San Jose, CA—Adobe revealed innovations across its video applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. New AI-powered text-based video editing and automated color tone-mapping capabilities were integrated into Premiere Pro. Significant GPU acceleration and dozens of workflow enhancements also make this the fastest version of Premiere Pro ever.
In addition, Adobe is celebrating 30 years of After Effects, its popular motion design software for video professionals. The app now offers a context-sensitive properties panel for enhanced user productivity, consistent color support as well as performance optimizations.
Furthermore, Adobe introduced new innovations and partnerships to expand Frame.io’s video collaboration platform to photography and PDF documents.
“Today’s video professionals are racing to meet insatiable demand for standout content across platforms and surfaces,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president, Creative Product Group and Digital Media Growth, Adobe.
“We are excited to advance workflows and inspire new creative expression with the latest cutting-edge Premiere Pro and After Effects innovations, empowering creative professionals to focus on the craft of creating, while cutting out time-consuming tasks that prolong content ideation, creation and delivery.”
Leveraging Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s machine learning and AI framework, Premiere Pro and After Effects now streamline video workflows. They offer AI-powered editing that can save production teams hours as well as reduce costs.
Adobe displayed the latest releases of Premiere Pro and After Effects at the 2023 NAB Show, April 15–19 in Las Vegas. This included beta versions of Premiere Pro’s text-based editing and automatic tone mapping as well as After Effects’ properties panel.
Adobe Premiere Pro Updates
Text-based editing represents a shift in postproduction workflows. According to Adobe, Premiere Pro is now the only professional editing software to incorporate it, making video editing as simple as copying and pasting text.
Powered by Adobe Sensei, text-based editing automatically analyzes and transcribes clips so editors, producers and assistants can copy and paste sentences into any order they want. They can then instantly see them appear on the timeline. Additionally, they can search transcripts in the transcript window to identify exact words and phrases.
Further, the app’s automatic tone mapping and log color detection let editors mix and match HDR footage from different sources into the same SDR project for consistent color. Consequently, editors don’t need to use look-up tables (LUTs) or manually balance footage to get the images they envision.
Premiere Pro also now offers significant under-the-hood improvements. In addition to enhanced performance, new features include background auto save; system reset options; and an effects manager for plug-ins.
Moreover, GPU acceleration for AVC Intra and professional formats such as ARRI RAW, RED RAW and Sony Venice V2—coupled with GPU accelerated video scopes, transitions and title templates—make editing faster and more responsive. This allows editors to now work with 8K footage in the timeline.
Collaborative editing enhancements also include sequence locking. Active editors can now lock a sequence, making it view-only for other editors. Additionally, “presence indicators” provide visibility on who is working in shared projects. And “work while offline” allows editors to continue to work offline and publish changes without overwriting others’ work when they return online.
What’s more, Frame.io support, which is included with Creative Cloud, enables secure sharing, collaborative review and project management for Premiere Pro edits.
After Effects Enhancements
In After Effects, the new properties panel now offers quicker access to the most important animation settings in one panel. The panel is context-sensitive, automatically showing users the most important controls needed based on selections. This cuts down on the time needed to navigate through the timeline as well as reduces the learning curve for new users.
Further, new ACES and OpenColorIO maintain consistent colors when sharing assets with other postproduction apps. This will help users create more predictable and photo-realistic images with less effort.
Additional new features deliver performance optimizations, including faster timeline layer selection and multi-frame rendering of shapes. Plus, keyboard shortcuts were added for selectable track mattes.
Notably, After Effects now helps users fix common issues without the need for IT expert assistance. It provides in-app troubleshooting for potential workflow issues; system performance optimizations; simple interfaces for enabling and disabling plug-ins; as well as diagnostics to fix bottlenecks in caches and preferences.
Partnerships and Programming Revealed at NAB 2023 
Beyond app innovations, Adobe is seeking to empower partners to deliver creative experiences that “inspire, transform and move the world forward.”
The company is launching a new Adobe Video Partner Program that provides an end-to-end approach across all Adobe video tools. The program offers access to exclusive benefits, resources and solutions to help develop partners’ businesses.
Adobe now has 400 global partners delivering solutions for Adobe customers. Among them are Canon, Nikon, RED and Sony. Plus, newly announced integrations with Fujifilm expand Adobe’s collaborative video review and approval platform, Frame.io, to support workflows for capturing, editing, reviewing and approving photos.
Adobe will make the new app versions generally available in May 2023.
