The New Essential Graphics Panel is Extremely Frustrating

[User9500]

I know that the Title menu was cumbersome and outdated, but this replacement seems even worse.  I like the idea of being able to individually manipulate assets within a graphics layer, but it's implemented so poorly.

Example:

• I apparently can't select more than one object/text at once? In the old Title tool you could drag a box around what you wanted to select. Now even holding shift or control doesn't even work.
• You can't hold shift to maintain alignment when moving an object? WTF?
• The font selection dropdown in the essential graphics panel SUCKS. You have to click the arrow to scroll incredibly slow through all the fonts instead of having a scroll bar!
• What happened to all my old Title templates? They're just gone? You didn't make any type of way to import and convert them? Let alone SEE THEM?
• Trying to resize text after typing it is nearly impossible. Before you could just press the selection tool, then select any object and manipulate it. Now it's like you can't de-focus the text box in order to manipulate it. You have to click in an empty space in the list of layers, or at least that's the only way I could find.

Seriously what is this

[Peru Bob]

These tutorials will answer some of your questions:

The NEW Essential Graphics Panel in Premiere Pro CC 2017 (Spring Update) - YouTube

reTooled.net – Premiere Pro CC – April 2017- New Features and the Essential Graphics Panel

reTooled.net – After Effects & Premiere Pro – April 2017- The Essential Graphics Panel in Depth

[davidbiederbec]

nope, shouldn't need a tutorial. It should be intuitive. Seriously considering giving final cut x a second try.

[Peru Bob]

davidbied  wrote

nope, shouldn't need a tutorial. It should be intuitive.

I guess you've never used After Effects.

Some applications are just not intuitive.

[davidbiederbec]

Sure after effects was confusing when I started. But no implementation in any major adobe platform has really required me to take a tutorial in the last 7 years, especially not something as simple as replacing text that my pre-editor created. It's clunky. Should be able to just triple click a layer to have all text highlighted like after effects, indesign, and photoshop.

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

The EGP was added to the release when they felt they had enough basic capabilities and a couple of the more advanced features that it will eventually be built around to let folks use it as an addition to PrPro. That's fine as far as it went, but I think the relegation of the old Titler to "legacy" status, nearly hidden ... and with a couple capabilities removed ... was unwise. At least at this point in the EGP's condition.

One of the developers said in an earlier thread that they thought releasing without a lot of detailed how-to was best as it would be faster for the user to learn it by essentially poking the box. To them, it was fairly sensible in the way it was laid out, and they expected the users to "see" this without too much work.

Personally, I poked the box for a while ... and nothin' did nothin'! I'm one of those that even "gets" SpeedGrade (well, 90%, which is really hot for that program!), and for me to simply hit a wall ... well, not thinking the EGP was so obvious as thought.

Now ... after seeing several demos at NAB of the thing in use, and having been through the (below) tutorials linked here, there is a very clear method to whether the controls for something are in the ECP ... say, animation ... or EGP ... say, text attributes.

Having seen it, having watched the tutorials, it's slick for what it does when it has the tools you need.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have the tools for many things yet ... and if you don't see how it's operating, you'll miss many of the capabilities it has.

I'm thinking that a user base with some experience, and with a couple more releases of tools, will be very pleased with the graphics capabilities that are available.

And for the moment, well ... there's some scrambling to figure out how to get stuff done.

Neil

Essential Graphics Panel (EGP)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAoZme5rOfM  PremiereGal: good overview, short.

https://vimeo.com/211404007 James Strawn, one of the development team for the EGP.

http://www.retooled.net/?p=1693  Basic overview of the EGP, in a bit more depth.

http://www.retooled.net/?p=1696  Extended look at the EGP in depth.

[R Neil Haugen]

There are some fundamental changes in the way the EGP will function than the old Titler, and within the context of using it they make sense. Yes, they are NOT obvious to begin with ... but after you get the reasoning (and the tutorials PeruBob suggested are excellent) then it does make sense. And for the toolset run out so far, can work very well.

They are also wanting a lot of user feedback on the EGP ... as it is being imagined as they go along. So feel free to pop in here with the problems, and of course, make the bug/feature request form filings. They DO actually see all those, and take them into account as they can.

As to a program should just 'be intuitive'  ... that's strange, to me, for a major pro program like this.

Resolve is an awesome grading app, but is NOT intuitive ... so I suppose we should ignore that one.

AfterEffects is the king of FX for most things ... and definitely not intuitive. Yep, scratch that!

I've worked with two different major CAD programs, they are NOT intuitive ... scrap the suckers!

Neil

[scottchestnut]

What was maddening for me was to be in the middle of a job and not be able to put a title on without having to go into some new exploration of something that really didn't even seem to reflect what was shown in the tutorial.  The legacy titler was no where to be found.  And I don't really have time in my life when I'm on a deadline to be forced to poke around in something that isn't even consistent with the tutorial.  The "EGP" seemed like a half baked idea that the team decided to include to see what the users would think.  I guess that's maybe okay if the legacy version were still available and if people weren't actually trying to make a living with the software.  I would ask the software engineers to imagine coming to work one morning and being asked to rewrite a bunch of code by lunch with a completely new language. 

For me, it was a bit of a last straw.  I've been cutting for a long time now and a cluster f**k has no interest to me.  There are quite a few things being added to PP which seem a bit half baked, like the proxy integration which boasts a bunch of extra steps like making an encoding preset, then an ingest preset, then exporting that preset and then importing that preset into PP and then creating proxies.  (Of course that's after one has made a ton of proxies which didn't work because they didn't have the right track layout but you had to discover that by trial and error because none of that was mentioned in the tutorial.)  I'm finishing the project I'm on now and then I'm cancelling my membership and going to DaVinci Resolve.  I'm all subscription'd out.  Subscription was supposed encourage rapid deployment.  Unfortunately it's also encouraged a lot of release beta testing. (Team Projects?  What a joke.)  Adobe has done what Apple did with FCP X.  They lost respect for the user, and starting looking at them like they were just a bunch of annoying beta testers who exist only to interface with software, not to actually do something which has demands other than operating their app.  Anyone remember Final Cut Server?

[R Neil Haugen]

Understand the frustrations, but ... as frustrating as the EGP roll-out was, the massive capabilities that they've shown as coming out in the near future with it are going to be something incredibly useful. Why they chose to semi-hide the old Titler ... no clue. And yea, that was incredibly annoying for those with deadlines, who are actually the people they're trying to help with the EGP ... so they pissed off the people they were most trying to help.

Really ... not bright.

But we all have work to get out ... however we can.

Neil

[DanielM42]

Agreed, this titler totally sucks.  I've been using it for a few years and I still don't really understand how to use it.  For instance.  The most basic need for an editor - to place cards for footage or graphics that will eventually show up in the edit.  Oh my word, how difficult can you make a simple task Adobe?  If I want to center this I then have to go and delete the position keyframes or it will animate.  I can tell editors were not involved in the design of this thing.  Almost everything is MUCH harder now.  Thanks guys.  I'm pretty much decided on moving to Resolve anyway (Not just because of this but a bunch of other crap). 

[R Neil Haugen]

Not perhaps understanding what problem you're having. Tracking items,  even groups of items, across the frame has been quite easy for me. So a bit puzzled here.

But would love to hear what you're struggling with in detail.