exported, you naturally just open up Encore and go). For me just knowing that if I have to work on either the DVD authoring or a re-edit, it's only one file and one application that I have to remember to open.

Face value it's not huuuge deal, but for the sake of work flow, this feature makes things more efficient.

3) Time Remapping - Finally, high-quality slow motion effects! Borrowed from it's older cousin/brother, After Effects, this new feature allows you to slow down, speed up and reverse footage with extreme precision and quality. With the abilitiy to keyframe and apply transitions, you have total control of the pace of your footage.

I'll be uploading some footage real soon to demonstrate how powerful this effect really is.