Hello Adobe Community and Product Teams,
I want to share an idea aimed at significantly improving our experience with resource-intensive Creative Cloud applications, such as Premiere Pro, After Effects, Media Encoder, and potentially others.
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### **The Current Problem: The Local Performance Bottleneck**
We love the power of Adobe tools, but many of us face major challenges:
* **Prohibitive rendering and encoding times:** Hours of waiting for complex projects, which hinders creativity and productivity.
* **High hardware requirements:** The need to invest in expensive workstations to achieve acceptable performance.
* **Slowdowns and lack of fluidity:** Choppy previews, less responsive interfaces on heavy projects, even on good machines.
* **Lack of flexibility:** Difficulty working efficiently on less powerful machines or on the go.
These factors limit our ability to fully exploit the potential of the software and meet our deadlines.
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### **The Proposed Solution: Controlled Hybrid Acceleration**
I propose that Adobe develops a **hybrid acceleration** system.
The core idea is to keep the main software operations running on our local machines, while having the **option to send the most computationally intensive tasks to optimized remote servers**.
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### **How It Would Work (Key Principles):**
* **Solid Local Foundation and Guaranteed Offline Functionality:**
* Creative Cloud software remains installed and fully functional on our computers.
* Offline work must **always** be possible. Remote acceleration is an *option*, not a mandatory dependency.
* **Targeted On-Demand Acceleration:**
* The user could choose to send specific tasks to servers for accelerated processing. Typical examples:
* Final rendering (Premiere Pro sequences, After Effects compositions).
* Encoding/Exporting via Media Encoder.
* Complex calculations (motion analysis, Warp Stabilizer, physics simulations, demanding preview renders, etc.).
* The main interface and light interactive tasks would remain handled locally for maximum responsiveness.
* **Full Data Control and Maximum Security (Crucial Point):**
* **Primary Local Storage:** Project files (.prproj, .aep, etc.) and all source media (rushes, assets) **remain stored on the user's local hard drives**. This is our intellectual property, our client data.
* **Temporary and Secure Transfer:** For a remote server to perform a calculation, it is technically necessary to send it the *strictly required* data for that specific task (e.g., the relevant video segments, assets used, calculation instructions). This transfer must be:
* **Secure:** Using robust end-to-end encryption.
* **Temporary:** Data is only present on the server for the duration of the calculation.
* **IMPERATIVE DELETION GUARANTEE:** This is the most important point for trust. Adobe must **guarantee explicitly, contractually, and transparently** that all user data temporarily transferred to its servers (or authorized third-party servers) is **permanently and irretrievably deleted** as soon as the calculation task is finished and the result is retrieved by the user, or in case of cancellation/disconnection. No residual retention should be possible. This guarantee must be central to the privacy policy and terms of service.
* **Plugin and Script Compatibility:**
* The remote processing environment must be able to load and use the same third-party plugins and scripts that the user has installed locally, ensuring the consistency and fidelity of the final result.
* **Choice of Processing Infrastructure:**
* To offer maximum flexibility, users should have a choice regarding the source of remote computing power:
* **Option 1: Adobe Cloud Servers:**
* An integrated solution offered by Adobe. It would be essential for this option to be offered with **reasonable, transparent, and predictable pricing** (perhaps power tiers or a clear usage-based cost).
* **Option 2: Third-Party / Private Servers:**
* The ability to configure the software to use:
* External cloud computing services (Render Farms on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.).
* **Private** servers (on-premise or hosted) managed by the company or user. Adobe could provide recommended technical specifications and potentially server software or APIs to facilitate this integration for organizations requiring full control over their infrastructure.
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### **Expected Benefits:**
* **Massive Time Savings:** Drastic reduction in waiting times for renders and exports.
* **Increased Accessibility:** Allowing those with less powerful hardware to tackle complex projects.
* **Flexibility:** Working more smoothly, potentially from different machines.
* **Potential Hardware Cost Reduction:** Less pressure to constantly upgrade to the most expensive local hardware.
* **Scalability:** Adapting computing power to the specific needs of a project.
* **For Adobe:** Strong added value to the Creative Cloud subscription, addressing a major user pain point, and potentially new service offerings.
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### **Conclusion: A Logical Step Forward**
Implementing a controlled hybrid acceleration solution would be a major step forward for the Creative Cloud ecosystem. It would address a pressing need for performance while respecting the imperatives of control, security, and flexibility for creative professionals.
Of course, implementation presents a technical challenge (transfer optimization, remote plugin management, server infrastructure), but I am confident that the Adobe teams have the expertise to meet this challenge.
I invite other community members to share their thoughts on this idea, and I hope Adobe will seriously consider th
is path for improvement for the future of Creative Cloud.
Thank you for reading.
AdChoices