Adobe Unveils Project Rush Video Editor

Today’s professional-grade video editing tools are designed with TV studios and Hollywood in mind. The tools are infinitely capable but hard to master, as they’re stuffed full of arcane terminology and nearly endless features and windows. It can be a chore just to prepare a simple video clip for upload. Conversely, simple video editors for mobile devices are too limited and aren’t flexible enough for most professional use. Adobe is aiming to change all of this with Project Rush, an entirely new cross-platform video editor built on the Premiere Pro engine. Adobe has given us a sneak peak at Rush, and will be rolling it out later this year as part of its Creative Cloud offering.

Project Rush Is Streamlined for Online Content Creators

Unlike traditional production studios, online content creators often operate on a shoestring budget, edit on location, and rely on frequent posting to help maintain their audience. Project Rush is designed to address all three needs. You can use it without needing a lot of training or a dedicated post-production team. It also works on both mobile devices and traditional computers, so you can edit on location for quick turnaround, but still have the flexibility of a more sophisticated interface once you have access to a Mac or PC. Upload presets for a variety of online services are also built in, so once you have your footage the way you want it, you’re only a couple clicks away from it being in the hands of your audience.

Cloud-First, but Not Cloud-Only

When Adobe started the Project Rush press event by telling us it was cloud-first, I got a little worried. A mobile solution that required all the video clips to be uploaded and processed in the cloud would be a non-starter in many cases. Mobile data bandwidth is often hard to come by and usually expensive. Fortunately, Adobe let me know that Rush is perfectly capable of working offline, either on a mobile device or computer, and syncing to the cloud when appropriate — to ensure that you have access to all of your projects on all of your devices.

Built On the Premiere Pro Engine

Because it’s built on the Premiere Pro engine, Project Rush can import all of the same formats — anything from your iPhone video to 4K RED footage. Speaking of which, it can also use the same presets as Premiere Pro, and Adobe confirmed that you’ll even be able to use your existing LUTs with it. That’ll be especially helpful for those of us who shoot in D-Log or other formats that are designed for post-processing. Adobe’s Premiere Elements has until now been a simplified way to get started in video editing, but Rush goes well beyond what Elements offers in cross-platform availability, and online and social media integration.

Project Rush Workflow

Rush adds tracks as needed (up to 4 video and 3 audio), but not until you want it to. For example, simply dragging a clip up will move it to an Overlay track. You can do simple trims and assembly using gestures on a touch screen if you want — instead of needing to hunt through palettes of tool icons. There are also some easier-to-use, simplified versions of the pro Audio editing tools from Premiere Pro.

Similar to the interface of Lightroom Mobile, you can edit clips using a set of menus that appear on the right hand side of your display. The simplest is applying a preset (either supplied by Adobe or one you have found or created on your own), but you can also do more specific color correction or apply certain other effects. If you need the full power of Lumetri color or plug-ins, you can open your Rush project in Premiere Pro for further processing. Keep in mind, though, that it’s a one-way process. Once you’ve modified your project in Premiere Pro, you can’t move it back to Rush.

Getting Project Rush

Adobe is only providing demos of Project Rush right now, in preparation for rolling it out later this year as part of its Creative Cloud offering. You can sign up to be on the list for beta testing at http://www.adobe.com/go/project-rush. It will also demonstrated at and streamed live from Vidcon 2018 later this week. We haven’t had a chance to go hands on with it yet, but will be certain to write more when we do. In the meantime, Adobe’s demos are certainly compelling, and point to what should be a popular addition to the Creative Cloud suite.

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