O'Grady's PowerPage

Tag: Adobe

  • Adobe releases Premiere Pro public beta with Apple Silicon support

    Adobe releases Premiere Pro public beta with Apple Silicon support

    If you’ve been hankering to see how a native Apple Silicon version of Adobe Premiere Pro runs on an M1-based Mac, Adobe’s public beta should answer your questions.

    A native version of the video editing software has been released, with Adobe offering the following comments:

    “Since Premiere Pro is built on a large codebase with support for a wide range of media and workflows, we will implement native support for Apple M1 in phases and some parts have not been ported yet.”

    “This phased approach allows us to validate performance and functionality for specific parts of the application before we add new components, and it also allows you to start seeing the benefits now.”

    Adobe stated that “the average editor is likely to see very little difference from the Intel version.” The differences and current limitations, however, include how After Effects does not have an M1 version yet.

    “The first public Beta includes all the core editing functions and workflows like color, graphics, and audio, as well as features like Productions, and multicam,” says Adobe. “We prioritized support for the most widely used codecs, like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes.”

    Adobe has begun steadily updated its apps to support the new Apple Silicon hardware, and generally takes an iterative approach to this. While Adobe Lightroom fully launched for M1 in December 2020, Photoshop for Apple Silicon only came out of beta in early March 2021, and then with caveats.

    If you’ve had a chance to try the Adobe Premiere Pro public beta with Apple Silicon support, please let us know about your experiences in the comments.

    Via AppleInsider and community.adobe.com

  • Adobe officially discontinues Flash Player support across all platforms, recommends uninstalling the software immediately

    It’s time to uninstall Adobe Flash Player.

    Following Adobe’s 2017 announcement of its plans to end support of its Flash browser plug-in at the end of 2020, the time has now passed and support for the software has ended. From now on, Adobe will begin blocking content from running in Flash Player beginning on January 12.

    Flash’s elimination should heavily impact users given that most web browsers have moved away from the format. The change will also not affect iPhone and iPad users, as neither iOS or iPadOS supported Flash.

    As of 2010, Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs critiqued Flash in an open letter, citing its lack of reliability, incompatibility with mobile sites, and battery drain on mobile devices. Jobs also said that Adobe was “painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms” and further innovation from Apple would not be hindered by a “cross platform development tool.”

    Though venerable, Flash Player continually suffered from vulnerabilities that exposed Mac and PC users to malware and other security risks that caused vendors like Microsoft and Apple to work tirelessly to keep up with security fixes.

    Given that Flash Player will no longer receive updates, Adobe has recommended that all users immediately remove the software “to help protect their systems.”

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

    Via MacRumors and Adobe

  • Adobe releases limited betas of Premiere, Rush, and Audition with M1 support

    Not surprisingly, Adobe is working on adding Apple Silicon/M1 processor support to its applications. The company on Monday offered a nifty limited beta to Premiere, its Mac video editing software, as well as Rush and its Audition audio editing tool.

    As with Photoshop, Adobe is offering a phrased approach to the transition, its initial betas supporting only a limited number of features.

    The company offered the following comments in a blog post:

    Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, and Audition builds with native support for new Apple M1 chipsets are available in public Beta today. The new Apple M1 platform offers improved performance and greater energy efficiency.

    The M1-native Premiere Pro Beta includes the core editing functions and support for the most widely used codecs: H.264, HEVC, and ProRes. Since Premiere Pro is built on a large codebase with support for a wide range of media and functions, we are taking a phased approach as we build out native Apple M1 support. This allows us to validate performance for specific parts of the application before we add new components.

    Users should note that the Premiere Pro Beta for Apple M1 incorporates the latest builds of our new captions workflow, which requires a project file format upgrade. We recommend creating a copy of current projects for Beta testing to avoid compatibility issues for any ongoing production work.

    Limitations for the initial Premiere Pro Beta on Apple M1 hardware include third party integrations, such as Transmit reference monitoring hardware, plugins, extension panels, and control surfaces

    In recent tests, YouTube export times for the M1 version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro were more than twice as fast as the latest Intel version, and similar to that of the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Other features such as scene edit detection proved dramatically faster thanks to the machine-learning features built into the M1 chip. Adobe notes that the existing version of the app still gets some of this speed improvement when running under Rosetta 2.

