Is the adobe video suite losing it's relevance?

Report · Mar 01, 2017

Having been a long time user of the video suite I find myself asking the question, are adobe starting to lose relevance?

It seems like business model and development strategy are focused on attracting new users and not satisfying existing customers with practical needs in increasingly demanding times.

If like me you've purchased a mac pro with multiple cores you're probably frustrated as I am seeing only one or two of the cores active whilst I have clients breathing down my neck waiting for the next version of my current project to finish rendering.

I'm also experiencing new crashing issues in the latest version of premiere and find the dynamic link reliability, consistency and speed to be poor. There is still no serious 3d offering which is increasingly needed to differentiate high-end content.

I can't remember how many obvious feature requests i've made only to see these ignored whilst seeing new almost gimmicky features introduced.

I've been a huge fan of adobe for many years as they used to seem to make significant improvements in new versions whereas since the introduction of creative cloud it feels like they're doing the bare minimum to sustain locked-in customer base.

It really feels like they've stopped caring about their users and I wonder how long it will be before the likes of the apple suite and black magic begin to attract a larger share of the professional market that I will expect to filter down and affect adobe user base across the board.

What's frustrating is that adobe are perfectly placed to offer almost an all-in-one solution for high turn-over creative content production but I feel like they're losing momentum with the mature crowd.

Would love to hear other peoples views on this topic.

Spencer Carpenter

Creative Producer

Message was edited by: JSM To remove link.

Report · Mar 01, 2017

I'm in the process of switching to Resolve myself, just because it handles my CinemaDNG media properly. In fact, I just cut my first two projects in Resolve.

And as a long time forum user, there is a very noticeable shift in the...'caliber'...of Premiere Pro users.

Report · Mar 01, 2017

Yes and with the fusion integration into resolve that's a very decent setup. Good luck.

Report · Mar 01, 2017

I agree. Its not just premiere, the lack of attention to detail at adobe does my head in. Things I've been complaining about since 2003 are still problems. The whole process of moving your prefs, plugins and presets after a clean install is from the ark.. Currently finding premiere stable to use, but utterly crapola for rendering. (which I don't get because it's rendering previews fine). I've always loathed after effects (I was spoilt by using discreet logic effect for a couple of years). So the idea of resolve/fusion is tempting. I think they'll see increasing competition from small lighter suites with new codebases.

If I ditched premiere, I'd probably ditch the whole suite (and get the photographers suite instead).

Report · Mar 02, 2017

They definitely need to knuckle down and put some razor-sharp focus on real-world features and usability. The amount of resources they have obviously spent in the recent past on the Welcome screen itself is mind-boggling. A classic case of (not actually) fixing what was never broken, while annoyingly, there is SO much to fix (yes, I did yell out there). Not appealing at all to long-time customers of the suite.

I hope that they aren't going the Apple way of deciding to spurn all their more advanced users in favour of catering to a more novice population. Ironically enough, Premiere got its foothold precisely because of Apple's decision to go full retard on their FCP 7 update.

I'm also looking at a switch to Resolve for editing. The fact that they have got so much right so quickly, and seem extremely eager to cater to their core audience is very heartening.

Report · Mar 02, 2017

I have to say if they develop fusion to contend with After Effects on the motion graphics front then I'll be sold on the black magic offering.

The fact fusion is solid, has comprehensive native 3d, versioning control for linked clips between resolve and fusion, is node based and as a company they don't mess around is very tempting.

Also as I said in order to create high end content/work jobs that are actually exciting we need to push ourselves outside what's included in the box with AE. Relying too much on plug-ins is starting to feel a bit wrong when the core package could simply be developed to cater for serious features.

For me AE should be looking to:

Fix obvious instabilities and look to address more cores in rendering

Fix dynamic link speed issues and introduce versioning for linked clips with premiere

Introduce a node based option

Support 3d meshes and rendering natively on CUDA and Open CL

Purchase rights to include many many scripts from aescripts developers

Pull through selected animation tracks from AE to premiere (which means premiere inherits AE's curve editor)

Then it would be great!

Report · Mar 02, 2017

Adobe is no longer intersted in fixing bugs that have been in the application for years, or one can even say that the priority has never been very high on the priority list. Today their main goal is to attract new users, mainly Mac users by adding features from FCP7 or adding new meaningless bling-bling features that are far less needed or wanted than transitions that work and behave correctly.

I remember when Creative Cloud became the only licensing option that the programmers/staff screamed halleluja since from then on they could release patches and updates as soon as possible and that they were glad that the old release cycle were gone, iow full version > pach update > .1 update > patch update > .2 update, etc. "Hell yeah, now we can adress issues must faster than before!"

