Discuss the Premiere Pro 22.3 UI changes: Import, Export, and Header Bar

[MikeDy]

I'm struggling too, this UI update seems a step backwards requiring more clicks etc to do the same tasks... I also can't find options to do layouts that worked very well for certain tasks. Whats happened to the caption layout for instance?

If I wanted a Premiere rush like inetrface i'd use rush... This is professional workstation software why are you dumbing it down... Shades of Final cut 10...

[R Neil Haugen]

The new "import" project startup page was never intended for advanced users to use. From the get-go, that was designed for newer users or those with simpler projects.

The assumption all along is that experienced users with more complex projects would do as they always have ... type a project name, select a location, click Create.

Then import assets from the Project panel or Media Browser panel as always. And at NAB, the staffers were somewhat puzzled the advanced users seemed to think they were expected to use that 'page'.

As far as they're concerned, they replaced a dialog with Name, Location, Create, and a bunch of other options few users actually ever used ... with a dialog with Name, Location, Create, and some import options some users actuall will use.

I work daily in both Resolve and Premiere, and what struck me about the new pages, especially export, was how much the structure was alike to that of Resolve. Not my fav app at all, personally. But I do need to be adept in it. Like it or no.

Neil

[Ann Bens]

designed for newer users or simple projects

If a new user selects several images with different resolution the sequence will be set to the first image.

This is something you might not want (image too small or too large) but that doesnot the new import tab tell you.

Suppose you do find out your settings are wrong (after countless blurry exports) how is the new user to find out how to change those settings.

the staffers were somewhat puzzled the advanced users seemed to think they were expected to use that 'page'.

If its designed mainly for new users or users with simple project, why is there for the advanced user not a preference to disable the page and get moving the old-fashioned way.

How about the export page. Is that also designed for new user or simple projects?

[R Neil Haugen]

I agree with you, there's some unexpected things can happen with that "simplified" export system. Not a fan of it.

The assumption for experienced users, as stated, was advanced users would do exactly as before ... name, location, create. So I don't they saw it as really much difference. So why turn it 'off' when they didn't have a way to turn "off" the other options on the old dialog?

That's what seemed to be their view. It's a big bigger, it has different "added' options, that's all the difference they saw.

The Export page they really think has good usability to it. And they're definitely "hearing" that some mods to it need to happen, which they expected to come when they built it.

So ... everyone, keep complaining about it!

Neil

[Ann Bens]

Oh I will still dont like it. Import and export tab.

[Baffy19]

Export page, like it. For my part, there are minor flaws that have been mentioned here, with regard to the name of the save and the ways for reuse. For me personally, it's not essential. I would rather draw the attention of developers to the modification of the video output function for the cinema (DCP). Flexibility in settings is needed.

[LPG1964]

Yes, that is exactly my point. Premiere should NOT imitate Resolve! Resolve is very good under the hood (speed, colouring), but is still inferior in simplicity of use. Premiere should not work on its graphical UI, but use all its resources on improving speed and coulouring... IMHO...

[Baffy19]

If you don't update the app for years, there will still come a time when it will change dramatically. But, you need to change wisely so that performance, functionality and, most importantly, stability in work do not fall. I certainly support the introduction of new features, design shells, so the product will develop and compete in the market. But, there is one BUT... When they just change the panels and say that we have super loading and watching videos before creating a sequence, this is already the last stage. It should have already existed. Now a rebalancing of the Color page is very much needed. We need to organize the tools here that are directly related to the interpretation of color. There are many things that for some reason are very reluctant to be solved. We see we have added a new window, a new button, etc. Adobe developers need to look bigger.

[Knight3D]

Neil,

your post is incredibly concerning to me. The fact that Adobe devs are puzzled by their users' actions is really telling. There are currently 3 versions of Premiere (Elements, Rush and Pro), and the suggestion that a year's worth of development (this new I/O UX) was designed purely for non-advanced users (why did Adobe make Rush again?), indicates a committee-made decision that mimics the Final Cut 7-> X fiasco. To be clear, that scenario resulted in many professional (advanced) users jumping ship to Premiere Pro (which resulted in the massive CS6 overhaul to court them). Someone needs to remind Adobe what the word "Pro" in "Premiere Pro" means. Or they should just drop it.

[R Neil Haugen]

Personally, I think you're a bit jumping to conclusions. They didn't spend the year working only on the import/edit/export page thing ... not even close. That would have been a few people at various times. And again, I think that was probaby decreed by the M&E people and their tons of research.

For just one example: have you noted that the underlying color was completely rebuilt between Pr2021 and 2022? The old system was based on Rec.709. The new one ... is certainly not. That was a truly massive job. Magnitudes of order larger than the UI changes.

