Introduction
New versions of Adobe's lead moving-image and audio editing programs - Premiere Pro 2.0, After Effects 7.0, Encore DVD 2.0 and Audition 2.0 - are now available standalone and in bundled suites. In a two-part, hands-on preview, Bob Crabtree gets down and dirty with a beta of one of the bundles, Adobe Production Studio Premium, kicking off with an overview of the four new apps and three new suites, the features they share in common and the string and glue that holds them together.
As well as being sold separately, Adobe's new quartet of programs are all available in money-saving bundles – though for the best savings, the thing to do isn't just to buy bundles but to buy them in the USA; the price premiums in the UK and the rest of the EU can be massive, as we highlighted in a recent HEXUS.headline - Adobe still ripping off EU buyers?
Initially there are three suites on offer - Production Studio Standard, Production Studio Premium (the beta of which we're looking at here) and the Video Bundle - each with Premiere 2.0 and After Effects 7.0 at its heart.
In the UK, the two Production Studio suites are the same price as the suites they replace. Production Studio Standard – taking over from Video Collection Standard 2.5 – sells on Adobe UK's online store for £915 ex-VAT (£1,075.12 inc). Production Studio Premium, replacing Video Collection Pro 2.5, goes out for £1,335 ex-VAT (£1,568.62).
The Video Bundle - with no direct predecessor and priced at £1,619/£1,902.3 - and adds one further program to those provided in Production Studio Premium - Flash Professional 8.0, a prime piece of web-action-creation software from Adobe's most recent company purchase, Macromedia.
Production Studio Premium comes with the Professional version of After Effects 7.0 and includes Encore DVD 2.0 and Audition 2.0 plus the current (CS2) versions of the Photoshop image editor and Illustrator graphics creator. In all, five DVDs are supplied. A full installation requires 21GB of available hard-disk space with a further 10GB needed to be left free for After Effects disk caching.
Production Studio Standard (we have to pass on the number of DVDs involved) pairs Premiere Pro 2 with the standard version of AE 7.0 and includes Photoshop CS2. That means, perhaps surprisingly, that Encore DVD is not included. A full installation is said to take 10GB of disk space, with, presumably, a further 10GB needed for AE's caching.
The savings from buying Adobe's
suites can be massive...
...especially if you buy in the
USA Both suites also offer enhanced interoperability, going under the name of Dynamic Link, along with a combined file browser-manager called Bridge that first appeared some while back with Adobe's Creative Suite 2 bundle.
A single Production Studio license allows one copy of the suite to run on two PCs – perhaps a laptop and a desktop - though these really aren't supposed to be used at the same time. Each installation needs to be registered and authorised within 30 days of being set up. However – nice touch - each authorisation can be temporarily suspended over the net and transferred to a quite different PC.
This could be hugely useful in studios with multiple machines needing to run the suite at different times. Educational establishments with similar multi-tasking requirements for large numbers of PCs might also find this option to be a money-saver as long as it doesn't take too long each time.