How the Next Version of Premiere Pro CC Will Connect Media, Projects and Editors

The next release of Premiere Pro CC is all about connectedness. From the introduction of a new Team Projects service to a new Text Template file format, Adobe is making it easier for video editors to connect to their work, their audiences and to each other.

*Use of this image was approved by Adobe for this blog post.*

Team Projects

Team Projects is a new hosted service that will allow editors and motion graphics designers to work on the same project concurrently within Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC and Prelude CC. Instead of working in standalone application files, team members will be able to share a single Team Project in the cloud. Team Projects is hardware independent, so media can be stored anywhere: on a shared network, on a local system or in the cloud. New media mapping functionality will allow Team Members to organize their local media independently of each other. Changes to Team Projects will only be visible to Team Members with the new Share My Changes and Get Latest Changes buttons in the Project panel. Smart conflict resolution options will keep Team Projects in sync when Team Members make changes to the same sequence or composition. A new Team Projects History Slider in the Media Browser will allow Team Members to roll back to any previous shared state of the Team Project.

New Team Projects service will be available with the next release of Creative Cloud.

Team Projects is going to change post-production as we know it. It's such a HUGE announcement it deserves it's own blog post: Team Projects Preview: 10 Things Premiere Pro CC Users Need to Know.

Visual Keyboard Shortcut Map

As video editors, we're all about visuals. So why not make our editing tools more visual? This is exactly what Adobe has done to keyboard shortcuts in the next version of Premiere Pro CC. The new visual keyboard shortcut map will make it much simpler to find and customize keyboard shortcuts. This will likely encourage more editors toward keyboard-driven editing in Premiere Pro.

A fresh new keyboard shortcut map is coming in the next release of Premiere Pro CC.

The new keyboard shortcut map will also allow editors to map panel-specific keyboard shortcuts. Color indicators will distinguish application and panel-specific shortcuts: purple for application and green for panel-specific. This new visual keyboard shortcut map will improve how Premiere Pro editors connect to the application via their keyboards.

Clip Stitching in Adobe Media Encoder

Speaking of connected, this new Adobe Media Encoder feature will literally connect clips together. Editors will be able to stitch camera files together on ingest with custom in and out points. Clip stitching will give editors the option to consolidate their media before bringing it into Premiere Pro for editing.

New clip stitching in the next version of Adobe Media Encoder CC.

Open Captions Edge Color and Timeline Controls

The next release of Premiere Pro CC will include more tools to create and adjust open captions. Captions provide another visual layer for audiences to connect with video content, whether they're intended for engaging viewers during silent auto-play on Facebook or for making videos more accessible to the hard of hearing.

Open Captions will have a new Edge Color tool to ensure captions are visible regardless of background. Additionally, editors will be able to adjust caption in and out points by clicking and dragging the caption's handles directly in the timeline. Captions can also be repositioned by clicking between the caption's in and out points and dragging left or right.

This next release of Premiere Pro CC adds the ability to create, adjust, and truly customize captions and subtitles.

Text Template File Format

Live Text Templates created in After Effects CC make it easy to add customizable lower thirds and and animated text in Premiere Pro CC. In the next release of Creative Cloud, Text Templates can be saved out of After Effects CC to a new Text Template file format. This redesigns the way motion graphics designers and video editors will connect using Text Templates. It means editors will no longer be required to have an After Effects CC license in order to import and customize Text Templates. Consider this ample warning for stock template marketplaces to prepare for an all-new template formate.

Save Text Templates as standalone files in the next release of Creative Cloud.

Enhanced Dynamic Linking with After Effects

Dynamic Link with After Effects CC is often cited as one of the major reasons filmmakers and editors choose to cut in Premiere Pro CC. After Effects CC will be getting a lot of performance improvements in the next release of Creative Cloud. Namely, real-time playback of source footage will be possible without having to cache. In the latest version of After Effects, the Lumetri Color and Gaussian Blur effects were GPU accelerated. Glow, Hue/Saturation, Brightness & Contrast, Mosaic effects will be added to that list. These enhancements will enhance the connection between Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC.

New performance enhancements coming the next release of After Effects CC.

Auto-Aware VR and Hide Controls

Premiere Pro CC 2015.3 was the first NLE to provide editors native support for viewing, editing and distribution of VR and 360° video. Adobe will continue to expand its VR and 360° video workflows in Premiere Pro CC by adding new auto-aware VR capability. This upcoming release of Premiere Pro CC will auto-recognize monoscopic or stereoscopic VR/360° video content, and display it accordingly with the correct preferences. This will accelerate the editing workflow of VR/360° video in Premiere Pro. There will also be a new option to hide the VR player controls for a larger viewing experience. These two new features will help editors connect more effectively with VR and 360° media inside Premiere Pro CC.

New auto-aware VR available in the next release of Premiere Pro CC.

HSL Secondary Color Pickers and HDR10 Support

With the addition of the Lumetri Color panel, editing and color workflows have never been so connected in Premiere Pro CC. No other NLE has been so committed to providing editors with color tools that are both high-quality and easy to work with as Premiere Pro CC. Adobe continues to expand its color toolset in the next release of Premiere Pro CC with new color pickers for HSL Secondaries in the Lumetri Color panel.

The next version of Premiere Pro will also add support for HDR10, which uses the Rec. 2020 color space. This open source HDR format is backed by companies like Samsung, Sony and LG. While the industry is preoccupied with a "format war" between HDR10 and Dolby Vision, Adobe is focused on giving editors the color tools and format support they need to successfully edit and deliver any HDR content.

Expanded Lumetri Color HDR support and new HSL Secondary color pickers in the next version of Premiere Pro CC.

Publish to Behance

Adobe is very serious about making Behance more appealing to video editors. To that end, direct publishing to Behance will be available in the next versions of Premiere Pro CC and Adobe Media Encoder CC. This expedited publishing to Behance will encourage more video editors to connect with the largest online creative community.

The addition of Publish to Behance coming in the next release of Premiere Pro CC.

"New" Audio Effects

Some of Adobe Audition's audio effects will appear in the next release of Premiere Pro. These will include Audition's Dynamics Processing, Parametric Equalizer, Adaptive Noise Reduction, Automatic Click Remover and Studio Reverb. (One interesting thing to note about these effects is they are used in Audition's Essential Sound panel, the "Lumetri Color panel for audio". This is conjecture, but one might see this as preparation for integrating the Essential Sound panel in Premiere Pro. Again, just wishful thinking.) By themselves, these audio effects will bring higher quality, real-time audio processing to Premiere Pro. Be warned, the audio effects these replace will be deprecated and removed in a later release of Premiere Pro CC.

Some Adobe Audition effects will added in next version of Premiere Pro CC.

There's a lot to be looking forward to in the next release of Premiere Pro CC. Particularly when it comes to more connected editing workflows. What features are you most excited for in the next release of Premiere Pro CC? What is your initial reaction to Team Projects? Please share your thoughts in the comments below! Any additional information or corrections to the content in this post are especially welcome!