Adobe Prelude CS6

Adobe Prelude CS6 was released in May 2012. It is a standalone product but comes shipped with Production Premium, Master Collection, and Creative Cloud.

Prelude is an ingestion application, which means an application that imports (ingests) media files into an editing application. Prelude works with Premiere Pro and is intended to be the first step in the post production process.

The idea is that you use Adobe Prelude to import and organize your media before you begin editing with Premiere Pro. Of course you don't need to do this—Premiere Pro can import files quite well by itself—but Prelude allows you to "pre-screen" your footage and perform some additional tasks:

• Partial ingest: Only import the parts of files you need, saving time and storage space.
• Create logs, metadata, subclips and markers.
• Optional transcoding on ingest.
• Create a rough cut.
• View transcription notes from Speech Analysis.

Should I Use Prelude?

If you've read the introduction above and you're still asking this question, then maybe Prelude isn't something you need to worry about. If you're currently using Premiere Pro's import function and it's working well enough for you, you may not find much advantage in using a separate ingest application. However if you find that your project panel is getting a bit out of control, or you have a lot of excess footage taking up space, or if you'd just like to try managing your assets a bit better, then it's worth a try.