AI video technology is ramping up, and Adobe is bringing its most recognizable AI editing tool out of beta. Generative extend is now the first Firefly-powered tool in Premiere Pro, coming out of beta alongside a few other features.
“Generative Extend is the first Firefly-powered feature in Premiere Pro, and the first tool of its kind to help editors seamlessly extend video and audio frames to achieve perfectly timed edits,” Ashley Still, senior vice president and general manager of digital media at Adobe, told exclusively in an email. “This is just the beginning of how Firefly in Premiere Pro can revolutionize video production with the precision and power only Adobe can deliver.”
Adobe has a mix of tools that are AI-powered and those that create new elements using AI; Wednesday’s announcement includes both. Generative extend is an AI creation tool, which can be used to create a few seconds of film that lengthens your existing clips. It can be used in cases where you wish you had a few extra seconds of a scene, using your footage as the base and creating new frames to extend the moment. Now, Premiere Pro editors will be able to render those extensions in 4K and for vertical videos, thanks to updates to generative extend.
On the non-generative AI side, the features coming out of beta should help you navigate Premiere and refine your content without needing to leave the program. Adobe is also bringing two AI-powered tools out of beta, including an smart search panel called media intelligence and AI caption translation tool.
Adobe’s been all-in on AI for a while now. Adobe launched its Firefly AI video generator in February, which is capable of creating five-second-long videos entirely from generative AI. There has also been a number of AI updates to Photoshop, in addition to its AI image generator.
Here’s what you should know about the new AI upgrades in Premiere Pro. For more, check out all the major AI video models available now and coming soon.
Generative extend in 4K
Generative extend is one of Premiere’s most prominent AI features. You can create a few extra seconds at the beginning or end of your clips if you needed another second or two of footage before going into the next scene. Adobe launched the beta of generative extend in October 2024. Now, those AI clips can be rendered in 4K and vertically in the regular version of Premiere.
To extend a clip, select the generative extend tool from your toolbar (it looks like a vertical bar with two arrows pointing in opposite direction covered in stars) and drag out the clip another 1 to 2 seconds. Whenever you create or extend clips with AI, Premiere Pro will label them as AI-generated in your timeline.
You can try out generative extend for free for what Adobe calls a “limited time” before it will start using Firefly generation credits. If you’ve just got Premiere Pro, you get 500 monthly generation credits. The full Creative Cloud package bumps that number up to 1,000. The amount of credits you’ll use on each extension will depend on the clips you generate — a higher resolution extension will likely use more credits, for example. Adobe’s AI policy states that it doesn’t train AI models on its users’ content.
Smart search in Premiere Pro
One of the first things you figure out when you start learning how to edit in Premiere is the importance of naming your clips and organizing files in your library, so that you can find specific clips later and avoid those dreaded “media not found” error messages. But anyone who’s done that knows it’s a tedious and time-consuming task. That’s where the new media intelligence panel can help.
Media intelligence is a kind of advanced search panel that aims to make it easier to find specific clips. You can still search by file name and location, but media intelligence can recognize certain elements in clips and pull them — subjects like “skateboarders” or technical elements like lens flares, or both, clips of people skateboarding where there’s a lens flare. The idea is to make it easier to find the clips you need, even if the files aren’t named after the subject or include the keyword you’re using to search.
Media intelligence uses clips’ metadata, including shoot date and camera type — meaning you can get really specific with your searches. It can also highlight sections of longer videos, so if you want one question from a taped interview, you can search for that without having to scrub the whole video searching for that one part.
Media intelligence runs locally on your computer and doesn’t read or store information about your clips.
Translate your captions with AI
Premiere Pro’s auto-captioning is also getting upgraded to include translations. Adobe said it has heard from users that they want the ability to add captions in multiple languages on the same clip, and the new tool lets you do that without leaving Premiere.
You can now add translated captions to your videos in the Premiere Pro beta app.
You can already automatically generate transcripts of your videos, and from there, you can add captions. With the new feature, you can transcribe those captions into 27 different languages, including Spanish, German, French and Japanese.
For more on Adobe, check out Photoshop’s collaboration feature and anti-reflection tool.
