Just in time for this year’s NAB, Adobe announced some updates to Premiere Pro—the software that was used to edit 2023 Oscar-winning films such as Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once (which racked up a total of seven Oscars including Best Editing and Best Documentary Feature, Navalny). And while you may not have Oscar aspirations, Premiere Pro has added new features and performance improvement that will enhance your video workflow regardless of your video genre.  

Text-Based Editing 

First up is text-based editing. According to Adobe, Premiere Pro is the only professional NLE with integrated text-based editing. Thanks to Adobe’s AI-powered Sensei, Premiere Pro can automatically transcribe the spoken word from the footage. The transcribed dialogue appears in a separate window identifying each speaker (you can manually apply names to the different speakers). Keywords will locate all the clips in which those words appear—a far faster process than having dialogue transcribed, printed out and highlighted by hand. Copy and paste the transcript onto the timeline and both the clip and the transcript are exactly where you need them to be. Edit the clip on the timeline and the transcript will follow suit. It’s a speedy and efficient process for making a rough cut. 

The demo I saw used two speakers in an interview setting, and that’s probably the best application of this feature. We’re not sure if the transcription will work as well if you’re recording, say, a wedding ceremony, but it might be helpful when putting together guests making toasts at a wedding—or any event where the voices might be more easily differentiated. Using keywords, the transcript will be more easily located during the editing process. Adding captions, which will appear in the timeline, is one-click simple.  

Text-based editing is currently in public Beta but should be available in May. 

Automatic Tone Mapping/Color Management 

Many photographers are more likely to be using two or more digital capture devices such as a still camera, iPhone, drone or a cinema camera to record a series of clips that will be combined into a final video. That means that you’ll likely have HDR footage from an iPhone on the same SDR (standard dynamic range) timeline. Footage from an iPhone or drone may blow out highlights, for example. And if you’re shooting in a venue with windows, it’s important to ensure that the view through the window isn’t washed out. Premiere Pro’s Automatic Tone Mapping feature is on by default and works well (and quickly) to recover highlight details that were missing. It’s also easy to balance clips from different sources. 

Similar challenges arise when footage is shot on different devices that use different color space. The current solution is using LUTs—which can be time-consuming and, for those without experience in this type of color management, a major headache. Premiere Pro’s new color management workflow (which shipped in February) is another automatic process that will fix mixed color space issues. All you have to do is change the default from importing native color spaces to the automatic option and you’re good to go. While the demos I’ve seen are optimized to show off the new features, I have to say I was impressed. Anything that can make video editing speedier and simpler is a big plus. 

Miscellaneous Updates 

There’s a long list of updates that contribute to Adobe’s “Quality, stability and performance” goal for Premiere Pro. According to Francis Crossman, Sr. Product Manager, “This is the most stable and the fastest version of Premiere Pro that we’ve ever shipped.” Of course, that’s something that can’t be experienced over a Zoom briefing but it sounds plausible given the updates. 

Various other updates include background auto-save, system reset options to clear caches, wipe preferences and troubleshoot plug-ins. You’ll also find more zoom levels, ProRes render previews and AAF support of Apple Silicon. And, yes, more GPU acceleration. Some features have shipped, some are in public Beta and others are shipping in the spring. 

For more details on these—and other—updates, visit www.adobe.com.