Warp Stabilizer: CS5 getting better (April 11?)

Here's a sneak peek at Warp Stabilizer a preview of new way to stabilize shaky footage in After Effects. After Effects Facebook says "It's a peek at CS5 getting better. For more information, come see us at NAB or stay tuned to this channel. More to come soon."

Adobe TV has a channel for other recent technology sneak peeks.



Update: "CS5 evolves" -- a little picture on front page of AdobeTV,

Export After Effects to iPhone, HTML5 + sneak peeks

Sebastian Perier notes Export After Effects to iPhone and HTML5 by dab.la, who used Sebastian's XML Gibson from AE Scripts. That script allows you to export your composition to XML files with more parameters than After Effects saves of projects. The solution was to "animate in AE, then export to XML [instead of compiled .ipa like Flash exports], then build both an HTML5 web app... and an iPhone app that can read that XML file and animate appropriately."

Of course HTML5 is one of the general thrusts of Adobe development, as seen at Adobe Labs. Converting Adobe Flash FLA files into HTML and reach more devices is the point of "Wallaby," codename for experimental technology that converts artwork and animation contained in Flash (FLA) files into HTML. For more news of how this all might work, keep an eye on Adobe’s web pro team at SXSW in Austin this week.

Update: Adobe posted some 2011 sneak peeks on AdobeTV. Here's one:

After Effects sneak preview at AENY March 31st

AENY is hosting new After Effects product manager Steve Forde for some "cool sneak previews of #AE stuff" in NYC on March 31st.

Another Photoshop CS5 sneak peek: Puppet Warp

Russell Brown has posted a new demonstration of the Puppet Warp technology being developed for Photoshop. John Nack has a few more comments at his blog [also]. Here's the older demo too:

Another Photoshop CS5 sneak peek

Another Photoshop CS5 sneak peek was given at Photoshop World 2010 in Orlando last week, including examples of Content Aware Fill and Auto Lens Correction. A Youtube was posted by Photography Bay (via), plus an older one by Russell Brown:

CS5 announcement on April 12

The countdown to the launch of Adobe CS5 suites has begun (via #csbuzz). You can register for the event and look at sneak peeks at http://cs5launch.adobe.com.

Update: See also the very cool Sneak peek video of Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop via John Nack. Older sneak peeks were already noted on AEP along with other more academic technology explorations.



Update: Todd Kopriva reminds us that if "you're thinking about making the move from After Effects CS3 to After Effects CS5, don't forget about this other great stuff that comes along" from CS4.

SF Cutters March 11: Red Giant sneak peek & more

SF Cutters -- brought to you originally by the Option key in Final Cut -- is having their 10th Anniversary meeting is this week on Thursday March 11th. The meeting is at Adobe is at 601 Townsend at 7th in San Francisco.

This meeting is free but please sign up for access and for better food planning. Here's the current agenda:

• STUMP THE GURUS With Kevin Monahan, Jesse Spencer, Karl Soule, Sean Safreed
• Karl Soule: Adobe Evangelist on The Making of AVATAR and Adobe Production Premium & a sneak peak of the new Mercury Playback Engine
• Sean Safreed: Redgiant Software - More Grinder & Sneak Peaks of New Releases
• Chris Fenwick: Slice Editorial - Organize your FCP Project - Save your sanity and Improve your Business
• Raffle, which includes CS4 Adobe Production Premium, DigiEffects Mega Suite, NAB Post Production World Pass, and more!
  

Nvidia demos Mercury Playback Engine

Nvidia has some newer "real world use cases" of Adobe's future Mercury Playback Engine, with silent demos of keying, color correction, picture-in-picture, compositing, and encoding.

Any one needing power playback and encoding should consider supported cards GeForce GTX 285 (~ $300), the Quadro FX 4800, 5800, or the Quadro CX if they are upgrading machines now.

Sneak peek: Future Photoshop masking technology

John Nack has a Sneak peek: Future Photoshop masking technology, which shows off some new selection technology that offers better edge detection and masking results in less time--even with tricky images like hair.

Some related stuff was mentioned by Chris & Trish Meyer yesterday, and by various authors (including an AEP sampling) last year when SIGGRAPH 2009 papers & projects went online.

