Yep, can't argue with that. And Playback Settings is not grayed out inexplicably--I just explained it. It's only for third-party hardware use now. There most definitely should be a toggle for the external monitor that's more easy to access. I've got a KB shortcut set up to go to the Playback preferences (Alt+Shift+P); not perfect, but it helps a bit. ... View more

Playback Settings is only for third-party hardware use, now. Kinda dumb, I think, but this is all part of the change in the way monitoring is handled now in Pr. ... View more

Setting up external monitoring--at least, when not using third-party hardware--is done in the program Preferences now. Go to Edit > Preferences > Playback, and there you can specify which video "device" you want to use. Your secondary monitor will be listed there, along with most of the usual settings you're accustomed to seeing in Playback Settings. ... View more

Ah. Well, Warp Stabilizer isn't third party; it's an Adobe effect built into AE, so again, I don't think it's going anywhere. Maybe it will be superceded by some new awesome stabilizer, but that might be a few versions from now I've used motion tracking to stabilize footage in AE, too; it works, for the most part. Warp Stabilizer is about a kajillion times better, to the point that I would dare call it "magic." ... View more

I know some folks use a program/plug-in called ProDad Mercalli; might see if there is a demo of that (no experience with it, myself). I'm sure there are others as well. Why would Warp Stabilizer disappear from AE? It's a pretty incredible technology, so it would seem unlikely that they'd invest all the time and energy into making it happen just to get rid of it. I believe you can get an AE demo that is fully functional and try it out; I've used it to stabilize some shots that were otherwise throwaways. ... View more

Are you talking about SteadyMove? That's long gone. The Warp Stabilizer is new in After Effects CS5.5; it's not available in any version of Premiere Pro. ... View more

To add to what Ann said, using the Crop effect (my choice, since it's CUDA accelerated) or the Linear Wipe transition effect with Hold keyframes would make this fairly easy. Hold keyframes don't "tween" or animate between consecutive instances of them, so you get an abrupt transition from one to the next. ... View more

It does: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 & CS5.5 * Viewing and adjusting effects and keyframes ... View more

It's automatically applied to any video clip when it's used in a sequence. Just select the clip instance in the sequence, and go to the Effect Controls Panel (ECP); the Motion effect will be there. Twirl it open to reveal properties like Scale, Position, Rotation, and so on. ... View more

I say "doughnuts to doughnuts" because the phrase "comparing apples to oranges" doesn't make sense, and I don't want to say "Apples to apples" because that's just silly and I don't want to give Apple any free publicity. And I like doughnuts. ... View more

Well, there are lots of codec choices and format options in Pr that would potential satisfy any delivery requirement--but we really don't know what your delivery requirement is. I suggested DNxHD, because doughnuts-to-doughnuts, it's pretty similar in quality and function to ProRes; the compression type they both use is the same. They both provide a large, high-quality, able-to-be-edited, suitable-for-broadcast, ready-for-archive video file. That said, if they don't need to edit the file, or archive it, or are going to be recompressing the file for broadcasting (through some sort of play-out server), then there are other high-quality options you might potential use that are already available in Pr, don't require a codec download and installation, and will create much smaller delivery files. One clear option in this regard would be to use H.264 as the codec; this is either available by selecting H.264 as the Format (which creates an MP4 and has quite a few configurable options) or by selecting QuickTime as the Format (this creates an MOV, but isn't quite as configurable). I actually do most of my broadcast delivery with the QuickTime H.264 option, and I'm on a PC. I guess the bottom line is that you need to check with the recepient what their needs really are, and if they are flexible on format. Hope that doesn't confuse too much! ... View more

I'd use these: Avid QuickTime Codecs LE 2.3.4 Free, cross-platform, and more-or-less equal to ProRes 422. When you send the client the footage, send them the codecs, too. ... View more

What Tom said. For the most part, transcoding H.264 is a waste of time, especially if you have a reasonably decent editing system. These days, 75% of my source material is H.264 of one sort or another, and I work with it right out of the box in Premiere Pro. ... View more

With DV, no--DV uses a specific pixel aspect ratio (non-square). You can't change that if you want to use DV. You could use another codec, like H.264, that will let you use square pixels, but that may not work for your delivery purposes. You could create a DV PAL Widescreen sequence in Premiere Pro (I'm assuming you have that), drop the HD clip into it, and scale it non-uniformly to stretch it out horizontally and fill the widescreen SD frame. Personally, I wouldn't do that, but it's an option. I really wouldn't worry too much about "losing" part of the original image--it's 28 lines, total, out of 1080, or about 2.5% of the vertical dimension. I can only speak for my own work, but there isn't much in those 28 lines (24, actually, since I'm in NTSC land) that is so important that I don't mind losing. ... View more

In both cases, you'll have 100% format support parity between the two platforms. Both the Mac and PC versions natively support those camera/footage types--just import and edit. Here's an article that covers this topic: Native Format Editing in Adobe Premiere Pro ... View more

Alrighty, then... Download this file first: http://www.mediafire.com/file/vl67maant5i6n81/avi2wav.zip. Extract the two files inside it into your folder containing the AVIs. Then, just double click the "avi2wav.bat" file. This will run a batch and extract the second audio track from all of the AVIs to new WAV files with the same name as the original AVI, e.g. ABC.avi and ABC.wav. When the entire folder is processed, import both the AVIs and WAVs into Premiere Pro. Pr will still only recognize the first audio track in the AVIs, but the WAVs will be your second audio track. In the bin/Project Panel, select each pair of files, right-click and select Merge Clips; this will create a new merged clip with the original video, and four mono audio tracks. Merged clips only can have mono tracks, even though both of the originals were stereo. If that's a problem, just skip the Merge Clips step and drop both clips into a sequence as stereo audio; you can link or group them if you like. Hope that helps a bit! ... View more

