Indiana Univ IT Tips by Donna Jones

Have you heard? Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 will be released soon. If you are like me, you are just getting used to the changes that came with CS5. What could Adobe possibly do to make us want to upgrade again so quickly? 

While many of the new features in CS5.5 are simply small tweaks, probably the most alluring change has to do with processing speed. When CS5 came out, we learned that CUDA is an Nvidia technology that is used in GPU processing. This technology was used to speed up a number of processes in the last version of this application. Now, with CS5.5, there are even more effects, transitions, and behind the scenes processes that are affected by this technology. Adobe states that “…CS5.5 lets you edit faster than ever by offering industry-leading, cross-platform, native file-based workflows and GPU-accelerated filters and effects…”  Does that mean my machine won’t freeze up when I try to use time remapping or when I attempt to work with the alpha channel of a clip? If so, sign me up!

Changes in this technology are also said to improve the process of dealing with mismatched media, such as frame rate differences, pixel aspect ratio differences, and frame size differences. This, too, sounds promising.

Many of the other changes that I have read about are not quite as significant. For example, there are quite a few changes that deal with audio. Videographers who use a dual-system sound workflow will probably appreciate several of the new features. Now it is possible to use In points, Out points, timecode, or markers from two or more separate tracks when synchronizing audio and video. In addition, users can now use a feature called Merge Clips to lock a video clip to a separate audio clip so that the two can be manipulated as if they were one asset. read more...