Adobe announces new video capabilities - virtual reality, animation and motion graphics

Adobe Systems has revealed advancements to its Adobe Creative Cloud video tools and services, to be showcased at this year's International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam.

To help filmmakers and video professionals create content, Adobe will highlight the latest innovations in virtual reality (VR)/360, animation, motion graphics, editing, collaboration and Adobe Stock – all available later this year.

Many of these features are powered by Adobe Sensei, the company's artificial intelligence and machine learning framework.

"Video is the fastest growing medium in communications and entertainment. Whether you're an online creator, global media company or filmmaker, you need to deliver world-class content across all platforms and formats at incredible speed," says Bryan Lamkin, Adobe digital media senior vice president.

"Adobe is breaking new ground in collaboration, social sharing and analytics to accelerate workflows for all video creators.

Adobe Creative Cloud and Premiere Pro have become the platforms of choice for professional editors around the world from Hollywood to Bollywood, including high-profile productions: Former United States Vice President Al Gore's An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power from co-directors Bonni Cohen and John Shenk, Mindhunter from executive producer and director David Fincher, Only the Brave from director Joseph Kosinski and 6 Below from director Scott Waugh.

Media companies are bringing characters to life with Character Animator, such as Mr Bean on Facebook Live, and through the work of online content creators like Valentina Vee, Jouelzy, Rooster Teeth and Rachel Nguyen.

The new capabilities coming later this year to Adobe Creative Cloud for video include:

•  In April 2017, Motion Graphics templates were introduced, bringing the power of After Effects to Premiere Pro through easy-to-use templates. Editors wanting to work with dynamic, professional graphics or graphics packages created in After Effects, such as titles, lower thirds, bumpers and closing credits, will soon be able to access Motion Graphics templates right in Adobe Stock and through Creative Cloud Libraries. In addition, Adobe has made usability improvements to the Essential Graphics panel in Premiere Pro, including Responsive Design options for preserving spatial and temporal relationships.  
• With the release of Team Projects, Adobe has improved collaborative workflows on the Local Area Network with managed access features that allow users to lock projects and provide read-only access to others. Formerly in beta, Team Projects will offer smoother workflows hosted in Creative Cloud and the ability to more easily manage versions with auto-save history.  
• Character Animator 1.0 is unveiled with changes to core and custom animation functions, such as pose-to-pose blending, new physics behaviours and visual puppet controls. Adobe Sensei helps improve lip-sync capability by accurately matching mouth shape with spoken sounds.  
• Virtual reality video creation will be possible with a dedicated viewing environment in Premiere Pro. Editors can experience the deeply engaging qualities of content, review their timeline and use keyboard-driven editing for trimming and markers while wearing the same VR head mounts as their audience. In addition, audio can be determined by orientation or position and exported as ambisonics audio for VR-enabled platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. VR effects and transitions are now native and accelerated via the Mercury playback engine.  
• Adobe Audition adds flexible session organisation to multi-take workflows and continuous playback while editing. Powered by Adobe Sensei, auto-ducking is added to the Essential Sound panel that automatically adjusts levels by type: dialogue, background sound or music.