Top 15 Issues/Fixes Needed in the next Premiere Pro release/update (CS6.5 or CS7)

[DMH79]

I’m excited for what’s coming next in Premiere Pro CS6.5 or CS7 (whichever update is next). As a former FCP7 user myself, Premiere CS6 was a quick and necessary switch (especially after changing the main keyboard shortcuts back to what I was used to). I’ve since gone back to FCP7 on occasion for certain things and I can tell you that I’m so glad I’ve switched. For all the headaches and serious errors that I still get daily/weekly with Premiere Pro CS6, it’s still definitely a big step up. I'm encouraged by staff members like Mitch W. that have expressed confidence that many of these issues will be resolved in the next release. Here is my personal list of “Top 15 issues/fixes” needed in the current Premiere Pro CS6…

(Adobe STAFF...feel free to print this out and hand it to the engineers responsible for making changes )

1) The infamous multicam FLAW. Needing no introduction…when you are editing your video in the multicam window and you hit pause or stop Premiere has decided that’s a great time to make a cut on your timeline and also switch angles back to the original angle whether you like it or not. You cannot stop ever while editing multicam without Premiere making these unwanted cuts and angle changes. Awful. Multicam in PPro is otherwise pretty nice, but this issue is terribly counter-productive especially when you are editing longer complex multicam sequences. Imagine if every time you hit pause or stop in the regular timeline it made a cut there and switched clips. Ugh. You get my point.

2) The audio meters/levels do not work while in the multicam window. A staff member in the forums (I think it was you) said this was a bug. Hope it will get fixed. The audio levels work in every other window and its essential to be able to keep an eye on the levels while editing multicam.

3) Ticktime.cpp-207 error. Ugh. What a nightmare. I have confidence that it will be fixed soon. Mitch W. from the forums is my new hero for taking on this error. How to replicate it?…simply have 6 (or 7) or more clips with the warp stabilizer effect added on the same timeline as a nested multicam clip and you get this error upon reopening your project. The more warp stabilizers you use, the more times you’ll have to hit “continue” to get through the error before you can open your project or export it to AME. I deal with this every single day because all my projects use these two elements. Most of my projects I have to hit “continue” on the error message upwards of 350-450 times to open my projects. Gets old fast.

4) Icon View order control. When you display all your clips in icon view instead of a list view (In the project window), there is no metadata to allow you to put the clips in order somehow (or at least maintain the order that you have in the list). There are roundabout workarounds, but c’mon.

5) Warp Stabilizer fixes…it is an AMAZING tool (far, far, far better than smoothcam in FCP7) BUT…it has it’s issues. Since I use hundreds of times/week (no exaggeration) I know it’s functions/flaws really well. The issues with Warp Stabilizer:
a) #3 above
b) Toggle OFF the effect after it’s applied and then hit Analyze again and PPro crashes. (easy to avoid but annoying bug)
c) If a clip is in the middle of stabilizing (not just analyzing…but the final step labeled “analyzing”) when Auto-save comes up…most of the time PPro freezes and crashes.
d) The DEFAULT “method” (in the settings for Warp Stabilizer) should NOT be “Subspace Warp”…it should be “Position, Scale, Rotation”. Why? It’s FAAAAARRRR better and more efficient. 95 out of 100 times it causes MUCH less “wobble” in the final stabilized clips AND most importantly 95 out of 100 times it scales the video less. Way better method.

6) The ability to open multiple projects simultaneously. As simple as FCP7 had it…or even better…as cool and efficient as FCPX does it would be nice.

7) The ability to mark a clip and not just a point on a timeline (because if you move the clip, the marker doesn’t go with it). I know you can use “Clip Marker” but it's very limiting, can't be moved, can't add notes, can't advance to the next marker (as far as I know). Also a marker list like FCPX has would be nice so you can see your markers all in a list at a glance and adjust them as needed.

