I recently had an opportunity to sit in on a demo of the new version of Adobe Premiere 6.0 at Government Video Expo in Washington D.C. Despite seeing a beta version, I have to say that I was very impressed with its usability and stability.

The Adobe representative demoed Premiere 6 on a Sony Vaio. The Sony was using its built in i.Link port. It was late in the show and things were a little rushed. Nonetheless he gave an entertaining and informative demonstration.

First off, if you've been using Premiere no need to fear, everything you used to do works pretty much the same way. They have made some usability enhancements.

Finally: OHCI support

The big new feature for many is support for a wide range of IEEE1394 or Firewire devices. This includes OHCI compliant interfaces. Remember, I saw this all on a Sony Vaio with its odd i.Link port. I was shown playback from the timeline to the DV device, in our case a TRV900.

Having IEEE1394 support provided by Adobe should provide a great deal of relief from any muber of issues, such audio synch, that plague many current third party solutions. Now manufactures can concentrate on writing to a standard interface for Premiere. They can now focus on providing an interface that is more technically correct. It won't be an instant fix by any means, but you should see an improvement pretty quickly after the final release.

DV In...Web Out

The Adobe representative who showed me the software, told me the mantra that the design kept repeating was, "DV in Web out." The new version of Premiere includes a version of Terran's Cleaner. The version included supports the output of Quicktime, Mpeg-2 and Realvideo. It major functionality limits have to do with setting advanced options that are available only in the full version of cleaner. There is also an option for exporting to Windows Media.

Of great interest was the ability to set "markers" that allow your video to cause a browser to read an URL. This allows highly interactive web experiences. The demo of this feature had a pro-BMX rider doing tricks. The video showed a quick clip introducing him, and the web browser opened a page simultaneously giving his biographical information.

What about security ?

Clearly the potential for more entertaining video is enticing. Seemingly overlooked is the overwhelming danger of security breaches. If a video can automatically trigger an URL then any video you download could take you to a page that garnishes your personal information from your web cache, or possibly from your hard drive. The feature extends to any activity that can be accomplished through an URL, such as JavaScript. As far as I can discern the feature uses Microsoft's ActiveX to enable this capability. Microsoft's track record regarding ActiveX security is less than sterling.

Storyboarding...sort of.

Adobe has included a feature that allows you to view clips as thumbnails. Adobe calls this thumbnail a poster frame. You can set your poster frame to any frame in the clip. Otherwise the first frame is used as the default poster frame.

When you open the storyboard window, you see a number of these poster frames filling the window. You can pick these poster frames and drop them on the timeline. While you can rearrange the poster frames in the storyboard window, when they appear on the timeline, they have teh same appearance as in earlier versions. While this is a great feature for helping organize your projects, it isn't a real storyboard editor. If you really want storyboard editing to help you assemble your story, you'll be better off with StudioDV as an addon package.

There is a feature that allows you to select a bunch of clips and drop them on the time line, Premiere then will place the clips on the timeline in order.

Bin there...done that

Adobe has improved project management by including user configurable bins for clips. You can create your own bins, as many as you like. You can't, however, create a bin within a bin. When you click on a clip in the bin, you get a preview of the clip playing in a little window. As far as I could tell, you could not resize the window. While the clip is being played you get a statistics window, that tell you things like the clips location, bitrate and its format.

Customizable Workspaces

You can now save the window setups that you use regularly. There are some preset workspaces and you can save your own. There is not a whole lot to say about this feature. but it will prove very useful to any serious editor using Premiere.

Improved control in the Monitor Window

The Monitor windows now have control for 3-point 4point and split edits. I was not able to examine this feature closely, since the demonstration either used straight cuts or was completely pre assembled.

Improved effects control

Adobe has brought the After Effects style to the effects control. You can also configure effects parameters. Adobe claims to have real-time preview of effects. This is close enough to true, but it is dependent on your processor speed to realize this.

More on markers

Markers in Premiere 6 allow you to do a couple of neat things. First off, if you have to synch two clips on the timeline, you can play clip one until you find an identifiable frame, then mark it. Play your second clip until you find the same frame...mark it. Now drag either clip to synchronize, and the clips snap to the marker. It isn't a real multicamera feature, but it makes multicamera editing a lot easier.

Lets say you have an audio clip and a stock clip of a drummer. Naturally the drummers motion will not match the music. So we use markers. We go through the audio clip and mark wherever there is a cymbal clash. Now go through the drummer clip and mark wherever the drummer hits the cymbals. Now select both clips drag them together, and Premiere will retime whichever you indicate. It will stretch and compress one clip (the drummer in this case) to match the other.

Conclusion

While I have not spent a great deal of time with the new Premiere, I can say that it is good step. It will not replace more serious editors like edit* or Speed Razor anytime soon, but it should be a whole lot more efficient, especially for DV editors.