Latest update turns Premiere Pro into a serious VR editor

When working in VR, traditional video effects intended for fixed-frame content often won’t work correctly. As Adobe explained, a gaussian blur, for example, when applied to VR video will reveal the stitching marks between camera fields. To remedy this, Adobe has created all new, VR-specific effects (including a blur effect) that will render properly across the entire spherical field, potentially saving editors time who would otherwise have to make frame-by-frame edits.

Beyond VR, Adobe also put a strong effort into efficiency improvements across its video apps, form Premiere Pro to After Effects and Character Animator. A few simple changes may go a long way to saving valuable time for those using these programs on daily basis.

Premiere Pro can now open multiple projects at once and users can easily reference media between projects. A new “close gap” option will let users remove all spaces between clips in a timeline automatically. Also, Team Projects is now official, which will allow remote editors to work together on the same project.

As for After Effects, the update will bring more GPU-accelerated tasks and a brand new system for automating data visualization that could save significant time where incorporating graphs and numbers into projects is common, such as documentaries and news. Character Animator will also benefit from increased automation thanks to a physics simulator that can handle gravity and collision animations.

When added together, there is no shortage of new features coming to Adobe’s motion apps. This move is in direct response to the growing demand for video content online. Adobe expects that 82-percent of internet traffic will be from video by the year 2021, and that half of that will be “produced” content. Making it easier for video creators to get their work done will help make sure that the video supply can keep up with the demand.