Adobe Premiere Pro CS4

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 simplifies the process of working with video from a tapeless camera. The Adobe Creative Team discusses how the Adobe Premiere Pro workflow varies for the P2, XDCAM, and AVCHD tapeless formats.

A tapeless workflow (also known as a file-based workflow) is simply the process of importing video from a tapeless camera, editing it, and exporting it. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 makes this process especially easy because, unlike many competing nonlinear editing systems, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 doesn’t require the media from these tapeless formats to be converted. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 can edit P2, XDCAM, and AVCHD footage natively with no conversions.

Though P2, XDCAM, and AVCHD are all tapeless formats, they do have their differences. Let’s review the basics of each format.

P2 is the video format recorded onto a P2 card by Panasonic P2 cameras. A P2 card is a PCMCIA flash memory card that’s inserted in the camera for recording or into a PCMCIA slot in a workstation. Although Adobe Premiere Pro can read and edit directly from the P2 card, it’s recommended that you copy the contents of the card to your local hard drive for best performance.

P2 cameras also have USB ports that allow the video to be transferred to an editing workstation via USB.

Notice that whether you move the files via the P2 card or transfer them via USB, the video doesn’t need to be captured serially. It’s transferred to the editing workstation at the speed allowed by the transfer I/O.

Several variants of the P2 format specify different frame sizes and frame rates. Adobe Premiere Pro supports all the standard P2 variants.

A typical workflow for P2 media is as follows:

1. Shoot onto the P2 card in the camera.
2. Move the P2 card to your workstation, and copy the files to your local hard drive.
3. Edit the files natively in Adobe Premiere Pro.
4. Export the project to Blu-ray disc, to DVD, to the Web, or even back to the P2 native format.

Sony XDCAM refers to a family of cameras that record to optical disc or SxS flash memory cards. Most of the cameras in the XDCAM and XDCAM HD lines record to optical disc. The XDCAM EX1 and EX3 models record to SxS flash memory cards.

You can remove the optical disc from your camera and place it in a deck attached to your workstation, or you can insert the SxS flash memory card into an SxS card slot in your workstation and read it as a flash drive. In either case, it’s recommended that you copy the files from the optical disc or SxS flash card to your local hard drive for best performance, rather than attempting to edit directly from the source media.

Adobe Premiere Pro offers native support for optical disc XDCAM content recorded as standard-definition DVCAM and for all high-definition XDCAM HD formats recorded at 18 Mbps, 25 Mbps, and 35 Mbps. Adobe Premiere Pro doesn’t currently provide native support for standard-definition IMX and the new high-definition MPEG HD422 50 Mbps codec. However, you can play content in those formats in an XDCAM or XDCAM HD player with SDI or HD-SDI I/O and bring it into Adobe Premiere Pro through a compatible third-party capture card.

Adobe Premiere Pro supports every XDCAM EX format variation except for 1440×1080/23.98p SP mode with 3:2 pulldown. As an alternative, Adobe Premiere Pro offers native support for 1920×1080/23.98 HQ.

A typical workflow for XDCAM EX media is as follows:

1. Shoot onto the SxS card in the camera.
2. Move the SxS card to your workstation, and copy the files to your local hard drive.
3. Edit the files natively in Adobe Premiere Pro.
4. Export the project to Blu-ray disc, to DVD, or to the Web.

AVCHD is a recording format generally used in consumer cameras to record high-definition video to a tapeless format. AVCHD isn’t limited to a single vendor’s camera or family of cameras; this format is used in many brands of consumer high-definition cameras, including various models from Sony and Panasonic. Compared to HDV cameras, which are based on the MPEG-2 codec, AVCHD achieves higher compression and lower data rates using the H.264 codec.

Cameras using the AVCHD record onto one of three types of media:

• DVD: The camera burns video as it’s recorded directly to a DVD in the camera, using the AVCHD recording format.
• Hard drive: The camera records video directly to a hard drive inside the camera, using the AVCHD recording format.
• Flash memory: The camera records video directly to a flash memory card inside the camera, using the AVCHD format.

The AVCHD format is a good format to record and view video, but has proven a challenge to edit because of its highly compressed nature. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 has the ability to edit AVCHD video in its native format without converting it to an intermediate or alternate codec, but how smoothly the AVCHD edit process goes will depend largely on the power of the editing system you’re using.

