Verdict

Pros

• Supports Lumetri Looks from SpeedGrade
• Multi-camera clips can be synchronised via audio tracks
• Improved handling of nested sequences

Cons

• Only available via Creative Cloud subscription

What is Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud 7.01?

Premiere Pro Creative Cloud 7.01 is the new subscription-based version of Adobe’s flagship professional non-linear video editing software. Adobe has ruffled quite a few feathers with its wholesale switch from perpetual licenses to subscriptions. On the downside, you now have to pay a monthly fee to continue using an application. But on the up side you won’t have to purchase a specific release ever again, as upgrades are included.

Both sides have their merits, and we will discuss the relative costs of the previous CS product strategy compared to Creative Cloud (CC) at the end of this review. But for now, let’s put the global arguments about subscription-based software licenses on hold and look at what’s new with this version of Premiere Pro.

Obviously, before you can get up and running you need to download and install the software. Once you have signed up for Creative Cloud, you can download the new Application Manager for the service, and then log in to see what your subscription includes.

We had a few issues installing the new Application Manager, but eventually we had things up and running. The Creative Cloud app also lets you download CS6 versions of apps as well, which is handy because there is no Creative Cloud version of Encore yet. Although all the other video-related applications have CC versions, including Audition, After Effects, and SpeedGrade. That is apart from OnLocation, which ceased development after CS5 and has been partially replaced by Prelude.

Being cloud based means Premiere Pro can start taking advantage of web storage, with the ability to save your settings on your Creative Cloud account, and sync them to the local machine. You can also choose to use settings from another account. For example, if you are working on someone else’s system. You also get 20GB of cloud storage with the individual membership plan.

Some of the most significant new cloud features of Premiere Pro CC will only be relevant for large organisations, however. It now supports Adobe Anywhere, so teams can collaborate on projects across the Internet and share assets. An Anywhere server is required though, although there are APIs for a number of popular media asset management servers.

Adobe Anywhere will stream video quality according to the connection, but still frames will be in Full HD. The video actually opens up on the server, so you don’t have to mix multiple streams of video that are coming in separately over your Internet connection. It’s impressive technology, but as the image on Adobe’s Anywhere page implies, you will probably have to be CNN to use it.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of new single-user features in the app itself. The Link Media dialog is much more useful than before, and allows you to use the Media Browser to find and re-link offline clips. Adobe has tweaked the way nested sequences work, too. You can now toggle whether these are added to the timeline as a single sequence or their constituent clips. So if you need to use multiple, slightly different variations of the same sequence, this new features makes the process a whole lot easier than copying and pasting collections of clips.