Sneak peek of Flash CS5 + physics demo

Lee Brimelow posted a Sneak peek of Flash CS5:

"I just uploaded a new video that shows all of the exciting new features coming in Flash CS5. In a previous video I focused on the new iPhone development features but this video shows the rest of the cool stuff we have in store for you. This includes the XFL format, the new text engine, and the one and only Deco tool. Again, this is a prerelease version so everything is subject to change."

Update: iPhone and physics demos of CS5 (via CS5.org),

Sneak Peek: Adobe Mercury Playback Engine

Adobe has slowly released info on its Mercury Playback Engine since September and now is showing a Sneak Peek of this technology presented by Dave Helmly at Adobe TV. Helmly also notes a "See How it was made" link for a peek of the workflow for the movie "Avatar."

In this video you can see "AVCHD playback and scrubbing, working with DSLR cameras like the Canon 5D & 7D, 9 Layers of P2, Native Red 4K Multicam editing and RED keying [at about 9:20] and ...accelerated rendering for exports. ...Currently, all you need is a Windows or OSX system that supports any of these cards: Geforce GTX285, nVidia Quadro CX,FX4800, or FX5800."

The Adobe Mercury Playback Engine

The Genesis Project, an Adobe blog, has details on the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine, the GPU playback engine demoed at IBC in September and mentioned a few weeks ago on another Adobe blog which discussed Premiere Pro "Next".

Again, check out the details in the Q&A, but you won't find the phrase "After Effects"!

If you want After Effects to be a better finishing tool, then make a feature request at the Adobe website.

Update: Karl Soule has a coupla posts too, Three words you'll be hearing a lot of: Adobe Mercury Engine and More on the Mercury Engine...,

"we do have external people testing it out now, including some people posting over in the RED forum here. As soon as we have any information about availability, I will be the first one to post it here."

On the RED forum, Adobe's Simon Hayhurst says,

"On topics like TC, Grading Integration, RED Rocket™ --- all important stuff .... and we're continuing to knock these kinds of items down one by one. Prioritization of which order to do them in is the hard question ..... Mike Kanfer is our most active Red forum participant and your first port of call for prioritization opinions.
[...]
On the topic of AE and Mercury --- the engine in AE is very different to an NLE engine --- there is inevitably some tech cross-sharing that can be done, but the apps work in very different ways at their core, so much of the core rendering engine needs to be different"

Update: note that the RAM base of the approved graphics card will effect performance (how many clips at what sizes and number of filters applied), so if you're doing RED files you'll want the more expensive cards.

Visual metadata

PrepShootPost ponders face recognition and says GIVE US MORE A.I. IN OUR N.L.E.

His suggestions could already be on a feature request drawing board somewhere. As mentioned in a recent post, Adobe: 'The future of video is searchable', computer vision algorithms are being used in a variety of contexts to leverage facial recognition or face recognition and improve search results. VideoSurf and DigitalSmiths, iPhoto, Adobe's use of Idee's Pixsimilar as the visual search engine in Photoshop Elements 6, and smart phone advertising are all connected.

And since that AEP post, Google has gone beyond Picasa facial recognition and searching images by color to launch Similar Images. Beet.tv talked with Google about the future of image search last year, but here's what they have so far:



Adobe has shown some related stuff too, among stuff posted last December here in Adobe 'Infinite Images' sneak peek (explore that video at 62 minutes for an extra). Here's a different angle of the sneak peek at Adobe Max 2008; this one just shows "Content Intelligence Toolkit" and a bit on how it might be integrated with audio metadata:



Seeing this stuff integrated into Creative Suite apps would be exciting, especially for those who wondered why so much effort went into metadata in CS4. Assistant Editor from Philip Hodgetts and company does come to mind, so maybe we'll get project management features or something even more intelligent. Perhaps, but for now you can check out Assistant Editor and that beta app mentioned at PrepShootPost that helps with multicam clips, PluralEyes.

Adobe roto tool sighted on Toolfarm

A few people mentioned seeing Adobe's new roto selection tool, including Toolfarm which has some pictures of a presentation of "Magic Matte." Similar technology was shown last year in a sneak peek of a futuristic Magic Wand-like tool, and related visual search & new compositing tech in another sneak peek at a MAX show this last winter.

