What?? Tape based workflows discontinued??

Folks-

Am I the only filmmaker and editor alarmed by this? I guess I'm late to this party.

The development seems almost criminally shortsighted and should be reversed.

It's simply this. Yes, we're all digital creatures now, but many of us have shelves, boxes, libraries with scads of DV and DVCAM original footage stored going back into the mid 90's, and often we acquire new tools to repair and enhance early digital content for future purposes. I often export a ProRes master of legacy tape and ingest it into Topaz Labs Video AI to delinterlace and enhance a transferred clip's image quality to HD standards-- sometimes 4K. It never ceases to amaze me how we can turn the clock back and retrieve great clips, great shows, to becme presentable in modern formats.

An example: When needed, I can connect to Premiere Pro V 14.0, invoke Capture, shuttle my Sony DSR-45 deck to select from a DVCAM tape. I log clip names, set timecode, and other fundamental aspects as I go. The project bin is built with ready to cut clips as I proceed. Then I can cut a show on any version of Premiere. All this is still available on a older Mac or Windows device, under an older OS (Mojave). I have two machines for exactly the kind of occurence we're experiencing now. But it's real annoying to switch.

If I understand the recent announcement, Adobe has lobotomized itself from that important portion of its corporate brain: CONTINUANCE. Build on what came before, not ejecting it as "not modern." We are not part of a user beauty contest, we are craftspeople, many of whom grew up on this app.

We need comprehensive tools to get a variety of jobs done, from old sources and new. Not pushing out old stuff with new stuff. New always gets Old. New is a fleeting marketing aspect, not a lasting value. Function, convenience, good UX. That's where the app's true beauty lies.

Hey, we're talking about preserving a compact Capture module backed by a list of compatible Firewire and other deck protocols. There's little space needed. What came before costs NOTHING to Adobe, the investment was made, it worked well, and should hang around because it will remain an asset to tens of thousands of filmmakers, earned its place and should still function, even on a Mac Studio M2 Ultra.

Yes, I'm aware there are "outside solutions" to acquire tape material. Even QuickTime Player can take a digital video feed. CAT DV maintains its original tape workfow support in its logging app's Professional Version. But once that transfer is made it has to be imported, integrated into a Premiere Project bin, ready for cutting.  I'd rather be a postman. Why lose the capability and convenience of deck control easily achieved from Firewire 800 to USB-C adapter connections, with precise clip-to-clip log and transfer text fields within the app?

IMHO, it's plain poor thinking that ignores a user base that grew up on Premiere Pro.

Love to hear from other users pro and con.

Best as always,
Loren S. Miller
NeoTron Cinema Group