And yea, the rollout of the new CM tools and practices/defaults was far from perfect, but they're getting a handle on it. Most format/codecs are working within it as expected.

And they've got a gorgeous transform for S-log3.cine in the public beta.

I'm still pushing for some other changes, like giving us an actual color management control panel. As currently the many new controls are buried hither and yon through the app ... because to the devs, it makes total engineering sense for them to be where they are.

They've also made some major changes in the graphics area, integrating frame.io, speech-to-text, all sorts of major, major working changes in the app. The UI by workload was surely one of the smaller things done this year.

And don't conflate Elements with Premiere Pro ... they're not connected in any way shape or form, internally or externally.

PrPro is, by supervision, part of their "DVA group, digital video apps. That's Pr, Ae, and Au. MediaEncoder is simply the complete encoding code in one 'app', but really ... it's not a separate team or product at all. The entire Me staff is buried within Pr, Ae, and Au as far as I can tell.

And none of them have anything to do with Elements. I've been around the DVA people at NAB for years, and at MAX, and never heard a word about Elements.

Rush is part of their "mobile" team's effort, and only semi-connected with Premiere Pro. Just enough to get Rush projects into Premiere, and that's it. The main Pr team doesn't spend much time at all with Rush.

Now ... as to the devs being puzzled by user reactions ... um ... it's your response that is puzzling to me. Have you ever actually spent time with engineers? Like, discussing the difference between the way the app is organized from an engineer's viewpoint as "logical" compared to a users view of "logical"?

I have ... and over such things as the new CM tools being buried in different parts of the app. Where everything appears in the UI makes perfect sense to the engineers, because they know how it's connected to under the hood. And to them, it "should make sense" to the users.

Well ...as a user, I don't give a rat's tail what X is connected to under the hood. I want similar tools grouped together. Like putting all color management tools in one panel, for both defaults and overrides and settings.

Typically, engineers can be aghast at such suggestions. It's part of the ever-ongoing debate between engineers and users.

Neil

[Knight3D]

I've been using Premiere since 1994 (nigh-daily since late 1996), so I think I understand what developments have been made since 2021. My inclusion of Elements was to infer that non-advanced users (which you brought up) have an alternate Adobe solution to Premiere Pro, in addition to Rush (which, despite starting its life as a mobile app, actually is a desktop application as well). It doesn't matter that Elements isn't officially part of the DVA group. It's called Premiere, and it's a video editing application made by Adobe for non-professionals.

I never implied Adobe focused the entire last year on the new UI, only that they did spend an entire year on it. For an audience that didn't ask for it. Again, non-advanced users have alternate Adobe options to Premiere Pro, and any time spent on developing this new UX could have been spent elsewhere (the user voice forum is rather vocal about this, I'm not alone here).

I will be spending the next few months retraining edtors at an NYC TV station that are utterly baffled by this redesign (I completely understand most editors adapt quickly - but TV people are a different breed). I will be correcting students in my editing and animation class when they click the wrong "Edit" button, because the Edit Button and Edit Menu look too similar, and are located right next to each other. And on it goes. All time wasted, because some VP at Adobe needed to justify their paycheck.

And since I don't like arguing on the internet, please believe that I understand where you're coming from. I want Premiere Pro to be the best damn NLE out there. I'd just like Adobe to get out of the way from time to time.

[R Neil Haugen]

Hey, we'd probably agree on most things here. And thanks for the clarifications!

The new import page is a "meh" for me. And again, no 'real' editor need use it at all. Easy enough to skip, if not as 'obvious' you can skip it as the old dialog box.

Their data show a ton of users that don't do the complex projects that you and your staffers would do. Or even the projects that I would do, which I'm positive are a lot less complex than yours.

That's the group that import page was built for. Knowing the total user base is what ... a few hundred thousand or something? Not sure what the total is these days ... they have to build for a variety of users. From people working long-form (and yes, there are a number of major long-forms users even if Avid dominates there) ... episodic/reality TV ... local broadcast studio ... and even YouTubers.

Some YouTube operations have major studio gear and production schedules. That blows me away.

I think one area they really blew it is in documentation. Compare the Premiere help & manuals to say Resolve. Right ... if they'd had a Resolve like manual for the new version, A TON of user frustration, angst, and completely and insanely wasted effort would have been minimized.

Been arguing for that for a long time ... sigh.

Neil

[Baffy19]

I will note this in addition. You can't study Adobe literature at all. It is not suitable for cognition of products. A beginner will not understand it, there is a lot of water in it and there is no structure like Blackmagic. To be honest, I wanted to take the Premiere exam, but I was puzzled by the waiting time for the exam on a certain date and the fact that most of the material for the exam is missing. According to DaVinci, I passed three exams and received diplomas with useful practices and knowledge in the learning process. The material is provided very competently and professionally. Either Adobe is not so smooth with professionals in their field, or they save money for the normal development of the product and the presentation of the material, which is of course hard to believe.

