AMD APUs and GPUs Accelerate Latest Adobe Creative Cloud Tools and Enhancements

AMD today announced its ongoing collaboration with Adobe has yielded numerous performance optimizations for new creative functions and workflow enhancements that will be available soon to video professionals using Adobe Creative Cloud. This latest wave of features includes high performance debayering for RED camera R3D media files, enhanced performance for new masking features, a new time-saving master clip capability and other tools.

Today's announcement builds on the already impressive additions the companies have made available in recent months, which began with OpenCL support through the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine to speed up Adobe Premiere Pro CC workflows. AMD App Acceleration via the open standard OpenCL API brings the massive parallel compute power of AMD A-Series APUs, AMD Radeon graphics, and AMD FirePro professional graphics to bear on the sophisticated capabilities within Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe SpeedGrade CC, and Adobe Media Encoder CC. That performance also scales with AMD dual-GPU configurations, including dual AMD FirePro GPUs for the latest generation Apple Mac Pro systems.

"OpenCL enables us to deliver a radically improved experience to Adobe Creative Cloud users with the muscle needed for today's most demanding workflows, including real-time production with 4k and beyond," said Steve Belt, corporate vice president, Product Management, AMD. "Our longstanding collaboration with Adobe provides a direct pipeline between the fantastic features most desired by customers in key Adobe Creative Cloud products and the accelerated performance offered by AMD's advanced compute core architectures."

"AMD processing power brings the full potential of Adobe Creative Cloud to life for professional users," said Simon Williams, director of Strategic Relations at Adobe. "Working together, AMD and Adobe continue to deliver a steady stream of advances that optimize the apps video professionals rely on every day. Together we enable video pros to push their creative boundaries and take on any production challenge, including the latest workflows for 4K and higher."

Attendees at NAB 2014 will have a first-hand opportunity to see demonstrations of more than a dozen new features in Adobe Premiere Pro CC, including many that use OpenCL acceleration through the Mercury Playback Engine to access the performance of AMD graphics processors. Highlights of the new features include:

• A new feathering masks tool, accelerated by AMD processors, enables editors to alter, cover, highlight, or obscure specific sections of video content and blend the edges of the alterations for a more aesthetically pleasing result. Feathered masks can be used in conjunction with a new mask tracking feature that lets editors create animated masks in Adobe Premiere Pro CC that can automatically track objects from frame to frame. Editors can use Dynamic Link to Adobe After Effects CC at any time to take advantage of more advanced tracking tools.
• The new Master Clip Effect tool in Adobe Premiere Pro CC works in conjunction with AMD hardware acceleration to save time for editors by enabling them to apply effects once to a designated "master clip" and then have those accelerated effects automatically applied to all other instances of that clip within a sequence.

AMD acceleration also powers the expansion of Adobe Premiere Pro CC support for popular high resolution camera workflows and their associated formats:

• A new debayering feature for media from RED cameras uses AMD hardware acceleration to provide real-time debayering and video playback of 4K R3D files. Now editors can work natively and make the most of the impressive quality footage from these popular cameras. The accelerated debayering scales to take full advantage of multiple AMD GPUs when rendering out projects.
• Previously announced and released support for Blackmagic formats in Adobe Premiere Pro CC has been expanded to now include the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera JPEG format in addition to the existing support for CinemaDMG.
• Hardware-accelerated debayering for Convergent Design Odyssey7Q monitor/recorder products will now also be available through the CinemaDNG workflow.
• Access to real-time settings and properties for both CinemaDNG and RED R3D media formats through Premiere Pro CC provides editors with much greater control over the desired look and quality.
• Adobe Premiere Pro CC support for the all new ARRI AMIRA camera's 3D lookup tables (LUTs) in ProRes format. AMD hardware acceleration powers the Lumetri Deep Color Engine to enable editors to playback the entire palette of AMIRA identified color looks in real-time.

Both AMD (Booth SL10405) and Adobe (Booth SL3910) will showcase the complete range of AMD OpenCL accelerated and enhanced video workflows at the 2014 NAB Show, April 7-10 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Visitors will be able to see demonstrations and experience first-hand the performance available across a broad range of workstations and video cards available for any budget.

Last updated: Apr 7, 2020 at 12:08 pm CDT