The latest update to Premiere Pro, Adobe’s popular video editing software, released yesterday includes new tools for editing 360 degree video and stereoscopic VR video.
Adobe’s Premiere Pro is one of the most popular video editing applications today, and it’s now got improved workflow for editing VR video. Detailed last month, the new functionality for editing 360 degree video is now available for download as of the June 20th, 2016 update to Adobe Premiere Pro CC (version 2015.3).
While you’ll need to use other tools to stitch video together into a 360 degree view, Premiere will import video with an equirectangular projection and allow you to edit it like you would any other video file. Monoscopic video is supported as well as stereoscopic video in the side-by-side or over-under formats, and the software can handle video shot at any field of view (like 180 or 360 degrees) and still output it correctly, assuming you toggle the right settings.
A new 360 degree panning option, available when enabling the VR Video options, allows the editor to define the ‘forward’ facing position of the film, meaning that from one scene to the next, you can ensure that the viewer sees the intended part of the 360 degree scene without having to swivel about. The view can be configured by field of view such that the editor will be able to see what is in view and what isn’t through a particular headset.
Now when exporting VR video, editors can mark the ‘Video is VR’ option which will include the appropriate metadata for services like YouTube to understand the the video is a spherical format and should be displayed differently than normal video.
Premiere’s VR options are functional but somewhat light for now, though we expect to see the Adobe continue to improve and refine things in future updates as demand grows for VR video editing capabilities.
A short introduction video, including sample 360 assets, is available from Adobe to help editors learn how to begin working with VR video in Premiere.