8) Ability to select a clip in the Project window and find out where it’s used in the timeline. I LOVE how you can do the reverse and take a clip in the timeline and “Reveal in Project Window” but it would really help to go the other way around. Dealing with several hundred clips for every project I’ve missed this feature from time to time (FCPX handles this really well).

9) Add a through-edit indicator in timeline and “re-join clips” option. If you cut a clip but keep both clips together it’s just one continuous clip. But I really hope Premiere adds the not only an indicator of some sort (like FCP7′s way of having two small red triangles facing each other on that cut) so you know it’s one continuous clip BUT ALSO the ability to right-click and “re-join” the two clips into one.

10) When clip is double-clicked in timeline, CTI position in source viewer should match location in timeline. This one is pretty annoying and a fix would be incredibly helpful. The way it is now is very counter-productive. Definitely hope this gets fixed ASAP.

11) Better border controls for images/videos. Can’t do much with images right now in PPro. At least allow to customize the color and size/strength of it’s borders and shadows.

12) Better support for Mac/Apple's top end computers/GPU's. I'm still surprised that 2011 top of the line iMac cards (AMD 6970M) that have 2gb of ram are not supported. I’m sure/I hope 2012 iMac’s will be supported with their new Nvidia GPU’s…but I’ll hold out hope that the top iMac (up until 3 months ago) is supported at least at it’s full power. All around better Mac support would be great considering the wave of new users coming over from FCP.

13) Opacity/Transparency issues with EXPORTED videos with Cross Dissolves, etc. For some odd reason videos exported from Premiere CS6 have issues with cross dissolves or minor transparency. I’ll try to explain…in the program window of PPro CS6 cross dissolves look fine. Also, if you take a clip and stack it on top of another clip and put the top clip at say 99% opacity instead of 100 it looks like it should in PPro. But, if you export the clips you’ll quickly see that there are issues. It’s almost like the exported videos dissolve from 5 to 95. They skip the subtle beginning (0-5%) and subtle end (95-100%) of any fade. A clip in PPro as described above that is on top of another but set at 99% will look more like 90-95% in the exported file ESPECIALLY if the two clips are contrasting (eg. top layer dark, bottom layer with bright elements). It’s like the opposit of ease-in/ease-out. I have to ease-in/ease-out of every dissolve to avoid this issue…and even then, it’s not THAT much of an “ease” as one would hope. Another user in a forum once posted a video that shows how abruptly exported videos end their transparency changes…see: THIS SAMPLE VIDEO  Perhaps this is a GPU/processing issue with AME vs. Premiere Pro but whatever it is, it should be fixed so videos you export look like the videos you edited!

14) Better control in Creative Cloud over which devices are “activated/deactivated”  We have 3 computers and it would be nice if one could log in to their Creative Cloud account and see a list of which devices they have and just toggle on/off which one’s are activated/deactivated. This is especially helpful when you are mobile and forget to deactivate one of your two home/office devices so you’re stuck now until you get back to the home/office to deactivate it. This is not a Premiere thing, but just a general wish.

15) Ability to sync multicam clips automatically using the audio. Plural eyes apparently does this well. Would be nice to have it built into Premiere like FCPX does. Select all the shots you want to sync, One button click, wait a few seconds, done.

That’s my top 15. Everything else is awesome in my opinion for what I do 10 hours a day 6-7 days a week. I’ve included bug reports/feature requests for all of these at one point but if you are someone else reading this go to the following link and ask for these issues to be fixed: FEATURE REQUEST/BUG REPORT

I wish Adobe did smaller updates more often. Because even if they were smaller updates, we’d at least know you are working on fixing some of these issues that have plagued this NLE for years. Holding off fixes for one or two big “updates” every year is tough to deal with in a world of the ever updating apps we live and play with daily on our phones. I realize Premiere is a much larger scale and far more professional than a phone app, but hopefully you get my point. Here’s to hoping the next release (NAB 2013?) resolves all my top 15 issues. Here’s to hoping that these issues will be resolved sooner than later so I can stop raising hell in various forums. I’m honestly ready to start praising and defending Premiere Pro instead of griping about it’s bugs and flaws. It’s a fantastic program “on the way” to being the best. I hope.

