The big news at Adobe MAX 2018 from a video creator’s standpoint was the announcement of Adobe’s Premiere Rush. Well, not all video creators shared in the excitement.

Let me explain what Premiere Rush is and is not. More specifically, why it’s not Premiere Pro.

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Who is Premiere Rush for?

Premiere Rush is designed as a cross-platform, multiple device video editing software aimed at social media content creators looking to process video clips quickly and upload them to their favorite social network.

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Widescreen, vertical, and square are the standard formats, but the resolutions and aspect ratios are key items that can easily be confused or set up improperly. Sure, there are resources that explain the resolutions, formats, and codecs, but creators just want to create. This is where Premiere Rush comes in.

The App

The app is currently available on iOS, Windows, and MacOS. Support for Android is coming, says Danielle Darbyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/danielletdarby/, Senior Product Manager, Video Editing at Adobe. As an avid Android user, I’m unable to try Premiere Rush on iOS. I did experiment with it during the beta period and, for the most part, I enjoy it. The UI is very similar to Lightroom CC and Adobe XD. The app embraces the touch interface with it’s larger icons and panels (Figure A).

Figure A


Image: Ant Pruitt

Adding video clips to the timeline for editing is somewhat straightforward. I struggled with the UI because I’m a regular Premiere Pro user. There were times I wanted to double-click an asset to add to the project or even right-click to do certain functions. But to Premiere Rush’s credit, some keyboard shortcuts I use in Premiere Pro are usable in Premiere Rush. This definitely makes my experience faster even though I know that’s not the thought process of a beginner videographer using a mobile interface. Nice touch, Adobe.

App performance

The app’s performance can be great from the start or a bit wonky. I’ve found that when using 1080p (HD) footage, the app chugs along with fluidity as expected. However, 4K/UHD footage struggles–initially. This confused me because if this app is supposed to service users on mobile devices shooting with mobile devices, does that mean that they are forced to only use HD footage? The answer is no. This is because your footage is uploaded to your Creative Cloud library and synced as smaller proxy files when using a mobile device.

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If you’re using the desktop app, the proxy files download to your hard drive and are then referenced while you work on your creation. If you’re not familiar with proxy files, these are files that are compressed to a lower resolution and file size allowing you to scrub through your footage faster. At the point of final rendering, you’re still able to render at a higher quality file and resolution without an issue.

My concern about proxy files in Premiere Rush is the idea of these files taking up space on my computer. Most people new to video editing would not know what a proxy file is nor its purpose. All of a sudden, their computer is low on disk space. When I brought this to the attention of Ms. Darby, she noted that proxy files are automatically deleted from your hard drive once you delete your project from the home screen (Figure B).

Figure B


Image: Ant Pruitt

Impressive features

Adding clips and positioning clips is a simple drag-and-drop process. Creators can re-position clips, images, and motion graphics to work for them. The ability to adjust color and exposure of clips is super intuitive and very familiar to the Lightroom CC experience. You can add tasteful color-grading filters (LUTs) with a tap. Or you can use sliders to adjust exposure and color options. Title screens and motion graphics are built into the app, or you can use your own motion graphics template.

Premiere Pro templates work really well, too. You can edit text and colors in the templates fairly easily. You don’t need to install your templates on your device if you don’t want to. You can sync them to your Creative Cloud library if that’s more convenient. Unfortunately, motion graphics templates authored in After Effects is not compatible.

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Audio editing is simple. Tap to add your audio clip whether it’s a music track or a voice over just as you would with any other nonlinear video editor. The beauty of Premiere Rush is due to the AI used to help make your audio sound better. Auto ducking is handled with just a tap where your music track automatically fades out when your video has dialog in it and then fades back up as the dialog stops. I played around with the background noise removal tool. Wow. In comparison to using Adobe Audition’s adaptive noise removal, it’s spot on and easier to use. It’s one slider, and you can adjust it on the fly as your clip plays back.

I tested with some smartphone clips as well as clips where I used dedicated microphones. Each time, the noise reduction was fast and left a clean result. The fact that Adobe used the technology behind its more robust Audition audio editor really comes through in Premiere Rush.

Social media boost

So, once a video project is complete, it’s time to release it into the wild via social media and blog posts. Rush allows you to export your project locally to your device as well as auto upload it to Facebook and YouTube. There is no auto upload option for Instagram at this time. The render process is a little slower than I prefer because of the lack of hardware acceleration. I have nice GPU on one of my rigs, and it’s not utilized. When rendering on a laptop with a core I7 chip and 16GB of RAM, a sixty second UHD video took about five minutes to render out as well as the additional upload time to YouTube (Figure C).

Figure C


Image: Ant Pruitt

Rush does a great job of handling the compression and other video specifications optimal for social networks. All you need to do is specify the orientation and the upload network (Figure D).

Figure D


Image: Ant Pruitt

Conclusion

Premiere Rush is an outstanding option for a simplified video editing experience. No, it’s not as powerful as Premiere Pro, but it’s useful. If you’re at a point where your Rush project needs a little more “umph” to get your message across, you can open your saved Rush project in Premiere Pro. Your edits will translate over to a new Premiere Pro project allowing you not to skip a beat in your workflow.

Premiere Rush is available to Creative Cloud subscribers at no additional cost or for $9.99 per month as a single app. Have you downloaded and tried out Rush? Let me know your thoughts on it. I will do a video demo of this app soon on my YouTube channel as a beginner’s guide. Tag me on Twitter with your creations!

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