Production Premium CS5.5

By Simon Fenton, May 3rd, 2011

Although only a point release update, CS5.5 feels more like a full release. Packed full of new features and enhancements, Production Premium now feels snappy even on a laptop, thanks to the Mercury Playback Engine, which supports a wider range of Nvidia GPU's, both mobile, and desktop.

One of the most significant new features in After Effects is the Warp Stabilizer plug-in that transforms jerky, handheld camera motion into smooth, steady-cam like results. In addition, DSLR shooters will appreciate the rolling shutter artefact removal that takes care of the CMOS Jell-O-cam shots.

Another great filter offered is the “Camera Lens blur” effect, which creates a soft out of focus effect on any shot, complete with iris, blade curves and diffusion controls; it can also be used with the AE 3D camera.  Finally,  “Light Falloff” adds an extra level of realism to 3D projects, mimicking the way light falloff behaves in the real world.

Camera Lens Blur

Light Falloff

Premiere Pro adds enhanced support and better performance for RED RAW digital cinema files, as well as Sony XDCAM, Canon XF and Cinema DNG formats.  If you’ve moved across from another NLE, Adobe makes the transition a little easier by offering Avid and FCP shortcut keys right within Premiere. 

Another feature DSLR shooters will love is the “Dual system sound” which makes synching field audio and video footage as easy as a click of a button. Then once the production is ready for audio mastering and sweetening, simply send the project directly to Adobe Audition, which is now available as a native Mac application. 

Media Encoder has had an interface overhaul, which simplifies encoding to multiple media devices, be it Smartphone’s, tablets or television.

Add Elemental Technologies “RapidHD” plug-in to the mix and you now have GPU accelerated H.264 encoding, giving performance boosts of up to 7 times faster than CPU only encoding.

Adobe story is a professional collaborative screenwriting tool, available either as a desktop application or via the web, benefiting both the pre-production and postproduction stages. In pre-production the scripts can be imported direct into Adobe Onlocation for better managing shoots, shot lists are automatically generated and the meta data is embedded back into media assets. When it comes time to edit, Premiere Pro takes this metadata and with the help of advanced voice to text technology, enables you to quickly search for specific assets or dialogue lines within a shot. 

In summary, Production Premium CS5.5 offers a bundle of great new features, but to really get the most out of these I would highly recommend adding in an Nvidia Quadro 4000 card to really reap the benefits of the CUDA accelerated processing especially when dealing with RED or DSLR assets.