Adobe to update Premiere Pro, other CC video apps with VR/360-degree tools & more

Adobe on Wednesday announced a slate of impending updates to its core video editing software, Premiere Pro CC, with support for 360-degree and virtual reality videos. In addition, related apps like After Effects CC and Audition CC will also see new improvements.

Premiere Pro will gain a "field of view" mode for imported spherical videos, and let editors freely switch between monoscopic, stereoscopic, and anaglyph frame configurations. When exporting, users will be able to assign VR-related tags for compatible video players.

The software should separately speed up the editing process, by allowing people to edit while audio and video are still being ingested — often a time-consuming process — and take advantage of new keyboard navigation shortcuts.

Other Premiere improvements will include Twitter export, an upgraded Lumetri color correction module, and more titling and captioning options. New proxy workflows will be available for 8K, HDR, and HFR content.

After Effects' main upgrade will be a new audio/video preview engine with smoother playback. Gaussian Blur and Lumetri Color effects will be GPU-accelerated, and the software will get new 3D media export options.

Audition is getting an Essential Sound panel with easier mixing and presets, as well as a quick export option for pushing projects to Media Encoder. That app should have a better media browser panel, and support not just for Audition but also Character Animator CC.

Character Animator will incorporate a new puppet tag panel, making it possible to track puppets in the field of view, rapidly switch between facial profiles, and attach multiple motion trigger behaviors.

Stock CC, finally, is being more closely integrated with other Adobe apps, and given tagged and filtered search for faster access to content.

Adobe has yet to set a firm release date for the above updates beyond an "early summer" timeframe. People will, however, have to have an appropriate Creative Cloud subscription costing at least $49.99 per month, and more for access to Stock material.

5 Comments

studiomusic 654 comments · 17 Years

About 8 years ago

I'm going to a demo of this next week at NAB. I expect the whole conference to be VR and HDR heavy.
A few years ago it was all about 3D... I kind of think VR will be more like 3D and kind of fizzle for most things except gaming. HDR, that is the future.

volcan 1799 comments · 10 Years

So much for assertion that Adobe is just sitting on their ass collecting subscription fees. They are pushing out new features on a weekly/monthly basis. Lots of upgrades to all apps and better integration as well as interface improvements. I've always liked Adobe applications and they are only getting better.

Orionova 1 comment · 8 Years

I really wish a few companies would create viable alternatives to CC/CS that aren't "software as service"/subscription based. I'm lucky that my university still pays for the student license, but having to indefinitely pay $50 every month is just ridiculous. I feel like Adobe is really in a position to do whatever they want to their prices.

Orionova said:

I'm lucky that my university still pays for the student license, but having to indefinitely pay $50 every month is just ridiculous.
$50 a month is less than we used to pay for boxed sets. We used to pay something like $850 every 18 months which works out to $66 per month and that wasn't even for the Master Collection. Now you get everything and it costs less, plus we get updates on a monthly basis and you get two licenses. Adobe CC is a professional suite. It is not for casual users. That is what Pixelmator, Affinity, Pages and iMovie are for. All of them decent apps and you only pay once, upgrade for free. Adobe CC is the creative standard. If you don't need to collaborate with other designers then the less expensive apps will work fine. We work with designers and publishers from all around the globe who use Macs and Windows and Adobe is the only ubiquitous platform.