[Guest]

It makes little sense to have zero connection between a clip in the bin and a clip in the timeline OTHER than not being able to delete the one in the bin. If the two instances contained any other kind of link at all, such as maintaining the same applied effects, correspondence of file name changes, or correspondence of changes to the in/out point, I might understand the thinking.

An item in the Project panel is a reusable asset, which may (footages, stills, audio files) or may not (sequences, synthetic assets) refer to a file on a disk. An item in the timeline is an instance of a particular asset in the Project panel, it doesn't refer to anything other than this asset. You may have several different items in the timeline, which refer to the same asset in the Project panel. Deleting this asset in the Project panel should and does delete its instances within sequences. Not sure how it can be clearer and why you want to delete an asset, which you used in the project, without deleting its instances within sequences.

[KGCW]

The limited comparison I did between AME and Compressor made me feel that AME output H.264 files that are marginally better looking than those of Compressor, so that might depend on what you feed them. But it mostly showed that AME is way, way faster.

Fuzzy Barsik > that's the way it worked in FCP, actually I got used to the way Premiere works, except one thing : when you import a sequence that reference assets you already have loaded in your project, Premiere should be able to detect it and link to them (in the same way Resolve does for instance) instead of importing the assets again and leaving you with two or more different instances of the same assets.

[Guest]

Better yet it should ask how you want to import project assets: whether to create duplicated copies or merge with those already in the project.

[KGCW]

That would be perfect indeed.

[daxmacrog]

You hit upon the heart of my issue with the Premiere system. Even if you're not importing a sequence, you can end up with many different instances of the same asset.

I've adjusted my workflow for Premiere, but I prefer the FCP way. It allows me to keep my Project panel much more streamlined and organized.

The way I like to work is to copy clips into different bins to categorize them. The same clip may be in “closeups,” “interviews,” “opening montage,” etc. It could be in 20 different bins. I may decide I don't need the “closeups” bin but I can't delete it if I used one of those instances, even though it could just as easily come from “interviews” or someplace else.

At a more basic level, I just like to delete a clip from a bin after I use it in many cases, leaving behind just the clips I'm still trying to place. It's annoying not to be able to do that, especially if I have still have another instance of the clip stored in another bin anyway. I end up with a bunch of “used clips” bins in addition to all the original categories. Sometimes they fill up with multiple instances of the same clip.

Also, I save versions of sequences. Sometimes I want to delete a bin, but if a clip was used in some old sequence I either have to figure out which clip it is and move it somewhere else or accept that it will disappear from that sequence. That's a problem if I ever want to reference that earlier version.

[Guest]

Even if you're not importing a sequence, you can end up with many different instances of the same asset.

That's rather an advantage.

The same clip may be in “closeups,” “interviews,” “opening montage,” etc. It could be in 20 different bins.

That's what metadata are for.

I may decide I don't need the “closeups” bin but I can't delete it if I used one of those instances, even though it could just as easily come from “interviews” or someplace else.

You can easily detect how many times an asset in the Project panel is used and where exactly: click the triangle on the right of the asset description next to the small preview icon in the Project panel, select an item from the list and you'll be brought directly to the according place in the timeline. Here you can easily replace it with an asset from another bin. And no, that's not any sort of inconvenience and extra steps to accomplish a simple operation, that's the matter of both PrPro greater flexibility and your decision how to organise (reorganise) your project.

I just like to delete a clip from a bin after I use it in many cases, leaving behind just the clips I'm still trying to place. It's annoying not to be able to do that...

That's the sole matter of your habits. There is nothing wrong with PrPro here. I would hate if it behaved differently.

[Jim_Simon]

I just like to delete a clip from a bin after I use it in many cases, leaving behind just the clips I'm still trying to place. It's annoying not to be able to do that...

