With the latest update to Adobe Premiere Pro CC, you are now able to create open captions as well as closed captions without the need to ever leave the NLE. If you are in need of a quick and easy way to subtitle your work, this is something that’s definitely worth a look! Closed Captions Made Easy Premiumbeat’s Jason Boone has just released a video tutorial in which he discusses the new captioning capabilities in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. This update makes it possible to not only create open captions (which are nothing more than burnt in subtitles) as well as the so-called closed captions, which the viewer is able to toggle on or off as well as switch between different languages. Well, if someone had the patience to type them all into the editor, that is. How to Create Closed Captions The process is really pretty straight forward. It can be broken down in 4 simple steps: insert captions (new item > captions) and choose your video setting choose your captions format (closed or open captions) edit captions (writing, formatting, timing) export (burnt in or sidecar file) That’s it, really. You no longer need a third party tool for this task, at least if the available settings meet your needs in terms of formatting options and so on. The options are quite limited, but to my mind subtitles don’t need to be super fancy. the captions editor in Premiere Pro CC Conclusion Watching the video above, the process seems to be very simple and straight forward. But in the end, we’re talking about a tiny plugin within a NLE, and I’m not entirely sure if I would want to create closed captions for a 90min piece that way. Maybe other third-party solutions like MacCaption (CaptionMaker on Windows – website) might be the more efficient tool when it comes to projects with a lot of text. On the other hand, the closed caption tool is deeply integrated within Premiere Pro and it comes as a free update, while the MacCaption software starts at $1,095 up to a whooping $6,235. That’s only reasonable if you are doing A LOT of professional work on a daily basis. What do you think? A much welcomed feature or something you don’t really need? Let us know in the comments section below! source: Premiumbeat.com

The Adobe 2015.3 Update recently released includes a plethora of new features, adding proxy media creation, new colour features and camera support to Premiere Pro, and many more CC applications. New updates to editing and media applications are always exciting, and Adobe have added some killer features to the arsenal of tools we use on a day-to-day basis with their Adobe 2015.3 Update. Premiere Pro sees expanded features with proxies, new colour features and much more. Edit While Ingesting and Transcoding Proxies For those unfamiliar with proxies, it’s the process of creating a low-res version of your footage for editing, which can then be linked and replaced with your original footage on export. This saves lots of time when editing with high resolution or data rate footage such as ProRes 422/HQ files in 4K and above for example. You can choose to transcode and create proxies in the ‘Ingest Settings’, where drop down menus guide you to select appropriate formats and codecs for the proxies. You can also create your own proxy file presets for specific workflows. The magic of this workflow is that you can edit while the footage and proxies are being ingested and transcoded, as they are being processed by Media Encoder in the background. VR and 360 Degree Video Previews VR and 360 video is BIG, but previewing and editing the footage after it has been stitched together can be difficult. A new tool, accessible through the button editor, allows the preview and playback of 360 video as it would be on a device. After adjusting the VR settings in the playback window, you can click and drag through your 360 degree scene to see the whole environment. Not only that, you can also edit the clip while the VR preview is applied, to get that immersive experience that your viewer or audience will experience as the sequence is built. Enhanced Colour Control Premiere Pro now has secondary HSL and colour adjustments built into Lumetri, allowing you to isolate and adjust either a range of colours or specific colours. The demo example of this makes it look very easy to do, and I’m keen on trying this tool out. Open Captioning The addition of open captioning is fantastic for expanding the content access for viewers that are deaf, and for audiences speaking different languages. Open captions are burnt in to the video file and are unable to be turned off (for specific language regions), and closed captions are now offered as part of the tool line up so viewers can switch off the subtitles if they are not needed. New captions can be created and edited very easily, with flexible options for changing the font, size, colour and positioning. There are many more new features in Premiere Pro and Media Encoder that are available with the Adobe 2015.3 Update, including: Control interface support (for the Tangent Ripple or Palette V2 for example). Edit in native formats with high resolution footage from the Red Raven and Weapon 6K. Publish videos directly online from Media Encoder CC. More here. New browser display in Media Encoder CC. The Adobe 2015.3 Update is certainly exciting, and bursting with new features. Remember that, by default, a Premiere update will remove your older version. If you are interested in keeping the existing version, go to “Update”>”Advanced options” and un-tick the box “Remove old version”. For a more in-depth look at the new and updated features in the Adobe 2015.3 Update, check out the following links: Premiere Pro CC Media Encoder CC After Effects CC

