Adobe has announced a handful of useful VR-specific effects and editing tools in its latest update for Premiere Pro.
Announced at IBC, the update includes the ability to edit 360 content from within a VR headset, effects and transitions optimized for use in 360-degree spaces, title tools and and the ability to select the starting orientation of each video clip from edit to edit.
Adobe also annoucned that they’ve expanded ambisonics audio support to allo changing the orientation of audio when working on immersive video, but has not shared further details. Immersive Shooter will be heading to IBC tomorrow, so we’ll be sure to follow up.
Edit VR within a VR headset
At left is what Premiere Pro users wearing a VR headset would be able to see, which includes their project timeline.
Adobe first announced its goal to allow users to edit VR/360 content from within a VR headset when it showed off Project Clover last November.
With this new update, Premiere Pro users will be able to create transitions, titles, add graphics and effects, and navigate their timeline from within a VR headset so they can see how each edit will look in the end-product.
Users will be able to scrub and playback their footage and navigate the timeline using a single VR controller, leaving the other hand free to create markers and apply other keyboard-driven workflows.
VR optimized effects and transitions
The popular iris wipeA transition effect where the image displayed slides offscreen, revealing the new scene behind., seen here, is one of Premiere Pro’s new VR-specific transition options.
Adobe’s traditional video effects quite simply don’t work as they should when applied to 360-degree content. For example, when applying affects like a gaussian blur to 360-degree video, the effect will be visible in various places around the sphere.
Available under “Video Effects” as “Immersive Video,” VR-specific effects include blur, chromatic aberrations, color gradient, de-noise, digital glitch, fractal noiseUndesirable variations of brightness and/or color in an image that typically occur when recording at high ISOs in digita... More, glow, plane to sphere, projection, rotate sphere and sharpen.
Using the “Plane to Sphere” tool, Premiere Pro users will be able to add text titles to their spherical videos.
The “Plane to Sphere” tool will allow users to place titles into spherical content, and the “Rotate Sphere” effect will enable choosing the starting orientation point of each clip from edit to edit. This is a particularly useful tool to guide a viewer’s experience to ensure they will always start looking in the direction you’d like them to focus on.
Adobe’s new VR-specific effects are optimized for fully spherical content, rendering seamlessly into the project. These effects include denoise, sharpen and blur, among others, and can be used for 180-degree and 360-degree content.
Premiere Pro will also feature new VR-optimized transitions.
Immersive video-specific transitions (available under “Video Transitions” > “Immersive Video”) include chroma leaks, gradient wipeA transition effect where the image displayed slides offscreen, revealing the new scene behind., iris wipeA transition effect where the image displayed slides offscreen, revealing the new scene behind., light leaks, light rays, mobius zoom, random blocks and spherical blur.
All of these tools are GPU accelerated and optimized for performance.
Other features of Premiere Pro’s latest update
In addition to its new VR-specific features, Premiere Pro can now open multiple project at the same time and its new “Team Projects” feature allows a number of editors in the same location to work on the same project.
For the full list of changes, visit Adobe’s blog.
