Good news for video professionals working in HD – support for the format in desktop editing packages has just got much better.
First up, Premier Pro 1.5, announced at NAB today. This new release builds on previous HD support, including the ability to export projects in Windows Media 9 HD format. Adobe have concentrated effort into Premier’s project management features, with multiple, nestable timelines and better sound support, including 5.1 surround sound. The inclusion of support for Advance Authoring Format (AAF) eases Premier Pro’s integration in mixed environments, and should save a few editors from having nervous breakdowns when flipping back and forth between packages.
One of Apple’s Final Cut Pro’s top features is that it can capture HD footage directly over Firewire without the bit loss that come about from all that compressing, decompressing and recompressing. Editing is done in the camera-original format and then output down Firewire when finished.
As Final Cut Pro can scale from DV to SD, HD and film with out down-converting to offline formats for editing, users can work in their output format from start to finish.