Even for a company the 'total' size of Adobe, they only have X number of bodies per app team. And the managers have to work within the budget that the upper folks allot them. Tis Life, right?
The current head of their video apps took over what ... two years ago? And when he did, it was an app with a ton of long-term bugs and most of the code was truly ancient. So the first big job was bringing in a new head of app management to institute a system-wide process that targeted bugs/performance/stability at every stage of the process. As before, that was a small group working 'after' everything else was done.
So they have cranked through a veritable ton of long-standing bugs and rebuilt most of the app's code over the last two years. As Ivo Manalov (the bug killer manager) put it after being there about 10 months, the good news was they'd killed most of the long term bugs. The bad news was ... most of the remaining ones were deeply buried and hard to find and trace. And he figured, some would only be dashed after completely rebuilding the parts they affected.
So past that effort, they also had to look at rebuilding the color 'basis' of the program. It was built around a total Rec.709 system, assuming the users had a Rec.709 compliant monitoring system. First thing they did was add what they called "over-range/over-gamut" capability to the code so it could at least work with some of the HLG/PQ media coming in to use. But it was a cadged together system while they rebuilt the underlying color management/handling of the app.
They haven't formally announced they did that with this 2022 version ... but they have noted the color management process is completely changed. Well ... from my testing and pushing things around, and from the comments (at times rather ... vague, of course ... sigh) that I've gotten from the engineers, they HAVE to have completely rebuilt the underlying color engine/pipeline of the app.
It now does function very differently between Rec.709 and Rec.2100/HLG/PQ.It treats log-encoded media very differently now, 'sees' many log-encoded clips as HLG/PQ ... well, most people don't realize HDR media is by nature log-encoded. SDR (Rec.709) is 'integer-encoded' as someone told me.
The Lumetri controls affect things exactly different as I would expect between a log-basis and integer-basis color pipeline between SDR and HDR.
So ... yea, they have to have completely rebuilt the underlying engine/pipeline to get this behavior. And that is a MASSIVE change in the application.
No, they didn't totally stick the landing of this huge change, did they? As there are some log-encoded media that is a bit of a challenge to work with. And things like you can't work with a clip both in HDR in one sequence and SDR in a different one at the moment. And the proxy situation for HLG/PQ clips is totally busted.
So we'll need a major patch as soon as they can get it out. And from the ... quietness ... of their public beta releases, I'm expecting they're running an all-hands-on-deck bit of work trying to get 1) the color things sorted and 2) the Maxon & other plugin issues sorted. Among other things.
Both are acknowledged to be an issue. For the moment, this version is a bit of a challenge to many users. Hoping we get that patch ... soon.
Neil
1 Correct answer
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Hi Kevin. You are right, my mistake.
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