New Desktop HD Editing Solutions

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.

Adobe Premier Pro 1.5’s new features

Apple on Final Cut Pro HD

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?