OnLocation CS4

A hidden gem in the Adobe Creative Suite CS4 Production Premium and Master Collections is a product called OnLocation. Remember DV Rack? Adobe bought it a few years back, changed the name to OnLocation and added it to the Creative Suite. Here's why it's cool and why you'll love it.

One of the big problems with shooting video on location is running out of tape or disc space. The other problem comes afterwards, digitising all of that footage and getting it into Premiere Pro. What if these problems went away? With OnLocation CS4, they do. Here's how ...

Connect your camera to your computer via Firewire or USB2 (which ever is the supported connection). Start up OnLocation. Fine tune the colour and lighting with the handy on-screen controls. Record the video.

That's it. When you are finished recording, just identify and move the clips into Premiere Pro CS4 using the Shot List and transfer features. 

You've already purchased the Suite. Now, you've got a powerful DVR in your computer. Use if for those crucial elder abuse interviews, on-scene polygraphs, in your surveillance van ... the list is only limited by your creativity.

Big improvement: everything fits on one screen - even a laptop screen. One of my old pet-peeves about DV Rack was the fact that you couldn't fit everything into one view. They've fixed that and cleaned up the interface.

And ... the best news of all ... it's now available for Macs. (in moving from PC to Mac, this was the one product that I knew I'd miss. I'm so glad that they've made it cross platform.)

Enjoy.