Survey about CS4…

[Greg Beckt]

I think it’s exciting that PPro FINALLY got some attention. It has been the forgotten stepchild for way too long. I’ts nice to see Adobe focus on productivity too. These are typically not big headline items but make a big difference for a lot of editors.

I do feel howvever that many of the “new features” are items that were oversights in the past…and that this release was definitely about fixing those, as well as “catching up with the Jones'”…in regards to existing featues already in Avid/FCS.

I hope Adobe continues to look at AE as the model for productivity and featues for PPro too. The more “trickle down” we can get from AE to PPro, the better.

My main concern though is stability. I still have too many issues regarding corrupt projects/preview files, memory problems, and crashes. If this aspect of PPro hasn’t been addressed in CS4, then I’m not sure I will continue with the suite…especially with a new version of FCS on the horizon and the new Mac OS.

[Perry Cheng]

Thanks Tim, you are right. I should have posted the title more appropriately. My observation on CS4 so far, at least on this forum, there are hardly any “overjoy” but random posts here and there about CS4. Not many ask any questions. My suspicion was that the “pros” already know and the causual users (like me) don’t care for the new features. CS3 has definitely more enthusiasts than CS4 (just like you said at the beginning of your post) and again, I appreciate your insight. In fact, I am a big fan of the Cows here, I don’t want to offend anyone.

Sincerely,
Perry

[Tim Kolb]

[Perry Cheng] “I am a big fan of the Cows here, I don’t want to offend anyone.”

Well…I doubt it’s dramatic enough to offend anyone…I suspect Jon will be OK… 🙂

We’re all big people here…the web just doesn’t give us a very wide pipe to communicate. When we can’t see the other person’s body language, facial expression or hear the tone of each other’s voice, the text just needs that much more scrutiny before we post.

It’s advice I need to take myself more often than I’d care to admit.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects

[Mike Cohen]

Re: Background Rendering

A typical project for me has 20 timelines. Each timeline is rendered out to MPG2 or FLV for DVD or web authoring. Not having to wait for one timeline render to finish at a time is BIG. Did I mention how BIG this is? It’s BIG.

Re: Text to Speech

If it works as advertised, 90% accurate for well recorded audio, that could be big. About 2 years ago we recorded a conference and first digitized then exported WAV files from about 36 hours of lectures and panel discussions. We sent the WAV files (transcoded to MP3) to our transcription service. I think we paid over a thousand bucks for all of these transcripts. That’s the price of Premiere and then some.

Re: Premiere vs FCP vs AVID

Makes no difference to most people we work with. This past week a video I cut in Premiere was played in a loop on the biggest LCD screen I’ve ever seen indoors and there was always a crowd watching it. If the client is happy, I’m happy.

Re: A casual user

Note to Perry: Perhpas your first post should have said: I use Premiere for X, Y and Z. How will CS4 help me?

Mike

[Perry Cheng]

Thanks Mike. I might have to research more into this “text-to-speech” functionality. That might be interesting…

Perry

[Tim Kolb]

[Mike Cohen] “If it works as advertised, 90% accurate for well recorded audio, that could be big.”

I’ve been using it for various clips…jargon is, of course, a problem.

I have had some issues with speech that was clear enough, but had some reverb due to the environment.

I haven’t encountered audio yet that is 90% interpreted correctly. I suspect the conditions exist, but we may be a patch or version or two away from really versatile and effective transcription…

The fact that it’s in there indicates that we’re headed in the right direction IMO…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects

[Mike Cohen]

Tim – how about comments in newer thread about changes to the interface and removed keyboard commands such as targeting tracks..?

[Tim Kolb]

There are some differences in targeting tracks…I tend to be a bit of a mouser myself, so the keyboard shortcut changes usually don’t hit me until I start programming my Shuttle Pro.

There are some changes. What I find very interesting is that as Adobe tries to move toward some of the Avid and FCP functionalities that editors who don’t use PPro seem to always be bringing up, the user above who came from FCP has decided to go back. Once the feature set of PPro satisfies everyone, the lack of speed/efficiency will have rendered it unusable…

IMO, all NLE manufacturers need to optimize their own philosophical workflow and come to terms with the fact that no one tool will ever own the whole market…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects

[Mark]

Just wondering if the Text to Speech will work in other languages than English. Up here in Montréal I get french projects, so it would be nice to be able to use that feature. Avid has a feature that syncs scripts to on-camera dialog….they released the French language version as a patch….unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to use this, as few clients provide me with a script.

I am going to be upgrading to CS4 in the next few days. I am an Avid editor (Media Composer at home, Symphony Nitris at work), but the CS4 Production package looks awesome. I have CS2…mainly for After Effects and Encore DVD and never really use PPro, but with the additional functionality added to the Dynamic link I could see myself using PPro to get footage into After Effects for multi-layered projects.

Thanks

Mark

Mark Harvey
Senior Editor
Le Réseau des sports

[Tim Kolb]

CS4 Text to speech has a handful of languages…

German-Germany
English-Australia
English-Canada
English- UK, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland
English- US
Spanish-Spain
Spanish- Latin America
French- Canada
French- France
Italian- Italy
Japanese- Japan
Korean- Korea

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects