Adobe Premiere Pro has the enviable status of one of the most recognized and one of the best non-linear video editing software packages out there.
Available for Windows and Mac, chances are if you’re interested in composing clips and making a movie, you’ve heard of it or are currently using it. It’s a powerful, popular video editor packed with industry-standard features and effects – and, of course, full integration with Creative cloud applications.
But this is a very competitive and vibrant market. The best video editors are constantly evolving, updating, refining and redefining what’s possible.
And Premiere Pro is certainly no exception. since we last reviewed the editing software, Adobe has added a series of updates that keep the tool at the top of the list.
New import focus
The latest version of Premiere Pro is focused on your media. This is clear from the get-go, with a redesigned import window showing your clips above everything else.
Find them, select the one you want to work with, and click Import. A new project will be created for you. Those clips will be added to your sequence. No hassle with settings or anything like that.
Of course, nothing prevents you from changing your sequence settings afterwards, which is crucial if you’re working on a project for a specific purpose social media format.
But more often than not, people will choose to just get started with your clips in their native format. This removal of potentially unnecessarily complex customizations is most welcome.
A great new feature is Speech to Text. The simple name belies a series of truly fantastic speech-to-text tools, including the convenient automatic transcription. Premiere Pro currently supports 14 different languages.
How it works is so simple: go to the Subtitles and Images workspace, then click “Transcribe Order.” You have a range of fine-tuning options, such as selecting the language (an important one, that), or even giving Premiere Pro the ability to recognize different voices, and highlight that in the transcript itself.
Now, of course, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. And it’s easy to make changes and fixes to the transcription, and even replace all errors at once, for example if someone’s name isn’t quite right.
Linked to it is a link to a spell check. So if you’ve made a typo, you’ll be notified with the usual red squiggly line below the problem word.
But that is not everything. As you play your sequence, you can monitor the progress on the transcript itself.
This means Premiere Pro knows where the spoken words are in the sequence. Why is that important? Because there is a handy search field at the top. Search for a word or phrase and you’ll be taken straight to the recording.
If you remember someone mentioned something in an interview, you can now find it in seconds, instead of desperately playing sections until you hope you come across the right piece, usually by accident.
But it gets even better, because with the click of a button you can create automatic captions for your videos based on that transcript. Now you can make movies that are even more accessible to the public.
That’s a really important step forward for creators, and we’re excited about how well the feature really works.
New title options
Speaking of text, Premiere Pro also has interesting new styling tools. For example, you can now add multiple shadows to your text layers, creating more unique and distinctive styles.
The spell check and replacement options mentioned above are present wherever text is used in your project. This also applies to multiple languages. Prior to this current version, working in multiple languages was very difficult, because you had to go to Settings every time you had to switch languages.
In the latest version of Premiere Pro, just type the other language and the tool will understand and adapt to it. The left-to-right or right-to-left settings are set directly from the Essential Graphics panel.
In fact, you can apply different scripts within the same graphical elements. This is undoubtedly a boon for multilingual filmmakers.
Let Sensei do the work
Sensei is Adobe’s name AI system, which is present throughout the software catalog. Here it is used in some cool and interesting ways.
One of them is Remix. This is a tool designed to retime songs so that your chosen tune fits the video perfectly. Usually this is a tedious process, with lots of cuts, fades, and trial and error to get it to work.
We tested this with an original song, to rule out any possibility that the AI was basing its knowledge on a known song, and we were very impressed.
The process took a few seconds to run (this will no doubt depend on your CPU’s prowess), but the end result was excellent. Kudos to Sensei.
Native Apple Silicon Support
Good news for creative Mac users: Premiere Pro offers native support for Apple’s own silicon chip. According to Adobe’s own internal testing, “Thanks to new hardware acceleration, 4k and 8K ProRes are now up to 5x faster on M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros.”
This also includes impressive hardware acceleration when working with the hi-res HEVC file format. Adobe says exports to HEVC are “faster with macOS 12 on M1 Macs. Hardware encryption is now enabled for DCI 4K and 8K HEVC exports, resulting in significantly faster performance.”
It’s always good when the big players support a new silicon project. It’s one of the reasons why the Macbook tops our list of the best video editing laptops.
final verdict
It’s not hard to see why Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the most popular editors on the market. It is a stable video editing powerhouse with a huge list of features designed to help you build professional projects intuitively.
There is a natural learning curve to master the software. But the juice is worth the squeeze. Especially with some of the great new tools – with transcription features a real standout in the pack.
If you’re serious about video editing, you really should take a closer look at Adobe Premiere Pro 2022.
