Adobe Premiere Pro Beta Improves Audio Workflow – Fade Handles, and More

Software News

by Francesco AndreolaJanuary 22^nd, 2024

Adobe has just released a new beta version of Premiere Pro that mainly focuses on enhancing user experience when editing sound. Improvements include new interactive fade handles on audio clips in the timeline, AI-based automatic audio category tagging inside the Essential Sound panel, redesigned FX badges, dynamic waveforms, and more.

As we all know, good sound is critical if you really want to elevate your visuals. However, sound editing is an art on its own and can become quite a daunting task, especially if you’re a novice editor or a seasoned one working on tight deadlines.

Premiere Pro already offers an intuitive set of audio tools that are packed inside the Essential Sound panel, but Adobe is now introducing new features to save you time in this process. Let’s take a look!

Adobe Premiere Pro (beta) – Audio workflow improvements

To begin with, new interactive fade handles are now displayed at the top corners of audio clips. By clicking on the handles and dragging them left or right, you can quickly add a fade in/out or crossfade audio transition while also adjusting its duration. Moreover, by dragging the handles up or down, you can adjust the type of fade (or cosine value).

This speeds up the process of adding audio fades, which was previously done by dragging and dropping transitions from the Effects panel to the desired edit point or by selecting the cut and then pressing a keyboard shortcut. While this is a nice-to-have feature, Adobe is definitely late to the game here.

On the other hand, the company is doing a good job in leveraging their Sensei AI model to speed up editing workflows. First unveiled back in October, their AI-based audio category tagging inside the Essential Sound panel allows the software to automatically identify audio clips based on their content (Dialogue, Music, Ambience, or Sound FX).

The novelty here is the presence of a new interactive Essential Sound badge on each audio clip that allows you to identify its type visually. Clicking on the badge brings you directly to the Essential Sound panel, so you can quickly make changes.

The existing FX badges have also been redesigned to make it easier to check which (if any) audio effects are applied to the clips, add more if needed, or make adjustments to existing ones. Also, double-clicking on the FX badge now redirects you to the Effect Controls panel.

Additionally, waveforms are now dynamically resized when adjusting the height of audio tracks, and new colors are available for tagging clips. These improvements should make it easier to work with sound, especially when editing on a small-sized screen.

Price and availability

These new audio improvements are available now in Premiere Pro (Beta). If you already have an active subscription, you can download the latest Beta release of Premiere Pro from the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app.

Lastly, Adobe announced that the AI-powered Enhance Speech beta function – that you can see in action in this video – will become generally available next month.

For more information, please visit Adobe’s website here.

Do you edit and mix sound inside of Premiere Pro? What do you think of these audio workflow improvements? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!