Please RESPECT Motion/Opacity keyframes when Time Remapping a Clip!

The "super tool bar" didn't pop my interest. But ... the auto-smart bins thing sure did, as did the "intelligent video transition" and Warp targeted analyzing idea. Those look awfully useful.

Neil

I have to agree with you that Kevin Monahan is one of the good ones.  🙂

Definitely a mixed bag as you say.  😉

I'm curious now... out of the links in my last post, which new tool would be your first pick?

Great post. Especically the bit about the color label names ... I mean, really? Never understood those.

It's been interesting actually meeting with and talking with many "Adobe" staffers for several apps over the years. There are enough people working enough different teams within any app that frequently they don't know that much about another part of the app. Well, they're buried in working within X, so I suppose that's logical.

Some of the devs are not particularly great at dev/user interactions ... well, they're an engineer first and always, so that's kinda expectable. Knowledgeable but not particularly ... charming.

And ... well, while I've found most Adobe staffers to have pretty solid knowledge about that on which they seem to be working ... some ... well, perhaps might be there because they're more 'touchy-feely' or something, and work where they interact with users more? Maybe?

Because yes, I've run into a couple staffers who's knowledge is not that apparent, but who seem to mostly run twixt users and devs. Get a query from a user, run to a dev, and ... hopefully ... get back to the user.

Then you get a support person like Kevin Monahan ... who's got more knowledge of The Biz than most others. Years of experience in editing/color/graphics/fx prior to coming to Adobe. He's an incredible resource at times.

So like most human endeavors, a mixed bag.

Neil

Hi Neil, to answer your question, yes, I've participated in a few of the feedback sessions you've described.  I've also submitted PDFs such as Top 10 Issues to Fix, at employee request.

Unfortunately, in my interactions with several Adobe employees, I've come across queries or statements that truly made me question their competence.  Would you trust a TV salesman if you asked "Does it have an HDMI port" and he responded "What's HDMI?".  Yes, things at that painful level that make you wonder how they got their job in the first place. 

There's a lot of things to fix in Pr that quite frankly, I think should never have been an issue in the first place.  There's too many things that are signs of poor judgment on part of the design team.  Things that are painfully obvious.  For example, why are labels named with such obscure names.  Cerulean?  Caribean?  Something tells me that this goes straight back to my suspicion that there's an ego problem at Adobe (then again, isn't there this problem at every big corporation?)  I imagine that some time ago, Pr team members thought it would be fun to give labels obscure names nobody understands.  Maybe they even queried regular users who responded with "Huh?", at which point I imagine they thought to themselves "F*** the user.  We know best!"  I see far too much of that in Pr.

If the Pr team did things more intelligently in order to limit or even eliminate functionality issues altogether (programming issues, ie. bugs, are almost impossible to avoid completely, so on that I give them a pass as long as they're resolved in due time), they'd have time to work on truly amazing tools, many of which I've suggested.  Yes, I'm just 1 person. but sometimes, asking the RIGHT person is much more important than asking a bunch of random people who don't even have the creativity to imagine a better way of doing things.

Just imagine if instead of spending time fixing the issue in this FR (which I certainly hope they do soon since it's a real PITA for editors who use time remapping), the Pr team avoided issues like that in the first place through intelligent design and therefore had time to work on truly helpful tools such as these:

Timeline Media Overwrite Warning:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereprofeaturerequests/posts/1697282927113694/

Advanced Warp Stabilizer analysis through masking:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereprofeaturerequests/posts/1899804996861485/

(video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDpZK3ruET0)

Super Tools Bar:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereprofeaturerequests/posts/1858162791025706/

AE-level mouse scroll wheel functionality:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereprofeaturerequests/posts/1830121270496525/

Intelligent Video Transition Context Menu:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereprofeaturerequests/posts/1728054207369899/

Smart Bins

https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereprofeaturerequests/posts/1909728322535819/

Sometimes the Pr team does great things.  But all too often they seem to be fixing previous issues that were carelessly created, or trying to reinvent the wheel where there's limited value in doing so while introducing new bugs and issues in the process.

Ahhh ... you go to the subscription model as your given excuse for why they would pay no attention to users. I've seen data on how subscription works against "simple product sales". Subscription is actually harder to sustain over time for most companies,  as competition causes blips in user choices.

To sustain a subscription model, you must keep rather aggressively providing what a significant portion of your user base wants or ... you go down. As have many companies that tried it.

And Adobe's user base has been going up constantly. Including Premiere ... over several million daily users of Premeire Pro alone. Which is of course part of why they may not make the choices any of us would choose ... they have millions of customers to work for, not just thee & me and some of our friends & peers.

You also seem to assume that the UserVoice, now Bug/Idea system is their only input portal for changes. Which is actually far more understandable, if also, welll ... not actually correct.

I've posted many times here how important that system was to users as our only direct means of influencing the metrics used as part of the decisions processes. To the point I think some completely forgot my other comments ... so I might even be part of the reason for that assumption.