The wait is almost over! Tangent Ripple, the most affordable control surface for aspiring colorists, is finally shipping. Tangent Devices had to admit that the demand is much greater than expected, though. Therefore, the supply is still a bit short. The Tangent Ripple panel The Ripple was initally announced at IBC 2015. Almost a year later, the UK-based company has lifted the curtain, and the Ripple is now shipping. Check out Richard’s initial article on this new panel, too. Things seem to be going well for this new entry-level color panel. Actually a bit too well, as the demand seems to be much bigger than expected. From Tangent Devices’ news feed: We’re extremely happy to say that demand for the Ripple panel has been fantastic and we are doing everything that we can to ship product out to our reseller channel as quickly as possible. However there has been a very large number of pre-orders accepted which does mean that it will take a while longer for these to all be satisfied. So please be assured that the Ripple is indeed now shipping but it will take a few more weeks before supply catches up with demand. Thanks for your patience! I hope things run smoothly from now on and that production can keep up with this high demand. Features of the Ripple Just like all of Tangent Devices’ panels, the Ripple is fully supported by their mapper software. This means you can customize what the controls actually do within your software of choice, as long as this is supported by the mapper. Programs such as DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Speedgrade are already compatible as they come with support for the Tangent Hub. The Ripple is also compatible with panels from the Element range, like the Element-Mf multifunction panel, for instance. 3 trackerballs with dials for masters. High resolution optical pick-ups for the balls and dials. Independent reset buttons for the balls and dials. Programmable A and B buttons. USB powered with integral cable. Light-weight compact size (desk foot print 325mm x 148mm). Note that there are no rings for master controls but dedicated dials The only downside might be the absence of rings around the trackballs. In order to keep the price low, the master controls are mapped to dedicated dials instead of the rings which can be found on bigger panels such as the Element-Tk. If this is really a downside you have to find out for yourself, though. A basic color control surface for $350 is a very reasonable price, I think. I’ve used the Wave panel before, and even tried the element-Vs app for iPad, but that is not the real deal for me. It might be a good companion if you already own an Element-Tk trackball panel, for example, but a touch-screen interface can’t substitute a real trackball panel, at least not for me. Tweaking lift/gamma/gain with both hands and trackballs is just so much quicker than you could ever be with a mouse on the computer screen. In the old days, DaVinci Resolve didn’t even have software color wheels, so the hardware control surface was a vital part of the system. And now, you can get the most essential part of that control surface for just 350$ with a whole grading software for free if you’re using Resolve. This is what I call a no-brainer. What do you think? Are you still tinkering with a mouse when it comes to color grading or are you going to give this device a try? Link: Tangent Devices | Application list

The all new Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 12.5 is out and, as always, it’s available as a free download. The company claims to have implemented 1,000 enhancements and 250 new features, so this new version is definitely worth a closer look! The video below highlights some of the new and enhanced features. DaVinci Resolve 12.5 1,000 enhancements and 250 new features, now this is a bold statement! Sure, not every one of these bits and pieces, but there are some very exciting improvements to be found in this new version of DaVinci which was initially introduced as a beta version at this year’s NAB show in Las Vegas. For a quick overview, these are the major enhancements of DaVinci Resolve 12.5: First up is a brand new feature called Fusion Connect. With this you can send clips from Resolve straight to Fusion 8 (also available as a free download) for further effects work. After having finished the FX, the clip will be sent straight back to Resolve. This feature comes built in natively, no more painful rountripping breaks. The Adobe Premiere & After Effects tag team can expect some competition here! There’s no doubt that DaVinci Resolve is the gold standard in terms of colour grading, but this isn’t really true when it comes to the edit tab. It’s become obvious that Blackmagic wants to change their reputation in this regard. A lot of editing features have been added to the 12.5 release of Resolve; some of them may be pretty much standard, but at least they are available now. And it doesn’t seem that Blackmagic will stop developing their flagship software anytime soon. New editing feature for version 12.5 Blackmagic has put a lot of effort into the edit page. As the whole editing capability is relatively new to Resolve, it’s nice to see the edit page flourishing in such rapid fashion. Some of the highlights include: advanced edit overlay, including ripple overwrite Improved clip retiming, including 2 new curves Drag and drop for clip reorganisation on the timeline Ability to view and edit clip metadata right from the edit page Power Bins: like Smart Bins but spanning across multiple projects Advanced editing features like ripple overwrite, ripple cut and paste/insert Markers now can work as duration markers, too New dissolves, wipes and other transitions Ability to edit keyframes directly on the timeline Audio waveforms can be displayed as an overlay in the source viewer New text tool. Edit text directly in the viewer New colour features The colour tab, an already advanced workspace, has also been improved. Now you can control the colour temperature and tint of a clip via dedicated sliders. Finally! Another improvement is the new Resolve FX effects library which is built right into DaVinci. The effects range from things like glow or film grain to weird stuff like JPG Damage, and they work either as a CPU or GPU effect. Other features include: New point tracker for hard to track clips (works with Resolve FX, too) Improved node editor: copy, swap, extract and insert nodes easily. Even compound nodes are possible New HDR mode for nodes Log contrast control can be set to either linear or S-curve mode New layering composite modes like colour dodge, colour burn, exclusion, luminosity and others new point tracker tool in conjunction with Resolve FX Some of the new features can only be found in the paid studio version of Resolve 12.5: Enhanced temporal and spatial noise reduction Automatic (and manual) lens correction for minimizing lens distortion New deliver page with presets The all new deliver page finally sports presets for popular video platforms like Youtube or Vimeo. Also, Premiere Pro XML presets are available and even audio only options can be found for further audio editing. All in all, the deliver module gets a much needed update and is really easy to use now. Everything you need is right there. the all new deliver page with presets Conclusion It’s impossible to walk you through each and every new feature of this massive update. You really should try it for yourself and explore the myriad enhancements in DaVinci Resolve 12.5. I must say I’m really impressed by the developing speed and all the new features in such a brief period of time. Not long ago, there wasn’t such thing like an edit page in Resolve at all! We will see what the future holds for DaVinci but it seems that it will be bright. Check out Blackmagic Design’s offical website for all the details. There are plenty of videos to be found, too.

wipster.io is an online video collaboration tool aimed at teams working on the same piece while removing the necessity for then to be sitting in the same room. Everything is cloud based, and now it’s even easier. wipster.io has now announced full integration with Premiere Pro. Integrating a web service Not too long ago, frame.io announced a similar kind of feature which integrated their online collaboration app deeply with the Premiere Pro panel structure. Now it’s wipster.io’s turn to bring their collaboration service to the next level. With the newly developed panel, you can share your edit straight from the timeline with your colleagues and clients. Everybody stays in the loop easily and can comment on the edit on a frame-accurate basis. The whole process is straight forward and takes the pain out of sharing an edit for approval. You just need to finish your edit for reviewing, choose the render quality, invite everybody who is required for approval and hit the ‘share’ button. When someone has a comment on a given scene, it will show up as a frame-accurate marker within your timeline. So you can work on your edit without having to leave Premiere Pro and read confusing emails stuffed with comments. wipster.io pricing You can download the panel for Premiere Pro for free, but you will need a wipster.io account to make use of it. The pricing of wipster.io is not the cheapest but most certainly the easiest to understand: $15 per user per month. A user is anybody on your team, the editor, a co-worker, you name it. A snippet from their FAQ’s: Each user has their own profile and, depending on the access you give them, they can upload videos and invite people to review them, access certain folders, and complete items in the to-do list. Not everybody needs to be a paid ‘user’, though. For reviewing (and commenting on) a shared video, no account is required. A client will just get a link, and he/she can watch the edit and comment on it. Which one? Well, you will have to find out which collaboration service best suits your needs. As a direct competitor to frame.io’s integration with Premiere Pro it’s nice to see that both companies offer a free plan (frame.io / 2GB / 1 Project / 5 Collaborators) or a trial period (wipster.io / 14 days free trial) for checking out their service. You can download the wipster.io premiere pro panel here and the frame.io panel here.