That's the sole matter of your habits. There is nothing wrong with PrPro here. I would hate if it behaved differently.

I agree.

[daxmacrog]

I make no secret of the fact that my habits are born of FCP. I'm happy to make changes to them when there is a benefit, but giving me the flexibility to delete a clip from a bin wouldn't impact your choice never to do so.

[Guest]

I make no secret of the fact that my habits are born of FCP. I'm happy to make changes to them when there is a benefit, but giving me the flexibility to delete a clip from a bin wouldn't impact your choice never to do so.

You have this ability right now. However, I wouldn't object if Adobe improved Project Manager, via which one could decide how to reorganise duplicated assets in the Project panel. But definitely a software shouldn't decide on behalf of me what is better for me.

[daxmacrog]

You have this ability right now.

With some fanegaling, yes of course.

I wouldn't object if Adobe improved Project Manager, via which one could decide how to reorganise duplicated assets in the Project panel

Yeah, I would agree with that. I am adjusting to the way Premiere handles various instances of clips, and your explanation above is very good, but I just think there is room for greater flexibility without losing any current functionality.

[preditorj40153117]

Dax

Have you tried editing from the hdd instead of importing all of the footage. You can use bridge to arrange the clips in you hdd locale with the folders you mentioned and then pull what you need only.

Remember how FCP would get to acting strange due to project size? That is one of the habbit precautions i still carry from FCP. I did not (in FCP) like the fact that when yu did pull a clipp from the hdd it was not referenced anywhere but the TL. Premier creates that reference in the asset pannel each time you pull.

The poster with the longest post (DHX?) did metion that he thought that renaming a clip in the assets pannel does not rename it in the project. Though i have a slight issue with that in cases of multiple instances, i would say if that was improved then the edit from hdd would be great.

[daxmacrog]

I did not (in FCP) like the fact that when you did pull a clip from the hdd it was not referenced anywhere but the TL.

I hear you. I'm coming around to the idea that any clip in the timeline has to be represented by a clip in the the Project pane.

An option that would work for me would be the ablity to create a duplicate of a clip in the Project panel that worked more like a shortcut. When such a clip gets used in the timeline, it would reference the master clip though, not the shortcut. That would allow me to create the temporary “scratch bins” that are a big part of the way I like to work.

[Jim_Simon]

giving me the flexibility to delete a clip from a bin wouldn't impact your choice never to do so.

That would involve a fundamental shift in how the NLE works.  Everything in a sequence comes from a bin, you can't have one without the other.  It's unnatural, and I'd argue FCP is the odd behavior here, which should NOT be imitated.

[chillyche]

Ahh.  I came from the old timey world of Media Composer.  We used to have the same clip represented in lots of different places.  But we used sequences.  Rather than having a bin of close ups, where I had to click and load each one, one at a time, to see which one I wanted, I would just have a sequence of the things, and load that.  It made non-linear editing just a tad more linear, in that I would frequently see clips I hadn't intended to see, and discover happy accidents.  Of course, I could just jump from cut to cut to cut, and not watch any of the stuff I didn't want to, but I just as frequently fast forwarded through, checking out all the material (that made it into the sequence) on my way to the holy select.  And I didn't have any duplicate clips. 

That workflow was a bit more challenging in FCP before they came up with the "insert sequence content" command, because you'd wind up editing nothing but nested sequences, so I could see why people had bins and bins and bins full of clips and subclips, instead of sequences. 

[jasonvp]

KGCW wrote:

But it mostly showed that AME is way, way faster.

No question about it: Compressor is a turd.  Top to bottom.  Apple needs to dump it completely and re-write it from scratch as opposed to contiually patching it.  And they should add OpenCL calls into it as well to take advantage of the hardware on the sytem it's running on.  That's a small part of why AME is so much faster: it will use the MPE to do as much of the work as it can.

Apple's other big problem is that FCPX is still transcoding to ProRes.  That slows the final export down considerably, if you start to export before said transcoding is done.