Today we know that the release of full versions/patches are exactly the same slow process that it was before so nothing did change. Just look at the issues with the Lumetri panel with it´s mislabeled sliders in CC2017. It did take some time before that one got adressed. AFAIK, Lumetri panel has problems with clipping whites today. Ohh, it will be fixed in the next sometime-to-be-released update. Why isn´t an issue like that fixed now?

Another example is After Effects. They dropped the multi processor feature in CC2015 with the good intention to rewrite it. Now we have CC2017 but the code for proper multi core support is not yet finished. Lack of staff, lack of resources, new bling-bling feature more important?

The Program Manager for Adobe Premiere Pro is more interested in wearing a straw hat at NAB dancing around on the floor and being the funny crazy guy. He´s not even communicating with the beta testers. Former Program Managers did.

Premiere Pro has sadly enough been on a downhill path for some time now and the beta testers input is too often ignored. Today it feels like the old days when i had a Matrox card and had to use workarounds all the time to get things done. I have to work with workarounds in every project today: Ohh, the transition looks bad? As a workaround just go to the sequence settings and un-check the "composite in linear color" and the dissolve will look normal and smooth. Ehh, is this still the case with CC2017? (Yes it is...)

They has us as subscribers, so why should they shape up?

Report · Mar 02, 2017

Today their main goal is to attract new users, mainly Mac users by adding features from FCP7 or adding new meaningless bling-bling features

I've noticed the same. Then I read that the Premiere Pro project manager, Al Mooney, came from Apple.

Figures.

Report · Mar 03, 2017

...spurn all their more advanced users in favour of catering to a more novice population.

Sadly - I think that's exactly the case. Buy our software and you, too, can be a 'pro'...

Those of us with 20+ years experience who crave reliable, robust, professional software are a tiny minority.

Mike A.

Report · Jul 06, 2017

I may not have as much experience with PP as some of you but I agree 100% with everything on this thread and I'm happy to find I'm not alone. Needing to use work arounds for simple tasks (pre-encoding transitions that don't encode well in the final encode) is a real pain and slows the whole editing process down quite a bit. Let's not get into the crashes either. Or the all important color change from yellow to blue. Please, Adobe, just get this thing to work reliably.

It's also pretty sad that I need to use Handbrake (free!) to get a high quality small file size, needing to first encode the Sequence through AME as a larger quality file and then run through Handbrake to get a near similar quality (to the human eye, on small screens) at only 4% of the size. (The client wants very small files.) I've tried many different settings options and I can get close with AME but not nearly close enough.

How did I find this thread? Web search: premiere pro catering to amateurs Why? Because do we really need (un)Essential Sound? A feature that buries the controls I actually need. It's like an extra 'on' switch for Dynamics Processing and a Hard Limiter, et al.

Report · Jul 06, 2017

Might want to read/watch this on cross dissolve: Free Impact Dissolve from FilmImpact - PremierePro.net

Report · Jul 06, 2017

Wow, synchronicity, I just installed Resolve last week out of frustration with several of the issues shared by others on this thread. And wow, if Jim Simon (a level-8 PrPro stalwart I've been following here for years) is disheartened too, this looks like a thread the staffers on forum should be reading carefully (I say this with with all due respect to the front-line staffers I interact with, who are all extremely helpful, professional, and generally maintain unfailing good attitudes in the face of our heated dissatisfaction).

I remember I first purchased CS6 for my current shop in 2011 because of my frustration with Apple's shift in business model (ditching creative pros to focus on iOS) and the humiliating burn that was and is FCPX, AKA "iMovie Pro." Each CC update lately seems to bury or break tools I rely on, in favor of fangley half-tested gimmicks that force me to stop work and retrain for no good reason.

I downloaded Resolve last week after a frustrating half-day spent/lost on sales-support chats and calls trying to purchase additional license resources from Adobe (all I wanted was another seat added to my existing Adobe ID, but I don't need the extra features of the "business" subscription). Frustrated, I put my money back in my pocket and installed the Resolve beta on a machine to which I had hoped to add CC, and so far I'm impressed with the pragmatic simplicity of DavRes. I am likely to go ahead with the paid version at some point after I have my hands around the entire workflow.

Thanks y'all for being candid about your challenges.

Report · Jul 09, 2017

I like that BMD dropped the full price down to $300. I'll be spending my money on that as well, once the final version of Resolve 14 hits.

Report · Aug 14, 2017

I just made to move from FCP7.....after a couple of projects under my belt....I am ready to keep moving on! You would think that after moving to subscription based software, that the top brass would be like "treat your subscriber better, and give good service" you know since we take everyones money every month.....yeah right customer service is the worst now. They have your revolving payment...not like they need to try and put a human face on you.