Adobe has recently teased some major new features in their upcoming Adobe CC platform. Can Apple’s FCPx and Avid’s Media Composer keep up with this level?   “It’s not the editing platform that is important; it is the way you tell a story” was my usual motto while having discussions with various editors on which editing platform is the best. However, I can’t justify this anymore, as it is the platform that enhances our story making capabilities and it is their sole purpose to make it easier for us to accomplish this. With new technologies coming out, such as immersive Virtual Reality and 360 content, editing platforms have to rethink the way they create their products to accommodate an ever changing industry. A prime example of how far Adobe has come is the blockbuster Deadpool, which was edited with Adobe Premiere. This is where Adobe has hit the nail on the head. Virtual Reality and 360 The new Premiere CC  brings new VR capabilities, in the form of a “field of view” mode. This allows editors to work with imported spherical stitched video and see what a viewer would see when looking in a given direction. The new mode will enable users to switch dynamically between monoscopic, stereoscopic and anaglyph frame layouts, freely reposition the viewing angle across 360 degrees while editing, and export video with VR tags so that video players like YouTube automatically recognize it. Proxy Workflow Premiere CC will feature a new workflow that enables editors to begin editing during “ingest” while importing video and audio in the background. The new update will also allow a proxy workflow for working with high-resolution formats including 8K, HDR and HFR media. Colouring and Other Features Adobe is expanding Premier Pro’s Lumetri color-correction toolkit, which should give editors finer control when isolating and adjusting specific colors using HSL secondaries. New navigational keyboard shortcuts, an added Twitter export option, and extra captioning and titling features are also part of the forthcoming update. Other Announcements After Effects CC: The motion graphics and special effects editor will feature a new audio and video preview engine for smoother playback for cached frames, new GPU-accelerated Gaussian Blur and Lumetri Color effects for faster rendering, and new 3D media export options. Audition CC: A new Essential Sound panel boasts simpler sound mixing and preset saving while a quick export option lets editors send video projects with finished audio directly to Adobe Media Encoder. Character Animator CC: A new puppet tag panel enables users to apply multiple motion trigger behaviors to video, track puppets in the field of view and quickly switch between facial profiles. Adobe Stock CC: Tighter integration with Adobe’s suite of apps and a new filtered and tagged search system for quick access to over 50 million images and video clips from within Premiere Pro and After Effects. Media Encoder: A clearer media browser panel is coming to Adobe’s standalone encoding app, as well as support for Audition and Character Animator apps. Adobe CC Pricing and Availability Adobe will be previewing the next major updates to Creative Cloud at NAB (at booth #SL3910, South Hall (lower) in the Las Vegas Convention Center). These updates are expected to ship in the “early summer.” The company is offering Adobe Creative Cloud for U.S. $49.99 a month.  

