Adobe Releases Major Video Updates, Expands Stock Assets

Ahead of NAB 2017, Adobe has announced a ton of new features and updates to their video-oriented products, which include new graphics features, audio effects, interesting AI capabilities, and more.

"Our heritage is taking complex challenges and simplifying them so you can concentrate on storytelling and professional, quality work," says Steven Warner, vice president of digital media at Adobe. That seems to be the theme of a lot of Adobe's updates, which offer some great capabilities with simplified interfaces. Check them out:

Premiere Pro CC

Essential Graphics Panel

The Essential Graphics Panel is the newest way to create titles and motion graphics, mimicking the controls one has in Photoshop. The Type tool allows one to create title and graphic layers and place them directly on the program monitor. From there, the new panel allows the user to change font, size, or color. Because these titles and graphics are on the program monitor, any changes are seen instantaneously. One can even declare a certain instance as the master, from which any changes will be synced to linked objects. One can now also create and save Motion Graphic templates with text, shape, and clip layers included. If created in After Effects, one can still change virtually any aspect of the template all from within Premiere Pro. 

Essential Sound Panel

Available in both Premiere Pro and Audition, the Essential Sound Panel is geared toward allowing video editors to produce proper sound without necessarily having audio engineering expertise. After the user selects the type of audio for each clip, Premiere Pro automatically presents the appropriate tools to edit with, thereby providing a simpler and more intuitive experience. Adobe has also introduced further integration with Audition and a deeper library of effects, including Convolution Reverb, which can apply the acoustic response of a space to audio recorded elsewhere, thereby making it sound as if it was recorded in that space. 

Direct Publishing to Adobe Stock

Video content can now also be submitted to Adobe Stock from Premiere Pro or the Adobe Media Encoder.

After Effects CC

Essential Graphics Panel

Also present in After Effects, the Essential Graphics Panel allows one to create titles and graphics as Motion Graphics templates for use in Premiere Pro. 

Camera Shake Deblur

The Camera Shake Deblur effect analyzes frames adjacent to a blurred frame, then uses them to reconstruct the frame. 

GPU Acceleration

Improved GPU performance and the addition of more effects that can take advantage of GPU acceleration will result in better rendering performance.

Character Animator CC

The Character Animator allows one to create animated characters via templates or by combining parts from Photoshop and Illustrator files, then control the movement via the keyboard, mouse, or webcam. Perhaps most impressive is the feature's ability to capture a voice and add mouth movements for lip-syncing, even allowing it to be done in real time for live streaming. Check it out:

Pond5

Lastly, Adobe is teaming up with Pond5 to further expand the video library of Adobe Stock. The Pond5 library offers extensive content from across the world in a variety of themes and genres, all of which will be directly integrated in Creative Cloud applications. It should offer content creators even more options to find exactly what they're looking for.

You can also check out this full playlist that shows off many of the new features individually.