Which I never meant to imply. And as I've stated before, that was the user's direct means of posting 'notes' to the devs ... but not the biggest way they acquire the metrics that are a good part of the process.

Adobe is a massive company with several different types of operations. The program or CC side of things like Pr, Photoshop et al is only one part, and apparently not even the biggest, part of "Adobe".

They have their documents section ... which is really a massive area in and of itself, dealing with the "Acrobat ecosphere" and all the high-end secure document/spreadsheet/financial information processes for other companies and governments to use.

And they also are a lead in the entire system for helping other mega-corps tailor their consumer experience of their company ... which involves massive amounts of user sampling and testing.

That sampling & testing also gets applied within the CC apps, of course.

You have some over-all management of the apps under the CC umbrella. There were some changes in the look of the apps, across the CC programs, a year back or so that bothered some people. Which were done on the basis of working to unify the "look" and feel of the CC apps. For example.

Then you have the product teams ... and for every product, first understand the devs are hired because of 1) basic knowledge in the tasks they're being hired for and 2) being a user of that type of app. So a dev for Premiere is expected to be both knowledeable in whatever function they serve on the team, and an editor who does this for personal and often previous professional work.

The program managers and the ... department supers? whatever they're called ... will have their own internal "roadmap" for where the app needs to be going. Based on their experience and understanding of both that function in society & their user needs.

But there's also that input into the process from those in the "experience" side of Adobe. The part that is constantly testing users ... using ... software. Of all kinds. Both in the general and in the specific.

Btw ... have you ever been through a live or on-line session with their marketing & exeperience (M&E) people?  And note, I call them that, for clarity of what they do, though I think Adobe calls it something else. I have, several times, in both methods.

The ones I've been through have been things like the general UI of Premiere to color correction to graphics design work. With mulitple people working on a project where clearly I am only one of many, many interviews they will give on that same subject.

These are always a fascinating experience. "If you see a screen like this, what is your first reaction? Where would you start working?" ... "These three phrasings are for the same control. For each, tell me what you would expect the control to do." ... "In your experience, do most people come into graphics deployment and design from training or schooling, or due to assignment as assistant editors?" "How much formal training is given to assistants assigned to (graphics/color/whatever) versus how much simple 'do this on this job' assignments without training?"

I have been given a UI screen, and told to initiate or perform X function, in whatever way seems more "my way" of working, from keyboard to mouse to pen-tab. And the results of course Officially Noted. Queried also ... "Why did you do X? Did you consider doing Y instead, and if so, why not?" All that sort of thing.

And on and on. Typically 45 minutes to an hour and a half. It ends up kinda feeling like being a mouse in a maze, looking up at the white-robed researchers with glasses, pocket protectors, and clipboards studying your every move.

So I would have a high degree of comfort in saying nearly all your assumptions are well ... somewhat if not completely irrelevant to the actual company and it's staffers.

Many of the design things some here have most complained about "clearly not coming from users", have actually been heavily tested on hundreds if not thousands of users across several apps. We humans are a weird, naturally diverse lot. And some things that 'most' people seem to want to do are just ... to me ... weird.

But a lot of people actually were tested for most of the design things. Even the ones I look at and totally feel are poorly setup for the task at hand.

Neil

"Adobe should just ignore those TV newsroom and thousands of major corporate in-house video production departments ... because they're not ... you?"

Definitely not.  All I'm suggesting is that the Pr team actually listen to us users.  I haven't seen a single FR requesting a complete interface overhaul for Import or Export... and yet, despite hundreds of requests/votes for far more critical things to be addressed, that's what we got... the very tools nobody seemed to be asking for and that a LOT of people seem to hate now that they're out. 

You're right, Neil, I don't know the exact motives behind what the Pr team does, although I highly suspect it has to do with misplaces priorities, and/or oversized "we know best" egos, and/or general incompetence.  How else to explain the fact they get so many things wrong, over and over again, from a crop tool that didn't have side handles for years on end, to the fact that for multiple selections, the Shift key still acts like the Ctrl key or vice versa depending on which Pr window you're in.  Things like that are just plain illogical, and frankly, smack of that "we know best" arrogance I mentioned above.  Adobe programs can't even adopt company-wide standards between themselves, with one program following standard software conventions, and another (most often Pr) given those conventions the middle finger (such as the absurd Shift vs Ctrl key incconsistencies I mentioned).

Should I go on?

And if you think that calling out thee Pr team on their dubious judgement is going too far, just take this response from Bruce Bullis as an example, who marked my detailed FR for improved scroll wheel functionality in Pr as 'Declined':

AdminBruce Bullis (Adobe) (Admin, Adobe DVA)  responded

Most users don’t have middle mouse buttons, which makes it hard for us to rely on its presence.

What???  EVERY program in Adobe's suite makes use of the middle scoll wheel, some extensively so.  Even Pr makes some good us of it.  I was asking for improved functionality, comparable to what's already available in AE, and that's the response I got (as well as what others got on similar FRs).  If that isn't proof that some of the people who work on the Pr team are severely misguided, I don't know what is. 

