Review: Adobe Premiere Clip

Color Grading

While the music track might not be useful for pros, the option to do some rough color grade can be. There are quite a few options available for looks to apply to a project (Figure 4, below). I chose a look to tweak the otherwise dull color from my phone. However, I was disappointed that the grade did not translate into Premiere Pro as a LUT or effect. This means that the color effect is destructive unless you change it in your original Premiere Clip project and re-export. If the Clip version won’t be the final but merely a reference, then this can be a good visual explanation to the editor of how the video should look upon completion.

Figure 4. Premiere Clip Color Effects. Click the image to see it at full size.

Export Options

After you’ve applied the final trims and fades, you can consider Premiere Clip’s export options can. The first default choice is uploading publicly to the Premiere Clip page. Optionally, the user can export to more common social sites like YouTube and Facebook. Finally, you can create an XML file for further editing in Premiere Pro. I chose this final export feature to test how well the project translated onto the desktop application.

After my MacBook Pro synced with the Creative Cloud folder, I found the XML with all used clips inside a folder. I imported the XML to a Premiere Pro project where my timeline and all clips were available. At this point, the Premiere Clip project looked like any other Premiere Pro project. I was able to adjust the audio levels that I had set in Clip, and I could achieve more in-depth editing and effects.

Since I wanted my own file exported for this article, I chose to export my final edit with Adobe Media Encoder. Doing this gives the user a full menu of format, frame rate, and codec options as opposed to relying on Premiere Clip’s compression. You can see the final export below.

While my experience with Adobe’s Premiere Clip was no joyride, I was impressed by certain features. The ability to easily rough cut a group of clips can be a great asset to a producer when traveling back from a remote shoot. And being able to take your work from the mobile device back into Premiere Pro is novel and helpful.

Being limited to iOS and an always-on internet connection certainly hampers its usefulness. Working on a flight back across the country won’t be possible. The ability to work offline with local media would be a great future update.

Still, Premiere Clip fills a hole in Adobe’s product line and the mobile apps world at large. Here’s hoping for improvements and expanded features.