    Adobe has stated that users can expect versions of its applications with native M1 support in the first half of 2021. In the meantime, applications will run under Rosetta 2 support with almost all functionality. Adobe has cited that there’s currently an issue with the Roto Brush 2 tool, and that it hasn’t tested third-party integrations.

    If you’ve had a chance to test the betas on Apple Silicon hardware, please let us know about your experience in the comments.

    Via 9to5Mac and blog.adobe.com

  • Mozilla releases Firefox 84, adds native support for M1-based Macs, other changes

    If you just bought an Apple Silicon M1-based Mac, this is going to come in handy.

    Mozilla on Tuesday released version 84 of its Firefox web browser, which adds native support for M1 Macs alongside the following new features:

    • The Network panel is now able to handle unexpected crashes and render useful debugging details such as a related stack-trace.
    • WebRender rolls out to MacOS Big Sur, Windows devices with Intel Gen 6 GPUs, and Intel laptops running Windows 7 and 8.
    • Firefox now uses more modern techniques for allocating shared memory on Linux, improving performance and increasing compatibility with Docker.
    • The Accessibility Panel now includes an option for displaying elements in their tabbing order in order to help developers see what elements are focusable when tabbing and in what sequence.

    Mozilla says that using the Speedometer 2.0 test, Firefox 84 launched over 2.5x faster and web apps are twice as responsive on Apple Silicon.

    Finally, Firefox 84 is the last version to support Adobe Flash, which will be deprecated at the end of 2020.

    If you’ve had a chance to try Firefox 84 on an M1-based Mac, please let us know about your experience in the comments.

    Via The Mac Observer and Mozilla.org

  • Adobe releases Character Animator 3.3.1, includes Speech-Aware Animation, Lip Sync, other features

    This is honestly pretty nifty.

    Adobe has just announced Character Animator 3.3.1, a major update to its desktop app, which allows users to combine Photoshop and Illustrator layers to create animated puppets. The program now offers Speech-Aware Animation as well as Lip Sync in its beta preview.

    Adobe has offered the following comments:

    Animation is having a major moment. At a time when live action content is challenging to produce, animation allows us to create without restraints and with nothing more than our imagination, no matter what is going on outside. More and more artists and studios are turning to Emmy-Award-winning Adobe Character Animator to accelerate traditional animation workflows, capturing performances in real-time, and even livestreaming animation. 

    The update offers the following new features:

    • Speech-Aware Animation uses the power of Adobe Sensei to automatically generate animation from recorded speech and includes head and eyebrow movements corresponding to a voice recording.
    • Limb IK (Inverse Kinematics) gives puppets responsive, natural leg motion for activities like running, jumping, tug-of-war, and dancing across a scene. Limb IK controls the bend directions and stretching of legs, as well as arms.
    • Timeline organization tools include the ability to filter the Timeline to focus on individual puppets, scenes, audio, or keyframes. Takes can be color-coded, hidden, or isolated, making it faster and easier to work with any part of your scene. Toggle the “Shy button” to hide or show individual rows in the Timeline.
    • Lip Sync, powered by Adobe Sensei, has an improved algorithm and machine learning to deliver more accurate mouth movement for speaking parts. 
    • Merge Takes allows users to combine multiple Lip Sync or Trigger takes into a single row, which helps to consolidate takes and save vertical space on the Timeline.
    • Pin Feet has a new Pin Feet When Standing option. This allows the user to keep their character’s feet grounded when not walking.
    • Set Rest Pose now animates smoothly back to the default position when you click to recalibrate, so you can use it during a live performance without causing your character to jump abruptly.

    Users can snag the latest beta version of Character Animator through the Creative Cloud Desktop app. A free trial version is available for new users with a puppet library and multiple tutorials.

    Character Animator 3.3.1 requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later to install and run.

    If you’ve had a chance to play with the beta and have any feedback to offer, please let us know about your experience in the comments.

    Via 9to5Mac