A typical workflow for AVCHD media is as follows:

1. Shoot the AVCHD video to DVD, flash media, or hard drive. The media will vary depending on the type of AVCHD camera you’re using.
2. Copy the AVCHD video clips to your workstation by placing the capture disc in your DVD drive, moving the flash card, or copying from your camera’s internal hard drive to your workstation via USB.
3. Edit the files natively in Adobe Premiere Pro.
4. Export the project to Blu-ray disc, to DVD, or to the Web.

Working through one of the cool built-in templates that come with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, the Adobe Creative Team shows off some of the program’s many text effect features.

Reverse-engineering can be a good learning tool. In this exercise, you’ll deconstruct one of the many built-in templates that come with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, to learn how to work with Titler’s effects.

Unlike styles, templates are a combination of background graphics, geometric shapes, and placeholder text. Tremendously useful, templates are organized into themes with enough variety for just about any circumstance.

You can easily customize graphic themes to suit your needs, or build your own templates from scratch and save them for future projects.

1. Choose Title > New Title > Based On Template. Alternatively, you can open the Titler and choose Title > Templates to get to the same Templates screen.
2. Open as many template folders and click through as many templates as you like.
3. Open the Lower Thirds folder, select Lower Third 1024, and click OK. This is a good template for experimenting because it has a full range of effects, including four-color gradient, reduced opacity (transparency), sheen, stroke, and shadows.
4. Click the Selection tool and move it over the template. Bounding boxes appear, delineating the three components of this title: Title One text, a brown-and-yellow rectangle, and a black rectangle superimposed over the right side of the brown-and-yellow rectangle.
5. Drag each bounding box in turn up the screen so you can see the template’s three components.
6. Drag the top edge of the brown-and-yellow rectangle to expand it. This action selects the rectangle and displays its characteristics in the Titler Properties panel.
7. Collapse the Transform and Properties areas in the panel to make some room.
8. Expand Fill, Sheen (in the Fill section), Strokes, and Outer Strokes (no inner strokes are used in this template).
9. Open the Fill Type pop-up menu for Fill and select each option in turn to see what it does. When you’re finished, return to the 4 Color Gradient fill type.
10. Double-click one or two of the four color-stop boxes around the 4 Color Gradient display to open the Color Picker. Select new colors. (Notice that each color is slightly different from the other three, and the colors at the top are slightly darker than the bottom colors. This design gives this rectangle extra depth.)

    TIP: Instead of using the Color Picker to change the color-stop color, you can use the Eyedropper tool to select a color from your video. Click the Show Video button at the top of the Titler main panel, drag the timecode left or right to move to a frame you want to use, drag the Eyedropper tool into your video scene, and click in a color that suits your needs.

11. Change the color-stop opacities by clicking each color-stop box and changing its opacity setting. You can change the opacity (transparency) of any color applied to any object or text, whether it’s a fill, sheen, or stroke.

    TIP: To display only the edges of a geometric shape or text, give it a solid-color stroke border and convert its fill color to 0% opacity.

12. Click the Sheen color box and change its color, opacity, size, angle, and offset. Sheen is a soft-edged color that typically runs horizontally through shapes or text. In this case, it’s the brown horizontal line that runs through the entire rectangle.
13. Click the two Outer Stroke disclosure triangles to expand the parameters. Strokes are outer or inner borders on text or graphic objects. They have the same collection of properties available for text and other Titler objects. In this case, both strokes are three points wide, and they fall adjacent to one another.
14. Change the size of the two outer strokes to 10 points each.

    TIP: Take a look at the sheen properties for both outer strokes. Notice that the angles are 191 degrees and 351 degrees (270 and 90 degrees are horizontal). That is, each sheen appears just a bit above the center line on one side and a bit below the center line on the other. If the sheens were to run through the entire box, they’d form an X. This is a clever bit of visual artistry. Before you expanded the rectangle, the sheens were on the top and bottom edges. In this taller mode, they’re along the sides. To see how that works, drag the rectangle’s bounding box top edge up and down and watch the sheens move along the edges.

15. Click the word Add next to the Inner Strokes setting to open the Inner Stroke property.
16. Check the Inner Stroke box to turn on its parameters. Experiment with this new stroke by changing its Size, Fill Type, Color, and Opacity settings.

    TIP: Adding a sheen or a shadow to an object is just as easy. Select the object in the Titler screen, check the appropriate properties box, and adjust the parameters.

17. Click the Title One text to select it, and then open its Shadow properties. Title One doesn’t have an obvious shadow, because the shadow size is only two points. It’s more like an outer stroke.
18. Change all the characteristics to see how the Shadow feature works. The shadow settings are self-explanatory, with the exception of Spread. Increasing the Spread value softens the shadow.