Are you talking about the effect limitations? Probably the best place to look for this information (as well as other differences between the platforms) is the help documentation: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 & CS5.5 * Using Adobe Premiere Pro One other difference would be the import/export support of a few different formats and codecs. For example, you can import and edit ProRes QuickTime MOVs on Windows, but you can't render or export to ProRes--that's more of a limitation imposed by Apple than Adobe. These are good things to be aware of, but typically, there are considerations you can make to ease a cross-platform workflow. What formats are you typically working with in FCP? ... View more

For the most part, yes. There are a few effects on Windows that aren't available on Mac (as far as I recall), but beyond that, the project files are 100% transferable from platform to platform. Note that both platforms will open up FCP XML documents from FCP 7, too--another important selling point fro your employer, I'm sure ... View more

I can understand the desire to keep it as simple as possible. If you want, I have a simple script that will extract the second audio track to a separate WAV file, so that you can do all the files in a batch without having to do each one individually. Let me know if you want that. ... View more

I'm actually surprised that Pr can import this at all--the video is Xvid. Maybe it's some variant that Pr's importers can handle, as Jeff suggested. I dunno--it doesn't play well for me, regardless, and I'm not going to install the Dxtory codec to find out. Anyway, to the matter at hand: while AVIs can, apparently, contain multiple audio tracks, Pr's importers are limited to a single track. However, Pr has other importers than can handle multiple audio tracks. QuickTime--which is a wholly different process--supports multiple audio tracks, as does MXF (some flavors). However, Xvid in QuickTime (which is feasible) won't import in Pr (at least on a PC), and Xvid won't go into an MXF file at all; that means you'd have to transcode. Personally, this would be my choice--but I found that the original clip played back pretty terribly, so that would be why I'd go that route. Additionally, you could extract the second audio track to a separate WAV file, import both the AVI and WAV, and then use the Merge Clips feature to marry them together as one pseudo-clip. Not perfect, but it would work. The benefit is that you don't re-encode anything. So, I've got solutions for both the re-encode/MXF option (my preference) and the AVI/WAV option. Here's proof of the MXF (transcoded video to XDCAMHD422 50Mbps) with four audio channels (stereo must be split to dual mono): At the end of the day, these (or a variation of them) are your only options. Pr simply won't import multiple audio tracks (even dual mono) in an AVI container. Let me know if you're interested in either of the solutions. ... View more

I don't think you have two stereo tracks--I think you have two mono tracks. It's entirely possible that Pr just can't use multiple mono audio tracks in an AVI--I work with QuickTime files all the time with multiple mono, so it is possible from a generic standpoint. Could you record a very short sample, and upload it somewhere to test? If you need an FTP, please PM me and I'll set you up. I'm sure there is a way around it. ... View more

Is the clip recorded with stereo audio (e.g. left and right channel) or is it dual mono? The Preview Area in the Project Panel should tell you this when select the clip, or you can right-click and select Properties. Where in Pr are you playing back the clip? In the Source Monitor, or in a sequence? The Source Monitor will only play back one audio channel (that's why I asked if it was dual mono) at a time. However, if the clip is being recognized properly, you should still be able to drop it into a sequence and edit both channels individually, as they will be placed on two mono tracks. ... View more

The better place to give Adobe feedback (or a piece of your mind, as the case may be ) is right here: Adobe Feature Request/Bug Report Form ... View more

Actually, it's a completely ineffective method. This is a user-to-user forum with only ocassional Adobe interaction. The proper avenue is here: Adobe Feature Request/Bug Report Form ... View more

OK, good. This isn't a guaranteed solution, but it might be your best hope of salvaging at least most of your work: Create a new After Effects project. Go to File > Import > Adobe Premiere Pro Project. Navigate to and select your Premiere Pro project file that isn't working. If it's salvageable, you'll see a dialog that lets you select all sequences or a specific sequence, and whether you want audio (you probably do). Hit OK, and your project will be recreated as an After Effects project as closely as it can to what the original Pr project was. It's not a perfect translation; for example, titles from Pr don't really come across into AE, so those would have to be rebuilt, and most effects and transitions won't be preserved either. In any event, if the AE project is populated with footage and sequences (which are actually comps in AE), you're in the best shape you can hope to be in at this point. So, go to File > Export > Adobe Premiere Pro Project, and save out a new Pr project. This should be a clean project file (obviously, with a few omissions due to a less-than-00% translation) that will open in Premiere Pro. Let us know how it goes! ... View more

The project is probably not going to open--or import--in Premiere Pro once it gets to that point. Do you have After Effects, though? There is a workaround there that can sometimes salvage terribly broken project files like this... ... View more

Bummer! You're the second person in two days to have this same (or at least a very similar) issue. Hopefully, Todd Kopriva--one of the very helpful Adobe people--will stop by and offer some assistance; I know he assisting the other guy who had this problem. It's very peculiar, so I hope it can get sorted for you quickly. Sorry the above didn't get you back up to speed! ... View more

Hey Toby, Apparently, we're not to call this the "revert to trial" bug any more with CS5.5, but the effect is the same: Pr loses its ability to use the third party codecs that Adobe licenses for support of such formats. It's a pain, but here's what you need to do: 1) Deactivate the software (under the Help menu in any suite application) 2) Uninstall 3) Run the Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool 4) Reboot 5) Optionally, you can do #3 and #4 again, but it's typically not necessary 6) Reinstall 7) Activate 8) Update immediately from something like Bridge (if you want the latest version, which you do) That should get you back all the sequence presets and format support that you'd otherwise be missing. If you have any problems, post back. ... View more