Since Adobe announced their new suite of programs, CC, as subscription-only, there have been plenty complaints about being forced to pay indefinitely for software that was previously able to be owned outright. While they haven't done anything drastic with the subscription implementation since launch, they have kept their promise of releasing significant updates for the software much faster and more fully-featured. The first update came in July, and now the second major release includes updates for Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, SpeedGrade CC, Prelude CC, Adobe Media Encoder CC, and Adobe Story, as well as a completely new iPad app called Prelude Live Logger. The Adobe CC suite is getting tons of native codec support and better roundtripping between Premiere and SpeedGrade, but check out the videos below to learn more about the new features in the update planned for October 2013.

Adobe Creative Cloud Overview:


Premiere Pro CC:

Premiere CC Codec Support and Linking Media:

SpeedGrade CC:

Speedgrade CC Direct Link:

After Effects CC:

For SpeedGrade to be a serious alternative to Resolve, it needed to add something like Direct Link. Being able to jump in and out of SpeedGrade with the same Premiere timeline in a simple manner is fantastic, and it makes the program far more useful. As far as codec support goes, it will be interesting to see how good playback is for CinemaDNG files from cameras like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, Digital Bolex, and Magic Lantern RAW (though hardware acceleration for CDNG should help the situation significantly -- which Adobe has stated will work with supported GPUs). If you want to stay with a proxy workflow, however, Adobe has greatly improved the process of relinking your full-res media -- something Avid has done very well for many years now.

If you've got lower-quality material that needs to be up-rezzed, After Effects should improve the quality greatly in this October update:

With so much native support and easy roundtripping, it's going to create much faster workflows with better results. Of course, it won't be necessary to stay within the suite of programs, but it's good to have the option now if you want an easier, simpler, and potentially faster process.

Adobe is also introducing a new iPad app called Prelude Live Logger:

The update will be released on October 15, but in the meantime you can read more about the new features and watch some more videos over on Adobe's site.

What do you think about the new features?

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