To say that the Sony a7 series of mirrorless cameras has been popular among videographers is an understatement. A large number of filmmakers have been using these cameras and some them make good use of the external recording feature to get even higher resolutions and data rates.  Unfortunately, there has been a pitfall plaguing the cameras for a while now. Of course, I’m talking about the crushed blacks and highlights on external recordings. This article will take a deeper look at why this phenomenon appears and how to resolve it. Or at least, how to work around it. [UPDATE: We have developed a LUT that fixes it.] Crushed Blacks on External Recordings It is no wonder that external recording is so popular on the Sony a7S. With the assistance of an external disk recorder, such as the Atomos Shogun, the possible resolution increases from 1080p to 4K and filmmakers can tap into high-quality codecs such as ProRes or DNxHD (as opposed to Sony’s H.264 derivative, XAVC). Sadly, when using S-log2 Gamma Space, crushed blacks and skimmed highlights can make a surprise appearance at the editing desk. A good portion of the lows appear cut off, and some highlight information tends to be lost, too. In S-log3 only the blacks are affected (as the video output only goes as high as 94%). The contrast is raised and, in essence, the whole purpose of S-log is defeated. This leads to images that were perfectly fine during shooting becoming broken. This phenomenon has been the main reason that some people have avoided using external recorders with the Sony a7S, a7S II, and a7R II cameras. What causes the Crushed Blacks Phenomena? Let’s face it. We’re often quick to blame manufacturers when things like this crop up. In this case, however, it turns out the culprit isn’t Sony. After digging deeper into the matter, we discovered that the reason we lose image information on external recordings is that the NLE is incorrectly interpreting the data it is given—it doesn’t realise that we’re using the higher bandwidth Gamma (S-log2/S-log3). In our case, the NLE in question is Adobe Premier Pro CC 2015. Wrong display range settings of the video data cut off image information. The image above is a waveform representation (captured in S-log2 with DaVinci Resolve) of a recording of an OEFC chart. In the camera’s S-log2 & S-log3 Gamma Setting, apparently data from 0 to 1023 is used for each channel. However, when no further metadata is embedded in the recordings, all NLE’s, including DaVinci Resolve, automatically interpret the footage recorded on external recorders with video levels from 64 to 960. This cuts off some information in both the blacks and the highlights. The orange arrows point out where that happens. When you record in-camera (XAVC, for example), then metadata is written directly to the file to tell your NLE to use 0 – 1023 (If you’re working in 10bit). On external recordings, however, this metadata cannot be transferred via the HDMI cable thus either the recorder would have to set that metadata flag (which it probably doesn’t), or it has to be set in your NLE manually. The Fix [UPDATE:] We have developed a custom LUT that fixes this problem either in post, or directly on a recorder, so you have 0 rendering time and 0 quality loss. Get the LUT by clicking the button below, or read all about it here. The Workaround Unfortunately in the NLE’s that many of us use (Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 & Final Cut Pro X) there isn’t an option to manually set the data levels. The NLE will always automatically interpret the footage with levels from 64 to 960 (or 16-240 in 8bit) and this will cut information, leading to crushed blacks and skimmed highlights and there is no way to change that yet. To correctly interpret externally recorded footage you will either have to switch to another NLE that lets you set this manually, or go through DaVinci Resolve, which allows you to re-interpret the footage. Fortunately, DaVinci Resolve is a free download. [UPDATE]: Thanks to xdcam-user we realized there is a workaround directly in Premiere. Adobe Premiere Pro CC To get your video levels back to include the full range of your external Slog recordings do the following in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. After importing your footage to the timeline: Apply the effect “Fast Color Corrector” to your footage. In the effects tab on the “Fast Color Corrector” effect change your “Output Black” to 16 and your “Output White” to 235. Make sure that the “Fast Color Corrector” is always the first effect in your filter-stack (before Lumetri for example), otherwise you will get the wrong results. Your footage now uses the full range right within Premiere. Other “Levels” filters will not get your levels back by the way. DaVinci Resolve If you’re using an externally recorded clip from an a7 series camera, then go to the EDIT tab in DaVinci Resolve and right-click on the clip(s) you are importing in your library window. On the drop-down select “clip attributes.” A window will open that lets you choose either “Auto”, “Data Levels” or “Video Levels”. By default this is set to “Auto”, but we want to select “Data Levels 0 – 1023” to properly display our S-log2 / S-log3 footage. After all of your clips are set to “Data Levels”, drag them to the timeline where you will then be able to color the clips to your liking—with all information in the blacks and highlights. Once this is done, go to the DELIVER tab in DaVinci Resolve to export the clips. Note that the above tip only applies to external recordings! When handling internally recorded files (XAVC) the levels should always be left to “auto”. Adobe Premiere After Effects CC [Update: Here’s the fix for After Effects] In After Effects the fix is a bit more tricky. First you have to open “Project Settings…” which can be accessed by right-clicking the small menu box on the project tab. In the window that opens you have to change your project’s Color Settings. Click the “Depth” dropdown and select “32 bits per channel (float)”. Then click “Ok”. Now you have to apply the “Levels” effect to your footage. It can be found under Effects –> Color Correction –> Levels. In the Effect Controls tab under “Levels” you can now set your ouput levels. Set Output Black to “0,0627” and Output White to “0,9255”. Those are the values that correspond to 16-235 in the 32-bit space. Now your footage includes all data levels of Slog. Besides being a more complicated workaround the real downside of this method is that it will considerably slow down your rendering speed. Final Cut Pro X Unfortunately Final Cut Pro X seems to handle the video range incorrectly as well and I have not found a fix. Although the xdcam-user article claims that Final Cut X handles superwhites correctly, this was not the case in my tests. To prepare externally recorded Slog footage for a correct grade in Final Cut X you will probably have to go through DaVinci first, or simply switch to Premiere Pro, like I did a while ago. I know many people out there love Final Cut X, so no offence please. Future Solutions? Of course, it would be an easy fix if Adobe and Apple would just give us an option to use the full range of levels in Premiere / After Effects & Final Cut Pro — just like in DaVinci Resolve. Apparently some users have been aware of this issue for a while, but so far there has been no direct implementation of such feature. We can only hope that this article will add some pressure. If you are affected by this, you can help and let the software companies know by leaving a comment underneath and fill out the feature request form. For Adobe Premiere Pro CC:  Adobe feature request form. For Adobe After Effects CC:  Adobe feature request form. For Apple Final Cut X: Apple feature request form. [UPDATE:] We have developed a custom LUT that fixes this problem either in post, or directly on a recorder, so you have 0 rendering time and 0 quality loss. Get the LUT by clicking the button below, or read all about it here.

Today we’re trying out Red Giant’s newest version of their audio syncing plugin, PluralEyes 4.0, and testing how it stacks up against Premiere’s native sync tool.  Red Giant recently released their Shooter Suite 13, a collection of utility plugins that can help you at several stages of post-production.  Tim’s article from last month covered PluralEyes within this release extensively, so do have a read if this announcement managed to pass you by. The folks over at Red Giant were kind enough to provide us with a copy to try, and I decided to put the software to test. I was particularly interested in PluralEyes’ integration with Adobe Premiere Pro. With very little time to plan, I remembered that my good friends Maria Jose and Samuel just happened to be playing a gig near the Cinema5D office. They are a couple of very talented, Vienna-based musicians originally from Honduras, and they were happy to drop by to perform an acoustic version of their upcoming single. I had to keep the setup simple due to the space constraints in the office but I also wanted to give PluralEyes enough to chew on, so to speak. The setup consisted of 3 cameras—2 recording in 4K and the other in HD—and of course their respective audio. In addition to Maria’s dynamic microphone, I had a pair of small diaphragm condenser mics recording Samuel’s guitar and another pair of microphones recording room ambience. They were all being recorded separately to different devices. You can watch the end result here: PluralEyes 4 Hands-on Experience: Conclusion Shooting live music is one of the many applications for which a tool like this fits just perfectly, and all in all, I was very happy with PluralEyes 4.0. Previous versions of the software had performed well for me in the past as standalone apps: there was something very satisfying in seeing all those clips rearrange themselves in a matter of seconds. But having all that functionality now available within Premiere has made a fast and enjoyable process even more so. PluralEyes 4.0 is available for $299 standalone, and for $399 as part of Shooter Suite 13. If you like the music, don’t forget to follow Maria Jose and Samuel on Facebook!