[daxmacrog]

AME is great, but when it comes to QuickTime files specifically, I get better results from Compressor.

Apple's other big problem is that FCPX is still transcoding to ProRes.  That slows the final export down considerably, if you start to export before said transcoding is done.

That's a serious benefit if your final output is ProRes. If you make adjustments to the sequence, you can re-export in a flash rather than re-encode the entire thing.

[jasonvp]

Dax Roggio wrote:

That's a serious benefit if your final output is ProRes. If you make adjustments to the sequence, you can re-export in a flash rather than re-encode the entire thing.

That's cool if, like you say, you work in QT.  Most of us don't. 🙂  Even on Macs.

[daxmacrog]

That's cool if, like you say, you work in QT.  Most of us don't. 🙂  Even on Macs.

Even if most don't, a lot do. However, I agree in general. A core strength of Premiere is its flexibility in handling so many formats with equal aplomb.

[KGCW]

when you import a sequence that reference assets you already have loaded in your project, Premiere should be able to detect it and link to them (in the same way Resolve does for instance)

Well actually it looks like Premiere CC DOES detect you already have those assets loaded on your project and link to them instead of re-importing everything, at least when you import the sequence through the media browser.

[Jim_Simon]

It does that in CS6 as well.  It only imports dups when you import an entire project.

[Jim_Simon]

Having stopped the CTI in the timeline, I want to mark that frame in that clip. Opening it in the source viewer is an extra and needless step.

I can see that.  Just add a modifier key to set a Clip Marker instead of a Sequence Marker.  But it's still two keystrokes, same as now.  (F for Match Frame, and M for Marker.)

The very first time you open a timeline clip in the Source panel, it corresponds. Any time after that, it does not.

That's because you're no longer loading it into the Source Monitor.  It's already there.  To get what you want, use Match Frame. (F)

[daxmacrog]

Match Frame appears to be broken in CC. Sometimes it picks the wrong frame if it works at all.

Even when Match Frame does work, it opens the original instance of the clip, not the one from the timeline with its in/out points.

Also, you can't just select the clip. You have to make sure the track is selected at the head and make sure no tracks above it are selected. Adobe tooks some good steps towards implementing clip selection primacy in CC, but some of the old nonsense still exists.

I can see that.  Just add a modifier key to set a Clip Marker instead of a Sequence Marker.

Now that's helpful! Ctrl-M. Done. It would still be simpler for M to just mark the selected clip or clips, but this will do.

[Jim_Simon]

Match Frame appears to be broken in CC.

I have noticed some odd behavior myself, and seen others report similar.  But it's intermittent on my end.  The weirdness happened once and now seems to work fine.

It does open the clip with In/Out points set for me.

It would still be simpler for M to just mark the selected clip or clips, but this will do.

That sets a Sequence Marker.  You need something different for Clip Markers.  (And you'd still need to target the tracks to be sure the proper clip is marked, just like with using Match Frame.  So it's still a wash.)

[daxmacrog]

It does open the clip with In/Out points set for me.

It opens with the In/Out points of the original clip in the Project panel. They may still match if you haven't changed the edit points for the Timeline instance since adding it.

That sets a Sequence Marker.  You need something different for Clip Markers.  (And you'd still need to target the tracks to be sure the proper clip is marked, just like with using Match Frame.  So it's still a wash.)

That's simply inaccurate. If the Source panel is active, that very same command, “Add Marker” (“m” key), marks the clip. Its behavior depends on context. In the context of a selected clip, choosing “Add Marker” to add a marker would be pretty darn intuitive. And you can certainly select a clip without targeting the track at the head.

[Jim_Simon]

They may still match if you haven't changed the edit points for the Timeline instance since adding it.

Nope, even after changing in the sequence they still match.

In the context of a selected clip, choosing “Add Marker” to add a marker would be pretty darn intuitive

I see.  That would be pretty handy.