Discussions in the Premiere Pro Beta community forum reveals future updates regarding Mac Pro Afterburner ProRes decoding and RED Komodo support. Those might be enrolled in the next version of Premiere Pro (14.3). 

Premiere Pro Public Beta 

First, let’s explain the Public Beta project and its importance for Premiere Pro stability. The Public Beta project was recently introduced in the goal to enhance ADOBE creative application stability and minimize bugs. This is ADOBE’s effort to sharpen the product development cycle in order to push its users much more stable versions. As for the users, this project constitutes an opportunity to engage directly in the development process for the Adobe video and audio applications. As explained by ADOBE: “Public Beta provides an opportunity to engage directly in product development, allowing interested users to test new fixes and features before they are released and share their feedback with the Adobe product teams. The program includes Beta builds of Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, After Effects, Audition, Character Animator, and Media Encoder”. Beta participants want to engage with the development process, are willing to run separate builds of their applications, and understand they may encounter unforeseen issues due to unique system configurations.  

Public Beta provides an opportunity to engage directly in product development, allowing interested users to test new fixes and features before they are released and share their feedback with the Adobe product teams

ADOBE

Daily beta updates of Premiere Pro

The public Beta is updated frequently, sometimes even daily, with new builds that address bugs and add improvements. As soon as ADOBE has determined that a Beta-tested feature or fix is ready, it will be added to the next release version of the product. It’s important to emphasize that the Beta builds are stable enough to work with but inherently less predictable than release versions. For participating in the program, visit the welcome page.

Afterburner ProRes Hardware Decompression Support

In recent beta builds (14.3.0 and newer) ADOBE added support for Apple’s Afterburner accelerator card which is an optional component available for 2019 Mac Pro systems. According to ADOBE “Currently we support decode acceleration of ProRes 4444 and 422 codecs using the Afterburner card. Please note: ProRes RAW acceleration via the Afterburner card is not currently supported – although CPU decompression is available for ProRes RAW”. By the way, the support for ProRes RAW decoding was added to the recent Premiere Pro update (14.2). Read more here: Premiere Pro 14.2 Released: Improved Stability, Enhanced Performances, and ProRes RAW. Furthermore, If you’re not familiar with the Afterburner card, make sure to read our article: Mac Pro Afterburner: Editors’ Dream but Only for ProRes and ProRes RAW.

Currently we support decode acceleration of ProRes 4444 and 422 codecs using the Afterburner card. Please note: ProRes RAW acceleration via the Afterburner card is not currently supported – although CPU decompression is available for ProRes RAW

ADOBE

Basically, the Afterburner focuses on efficient decoding of ProRes and ProRes RAW multiple streams on FCPX (Final Cut Pro X). The utilization of this accelerator will be implemented on the next version of Premiere Pro, so Mac Pro users can utilize it on Premiere as well.  For Premiere Pro Beta user, the Metal renderer must be selected for use in the applications: File < Project Settings > General > select Renderer: “Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (Metal) – Recommended”. For now, there is no way to identify the utilization of the Afterburner card. However, it’s a good start that can be improved in the next version (14.3). 

Support for RED Komodo camera

The next version of Premiere Pro (14.3) will be Komodo ready. According to ADOBE, support of RED files from the Komodo camera has been added. Although these R3Ds are supported already by Premiere Pro, it’s a new sensor, and thus need to be updated (for metadata purposes). The question is if Komodo users will be able to edit their files on current versions of Premiere Pro? I suppose that answer for that would be yes. However, we expect some issues regarding metadata. I guess we find out soon since Komodo cameras will be released before the next version of Premiere Pro (14.3).