All I want to see is the Pr team get their priorities realigned.  To stop using ridiculous and completely false excuses such as "Most users don’t have middle mouse buttons" in order to avoid working on solutions that would be most welcome by us editors.  I'd love to see them working on updates as if they had to actually entice us to pay for them, as was the case prior to the monthly subscription model.  Because of the current pricing model, there's less incentive for the Pr team to entice us with truly valuable updates since we pay monthly whether we want them or not.  If it continues like this, we, the users, end up losing out.

If I see something done illogically or to me, wrong, yes, I certainly do state so. As anyone is welcome to do.

As I did with the ending of SpeedGrade and more recently with the addition of several user color management controls that were spread out through several parts of the app, nearly hidden. Or starting the Essential Graphics years ago without all the needed keyboard shorts for nudging and stuff, which was in the ancient Titler, and finally ... a couple versions into the EGP era ... got properly added to the EGP work.

And I do not assign pejorative motives to any dev ... I don't know what or why they do things, and so often the things I do get to find out about at something like NAB, comes from an angle I had never even thought of. A bit of ... humility ... in approaching those concepts seems wise to me.

I also note that of the several million daily users of Premiere Pro, none of them ever work or approach it exactly like I do. We humans are naturally an amazingly diverse lot, and everyone's mileage always variies.

I keep the above concepts in mind for both any changes to function in this or any other app, and also for UI changes. For example, some of my good friends LOVE LOVE LOVE the Resolve UI, which is painful for me in many ways. That's absolutely great, I don't think less of them at all because we are so, so different in approaching these apps.

Because I expect we're all different.

But that isn't what you seem to be doing.

The way your comments sound ... it seems like you are making a ton of rather strong, blanket statements, including assigning motives to people you've never ever met, based on a series of assumptions ... and also seem to think your assumptions are the only possible basis. Rather than simply one possible basis.

Is that your intent?

Over the years, I've seen so many unfortunate comments on this forum, typically when people get into assiging motives. Such as ... the import page was "clearly" designed for YouTubers. No "professional" editor would ever use that abomination!

Which is simply bonkers if you've talked with any of the staffers. I don't think that was even a consideration. From what I've heard both from some staffers and a lot of other users ... it seems that Import page is used ... and was wanted ... by quite a few TV newsroom and major corporate editing staffs. And is used heavily by them daily.

Thousands of (to me) very experienced, highly trained, and definitely professional editing staffs.

But it would seem from your comments, that Adobe should just ignore those TV newsroom and thousands of major corporate in-house video production departments ... because they're not ... you?

Is that really what you mean to say?

In order to have useful discussions, it seem to me that we all have to understand we are only one person, and are innately different from all other humans. Every aisle-way discussion at NAB is fascinating to me, precisely because every editor or colorist works very differently from every other one.

Neil

Thanks for your response Neil.  Yes, I feel that the interface overhauls boil down to being 'pet projects' by one or more of the Pr staff, and they were fueled by a misplaced sense of ego.  Had empathy and intelligence been the driving factors rather than the all too common "We know best" ego, the Pr team would have worked on what WE the users need the most, as expressed through our numerous FRs, rather than what THEY felt is more important.

The day Pr staff set their pet projects asside and actually trully, fully, actively listen to their users to focus only on what needs the most attention will be a great day indeed.  But rather than do that, they went ahead wasting an entire development cycle redesigning stuff that frankly did not need to be redesigned.  The old export window only needed a few minor problems fixed, which I and others requested in FRs (problems which are STILL present in the new interface!).  The new import window is completely irrelevant to anyone that uses Post Haste, a tool that's been around for ages and works far better.  Now that's a tool that 100% of editors should use.  Adverizing Post Haste to its users would have been infinitely simpler than embarquing on the completely non-ensential tangent which is the new Import page.  Imagine if in the time they spent designing those new interfaces (and still spend fixing all of the new issues they introduced with them), the Pr team had set out to fix the issue in my BR post above along with a dozen or more other issues such as this one.  Wouldn't that be your preference?  Isn't it worth calling out the Pr team when they royaly mess up their priorities, no matter if it may sound less than polite, in the desperate hope that they start doing right by their users?

Great suggestion. Happy to upvote.

Your additional comment not so much ... why going to the thing about stroking egos? I've found that suggesting motives in online discussions is almost always both 1) completely off-base wrong and 2) often offensive.

For your example, that import page is used by many thousands of especially corporate and TV station users daily. So many very professional editors love it.

You and I and many others do not use it, have no need of it. It irritates me that they don't have a simple use of the Tab key to jump from settings a location to the Create button. So I have to waste time mousing over the whole frickin' screen. I've complained about that, as have others. Hoping that gets changed.

But I don't see it ... polite? ... to denigrate something other professionals may find their absolute fav thing. Nor disparage the devs.