Adobe Unveils New Features in Premiere Pro and After Effects: Discover What’s New!

This Tuesday, September 8, Adobe revealed a slew of updates for Premiere and After Effects, just days before the IBC starts on September 11 in Amsterdam, a frequent venue for Adobe’s video-related announcements. This year, the focus is on four main areas: media generation within the timeline, color grading, audio, and the After Effects AI Assistant, all designed to keep editors within their timelines instead of searching elsewhere for needed assets.

The Generative Media Tool produces video and sound within the timeline

The new Generative Media Tool works by selecting a timeline section where the output should appear and describing the desired result in natural language. Premiere then delivers editable video or audio clips that match the visual context of the edit.

Four functions are integrated into the taskbar:

• Generate Video fills gaps in the edit using reference images from the project to match the look of adjacent clips.
• Generate Sound Effects leverages Adobe’s audio model and uses the editor’s voice to guide the rhythm, timing, and intensity of the sound.
• Generate Soundscape, currently in beta, analyzes up to 15 seconds of video to build synchronized layers of ambiance and effects.
• Generate Music, also in beta, creates an original track in various versions, with tempo and looping adjustments.

The template selector is the other significant update. Editors can choose their engine from Adobe’s Firefly Video or partner options such as Veo, Kling, Runway, or Luma. Adobe, however, reserves commercial exploitation rights for its own models, with synchronization rights on the generated music. These generations naturally consume credits.

Four audio tools in public beta

The second set of tools focuses on audio track cleaning, from noisy footage to failed takes or overlapping dialogues:

• Enhance Audio builds on Enhance Speech, offering separate controls over dialogue, music, ambiance, and effects in a clip, including removing unnecessary elements or entirely muting the dialogue.
• Separate Sound Source breaks down an audio clip into individual components, from voice to reverb.
• Separate Crosstalk isolates overlapping voices into two distinct tracks without re-recording.
• Dynamic Auto Ducking balances dialogue, music, and other elements without manual keyframes.

A new speed algorithm completes the suite, allowing duration changes that preserve the original pitch and timbre over a larger range than before.

The AI Assistant enters public beta in After Effects

Adobe’s AI Assistant, previously integrated into Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io (still in private beta), and now moves into public beta in After Effects. In Premiere, it already assists with organizing footage, batch renaming, and adding markers.

In After Effects, the assistant operates across entire projects, not just the open composition. It reorganizes projects with thousands of layers and fixes technical issues. It also generates expressions that control property animations, described in natural language rather than code. Adobe emphasizes that professionals maintain control over delegated tasks, presenting the tool as both an entryway for newcomers and a time-saver for veterans.

Color Mode gains new features

The integrated color grading space in Premiere remains in beta but has been expanded. The Vignette module adds cinema-like effects with controls over darkness, blur, and chromatic aberration, while Midtones introduces precise adjustments of mid-tones via curve editing. An Auto Color tool meanwhile adjusts color temperature and exposure across a clip, group, or entire sequence in a single click.

Masks can now be transferred from one adjustment to another, with improved controls in the redesigned Properties panel. This panel, along with the Effects panel, has been reworked to speed up navigation.

Finally, Frame.io Mounted Storage is now available to all accounts, allowing for full-resolution media playback from the cloud directly on the timeline, without manual downloads or local storage overload.