[R Neil Haugen]

Company wide, the Adobe consumer products have mid-poor to lousy documentation. It's a common topic for any discussions among the ACPs for the various programs, and something we all push back about.

A huge problem, truly. And yet clearly many of the M&E & upper management types feel that giving the user numbers, they're doing ok.

Not hardly.

Neil

[Baffy19]

The Import page is useless in its current state. Just extra clicks. Make Adobe better. Where is the creativity of ideas? Where are the best integrations with other Adobe applications? where is the work with metadata? Where is the possibility of cropping extra (unnecessary) frames in order to save hard disk space? And you can still. When this happens, users of all levels will talk differently about the Import page. Now it is not needed with such functions.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Community,

Thank you for the comments, but the Premiere Pro team does not generally read feedback on these user-to-user forums (Discussions).

Regarding Export Mode: Please provide feedback to the Premiere Pro Team on this thread on the Ideas forum.

For the Header Bar: provide feedback here.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Heathenlamb]

In fairness Kevin, while many of us understand this is a commnity driven forum, ALOT of users don't. This forum does appear to be a direct link to Adobe by sheer virute of appearance. I get the impression a lot of users think Adobe is getting this feedback directly.

Perhaps moving forward, Adobe should either start directly engaging with this forum and get rid of User Voice all together or simply combine the forums. I feel having the two seperate forums creates confusion and results in a lot of frustration.

[Kevin-Monahan]

@Heathenlamb - the team has moved User Voice bug reports and feature requests to these forums, so your request has been fulfilled. They're here, but you do need to tag it as as bug or idea when you begin a discussion. 

Thanks,
Kevin

[WizWorldLIVE]

Hi Kevin,

Will the feedback here actually be responded to in a constructive manner? Because over on UserVoice we were stiffly told that the overwhemling number of complaints about the UI chages were worthless & stupid. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi, @WizWorldLIVE 

I can't speak for the product team, I'm in support. Sorry about that. I understand how frustrating that might be to feel unheard. Fergus made a post recently. Did you see it? Here is a link. He indicated he would be giving regular updates about changes to Export mode. That's the latest news for you. I hope that helps.

Take Care,
Kevin

[Hutch Harris]

Kevin, why should we bother? They don't read the feedback on Uservoice either. Well, maybe they read it, but here's how they respond to users asking for the old UI. Direct quote: " We will not be going back to the old design or giving that as an option"

Regardless of where we post feedback its basically just screaming into the void. May as well jump over to Resolve at this point, at least performance is better even if I'm not huge on their UI either.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey Hutch,

Sorry for the frustration. 

Kevin, why should we bother? They don't read the feedback on Uservoice either. Well, maybe they read it, but here's how they respond to users asking for the old UI. Direct quote: " We will not be going back to the old design or giving that as an option"

Sorry about that. At least the team is honest with you on questions like this, which they usually are. I am so sorry the response is not what you wanted to hear. 

The next action plan is to give the team specifics about what you don't like on the Ideas forum or, even better, upvote another popular request, change, or piece of feedback other than, "change it baaaaaack!" By now, you know that's not in their plan, and it's a waste of time going down that road.

Regardless of where we post feedback its basically just screaming into the void. May as well jump over to Resolve at this point, at least performance is better even if I'm not huge on their UI either.

They got the feedback, and it sounds like they want to improve what they have rather than go back to an old UI. It would be not very good to see you jump ship over this. Let me know if there's anything more I can help you with.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Jeff Bellune]

Even though it's been made clear the old UI won't be coming back, is the new UI completely unusable? If so, then jumping ship may be the best option. If it's not, then suggesting changes or tweaks via UserVoice that would ease the pain might prove useful. 

I considered requesting a tweak to "make the new UI look exactly like the old UI", but I didn't think it would get very far. 

[R Neil Haugen]

One thing very obviously NOT in this patch ... fixing the missing filenames in the Export dialog when you select the destination folder.

Neil

Mod note: Edited for content.

[jo35719846]

When I select location in the media file export menu I used to be able to see all the other files within a folder, but now the menu is blank and just shows the name of the folder, but no other files, I used to use this location menu to kind of quickly know which version I'm on if I exported other version to that folder or just used that file name and clicked on it to copy it. Now I have to manually type out every file name when I export in premiere. This takes up time and adds more confusion to our folder system. 

[Mike_Abbott]

I'm sorry to say that the new export dialog is a train wreck. This is one of the major issues. Please add your comment to an existing request here: 

Mod note: Edited for content.