A Storm Or A Spoon

Update: The 7.1 version due out in October is going to fix the issue altogether. Great job, Adobe!

Being the one to spoil the party is no fun, especially if you like the host, or enjoy the meals. But when your favourite dish was rotten and received only a little ketchup treatment, well… sometimes you have to be vocal about it.

Let me at first say that I love the party. To have an update within a month of the release, that fixes a major multicam bug (which for some reason I have not fallen prey to) and adds plethora of new features that will make life and editing easier is awesome. This is the power of Creative Cloud that a lot of people were talking about. There’s no denying, that the party is well deserved.

If you want to learn of all the new features and improvements to Premiere Pro which come with version 7.0.1 update, take a look at the official Premiere Pro blog or reTooled.net tutorial. They will show you the goodies, and these are plenty.

But unfortunately for me, one issue is not completely resolved. And it’s not for the lack of trying.

I wrote before about a nasty curves issue, and for some reason my post was not received with enthusiasm at the home of Premiere Pro. I really, really hoped it would be resolved in this update, and that I will be able to join the happy fest. Well… it is, and it isn’t.

The good news is that the curves no longer clip superwhites and superblacks on input. Depending on how you use the curves it might or it might not be the solution. If you never move the starting and ending points of the curves from their places, you’re good to go. Also, if you only move them up or down, to reduce the dynamic range, you should rejoice, because it works as it used to as well.

But if you ever move these points to the inside, namely the point on the left to the right, or the point on the right to the left, to add contrast, and you hoped to later recover the clipping, your troubles did not go away. Sometimes they might even be compounded.

Unfortunately the curves still not work as they used to. This example of course is exaggerated to the extreme to make a point.

Unfortunately the curves still do not work as they used to. This example of course is exaggerated to the extreme to make the point.

Because the curves will flatten everything what is beyond the leftmost or the rightmost curve points up until the left or right border. Then they will resume their 45 degree slope. To many it might be a non-issue. To me it is. To me it means that most of my old projects will still have to be rendered out in CS6, and I will have to be careful with the new ones, especially when using Jarle’s grading presets.

I am not happy. Depending on where you sit, this is either a storm in a teacup or a spoonful of tar that spoils the barrel of honey. Unfortunately, I belong to the second group, and it’s no fun at all.

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3 Responses to A Storm Or A Spoon

  1. Matt Dubuque says:

    Darn, I’m disappointed to hear this Bart.

    Sometimes, for reasons not clear to me, Adobe doesn’t seem to listen to its customers too well.

    • BartW says:

      It’s certainly the point of contention between the programmers and users. Overall my experience of their feedback reception has been mostly positive, but there are moments like these when I’m bewildered.

      • Matt Dubuque says:

        Yes, especially because your concerns are both well founded and cogently expressed.

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