Adobe 'Infinite Images' sneak peek

From Peter Elst, Adobe MAX 2008 Milan - Sneak Peeks session, via Rufus Deuchler (co-host of Adobe's Caffe Fibonacci, which is shot on a virtual set):

"If you remember last years 'content-aware scaling' demo by Shai Avidan (a feature that incidentally made it into Photoshop CS4), stay tuned until the end of the video to see some of the amazing things he’s working on at the moment."

'Infinite Images' creates a 3D virtual space from a collection of images (starts around 55 minutes). It seems similar to Microsoft stuff mentioned earlier in Microsoft tools meld 3D and photos and Microsoft releases image stitcher Photosynth. I also like the improved search intelligence with enriched metadata (at around 42 minutes) and new ideas in compositing (around 62 minutes). Aspects of the last section seemed similar to a sneak peek mentioned last Spring (pictured above, see 34:30) where the Magic Wand tool became the Holy Grail of compositing.



And if you're into it, there's Adobe MAX 2008 Milan - Keynote Day 2 at Action Script Hero.

Update: John Nack posted additional details and a PDF on his iDisk which contains additional video.

After Effects CS4 at IBC 2008

Digital Arts is reporting details on Adobe's preview of After Effects CS4 at IBC 2008. Little of this was shown in the previous sneak peeks. Here's a few but not all they mentioned, and I'm sure there will be much more in the official unveiling next week:


-- After Effects CS4 ships with Imagineer System’s Mocha-AE
-- a Cartoon filter that turns clips into animated movie
-- AE compositions on the Premiere timeline and other Dynamic Link enhancements

-- Roundtrip editing between AE and Soundbooth
-- automatic creation of compositions to match the size and framerate of mobile phone templates from Device Central

Creative Cow also has a short write-ups (another) with additional details like:
-- a Mini-Flowchart and other UI enhancements
-- 3D functionality with raytrace rendering moving between PS and AE
-- export a multilayered AE comp to a Flash project
-- separate keyframes and curves for X, Y, and Z

Update: a Cartoon filter that's fast and works easily would be a good thing, though it might not appeal immediately to strict visual effects types. The full feature set has not been announced; these preliminary reports.

Update 2: Apple Insider says Adobe Creative Suite 4 details emerge, but nothing on After Effects.

Update 2: Digtial Arts jumps the gun again with a beta preview (it's Tuesday in England earlier), and CNET has a teaser:

Photoshop's 3D plumbing

John Nack explains some of the thinking behind the build-up of Photoshop's 3D plumbing. It's not just "a bunch of cool features we'll never learn to use," as quipped a comment to another Photoshop CS4 sneak peak.

Update: 3D surfaces could be in Photoshop someday too. According to New Scientist, Textured graphics can be captured in a flash.

Another Photoshop CS4 sneak peak

from John Nack:

"Adobe's Terry White traveled to Photoshop World and recorded a video podcast of the keynote presentation, during which Adobe VP Johnny Loiacono and I offered some sneak peeks of the next version of Photoshop, as well as a few Adobe Labs projects expected to follow closely behind the new release. [Via] Photographer, artist, and author John Paul Caponigro summarized the demos, and the Photoshop-specific content starts around the 16-minute mark, running 20 minutes or so."

The first 20 minutes are interesting too though, for Photoshop Express-mobile features and Lightroom. Other sneak peaks can be found in these posts.

Adobe technology sneak peeks

Who knew that the Magic Wand Tool would become compositing's Holy Grail?

John Nack shared links for 2 sessions of Adobe's 2008 Fiancial Analysts Meeting where some new technology (maybe CS4) was shown. The After Effects part was in session 2 around the 27 minute mark, but look for the button to reveal the transcript cue list.

Earlier sneak peaks were noted here in NAB 2008 on Adobe TV and Flash CS4: IK, curve editor, 3D postcards, XML, plus Technology sneak: InDesign -> Flash.

Update: Older but here's a peak of Thermo, a forthcoming Adobe design tool, mentioned earlier with official sneak peek video.

NAB 2008 on Adobe TV

Clips from NAB 2008 have been posted on Adobe TV, which is available at tv.adobe.com or within the Adobe Media Player channel. Here's a sneak peak technology preview presented by product manager for Adobe Production Premium, Hart Shafer. It's better viewed elsewhere since the embed code only allows resizes the viewing area of the player not the video: