News on Premiere Next at Adobe Max

[lasvideo]

Join us today at our #AdobeMAX keynote, live at 9:30 a.m. PT with CEO Shantanu Narayen and SVP @DWadhwani: http://adobe.ly/AdobeNext

[UlfLaursen]

I like that idea, Steven, with the exit strategy - would definatly work for me.

And yes, they should look at pricing too outside the US.

I am stil tempted of the offer for DKK 182  /  $ 32 per month as a CS6 user to upgrade to CC though, as I paid $ 650 for the last upgrade from CS5.5 to 6, and I would get even more applications. I would not use all of them but still...

Ulf

[Cocovanna]

But it's only for a year. Then your price rises to $1000/y (and you loose your investment if you drop out then)

[UlfLaursen]

How do you know that? I could have guessed that prices will go up after the first year for sure, but I trust it will be more reasonable than this, but I don't know for sure of course

Ulf

[Steven L. Gotz]

But it's only for a year. Then your price rises to $1000/y (and you loose your investment if you drop out then)

See? It's is nonsense like this that causes more anxiety than it is worth.

The cost for most people in the USA is about $30 per year for previous owners, or less with the educational discount. It rises to $50 per month after the first year for most people. The last time I checked, that was $600 per year, not $1000. Rabble rousers and alarmists are causing a lot of trouble for no reason other than to be a pothole in the road. It really should stop. Free speech is a wonderful thing and is certainly right up there in the list of things we prize highly in the United States. But lies and misleading "information" is getting in the way of reasonable conversations.

If Cocovana meant something other than US currency - then he/she should have said so. Like Ulf did.

People, censor yourselves. Think before you write. Speak the truth or voice your opinions, but when you state "facts" do what you can to make sure they are accurate please.

[Cocovanna]

The currently announced DK price is DKK 5.461/y or $962/y. And I am pretty sure, that the discount offered if you own CS3 or later stops after 12 months. I've been studying the terms closely.

[Cocovanna]

And Steven, my post was an answer to Ulf, so of course I'm speaking danish prices

[Cocovanna]

A few people in this thread has the view that CC is "no big deal" ... But for me, the price triples, without any fallback when I stop payment. That's a HUGE raise!

(Using Production Premium, skipping every second update)

[Biggles_Lamb]

[Moderator's note: although this post is listed as replying to Cocovanna, it is actually a reply to Steven L. Gotz]

How about deciding upon a opinion and staying with it, instead of rubbishing other peoples ideas and bouncing one way and then the other

Where do you get off saying that the subscription model is the way to go...........I certainly do not get that idea from all the posts who are negative about it

Get real, those of us outside the USA are subsidising users in the states with our higher prices

With the present Adobe subscription model we would pay for a lot of extra software that a large number of us just do not need. 

Let us assume that we are just primarily interested in Premiere................as far as the functionality is concerned just how good have the updates since CS3 been?

Ignore the changes from SD to HDV to HD, have the Premiere updates been worth the cost of upgrading to the next full CS or half CS version?

In my humble opinion no version upgrade of Premiere has actually been worth it

[personal comment removed]

[Steven L. Gotz]

I am not bouncing.

I will make it clear what I believe.

1. I believe that the subscription model will work out for the vast majority of people. I like inter-connectivity and access to every product. So do many others.

2.  I believe that some people will suffer because they only use two or three apps. Or, they do not want to be connected.

3. I believe that an exit strategy is required that allows people to buy an upgrade to CC and then when they stop paying they get to keep what they have been paying for all that time. That is what we should be fighting for with all of these posts.

4. I believe that prices outside the United States should be the same as in the US, with the addition of taxes levied by the countries themselves and accounting for exchange rates and various costs of doing business in those countries including translations - but if people in Denmark want the English version they should not have to pay for the translation services.

5. I believe that people are stating facts that are not in evidence. Not lies, but not the truth either. Scare tactics and misinformation are causing massive disruptions in the force.

6. I believe that the differences between Premiere Pro CS3 and CS6 (the upgrade I personally made) are significant and the GPU acceleration alone is worth the price of the upgrade.

7. I believe that many people think that the Creative Cloud is actually cloud based. Most of it is not. Mostly it is just a download service to get the software to your computer.

8. I believe that a US$50 per month entrance fee to the best software around will bring over so many users that Adobe stock prices will eventually rise to new heights and that people will that that idiot of a CEO is a genius. (He isn't.)

9. I believe that certain users should have their subscriptions subsidized for the services that they provide Adobe. I am thinking of Harm and Bill specifically because of the PPBM sites, not myself.

10. And last but not least, I believe that you have the right to your humble opinion. As do I.

Is that clear enough?

[Andy_Bay]

Steven, you say there is no proof that Adobe will raise the subscription prices in the future and call fears of this "nonsense".

Do you realize how absurd your trust for Adobe feels for the people who just HAD Adobe TRIPLE their prices?

[Steven L. Gotz]

Andy,

I am certain that Adobe will raise prices. It is inevitable. I just don't think it will be big dramatic raises.

You know the story of the frogs in the pot? If you raise the temperature a little bit at a time they stay in until cooked. If you try to toss them in boiling water, they jump out.

That is what people are claiming will happen, I think. That they will raise them outrageously and people will leave or stick it to us a little at a time until we are cooked.

It is my belief that many people would get stuck. Yes, It is true. But I also believe that the majority would move on to other products. Like I said in another post. If everyone donated $100 to Lightworks that product could turn into something fantastic. I believe in the market. I believe in supply and demand. And I believe that Adobe will lose many customers over this move. But I also believe they will attract some people who want better software but who could not afford the whole package at one time. Will it work out for them? I have no idea. Will it work out for me personally? I am certain that it will.

When I came back after a fews years away from editing video, I went with the cloud because $50 per month was better than $2500 up front. But I went in with my eyes wide open. And the subscription I use is my wife's. She is a teacher and gets a discount. Cheating? Not really. She does use Acrobat and occasionally Photoshop. And a lot of my projects lately are for her.

I do trust Adobe. I trust them to do exactly what they think is best for THEM! I just happen to think that this time it is also best for the majority of users. I could be wrong. We shall see. The point is to make money. To do that they need customers. To get and keep customers they have to have great software and appropriate prices. Are they doing that? I don't know. Nobody does. Yet.

[Alan_Craven]

Steven,

I think that your post #702 is an excellent summary of the state of play.  I tend to agree with all your points except 8, and also 1, the concept of which is simply not for me.

The very serious points 2,3, and 4, are going to be lost in the background noise generated by 5 and 7, plus other distractions.

Your point 4 regarding variations in pricing is, of course, nothing new.  It has always been Adobe's practice whilst I have been a user of their products.

[Steven L. Gotz]

Alan,

Yes, #2 is a big one that will not be addressed. Please excuse me for #4. We Americans tend to be US centric along with ego-centric (in my case at least). I just never had a reason to notice until my friend Harm brought it up so concisely.

All I can tell you is that persoanlly, I am having a ball with some of the new programs. I redesigned my web site with Muse just for the heck of it, and I am using Behance even though I have my own site. It is just too easy to post photographs and videos up there. I am really lookig forward to updates liek the one for Muse that came out in February. No big version number change, just a lot of great new features. And no release cycle worries.

If that happens with the other software it is going to be fantastic. New features at the click of a mouse. Anytime they are ready, and only when the user is ready to accept them.

[Andy_Bay]

So Steven, since you think so highly of CC can I ask you to think about a hypothetical situation:

Let's imagine you use the cloud happily for a few years and create tens of different projects with it. Then you start slowly realizing that Adobe has not released any major improvements to the software. Just small tweaks here and there. You start to feel cheated. You start to feel like you are Adobe's cash cow. What are your options now considering you have a couple of on-going projects in the CC?

In the old model you could speak the only language stock companies understand: money. You could simply say "not good enough Adobe, look's like I'll skip CS6 and wait for CS7". What can you do now when your work depends on staying hooked to the cloud?

[Harm_Millaard]

Andy,

There is another complication to this situation. No backward compatibility between projects, only forward.

Take this situation:

• You start with CS5.5 and create several projects. Fine.
• You upgrade to CS6 and update your projects to CS6. Still fine, because you still have CS5.5 for re-editing the original CS5.5 projects AND re-edit with CS6 versions as well.
• You upgrade to CC7 and update your projects to CC7 and add new ones. Now you are in a pile of trouble.
  • You can't stop your subscription, because your CC7 projects are not backward compatible with CS6.
  • You have to pay the 50% of non-paid months when ending your subscription and the discretionary price Adobe charges.
  • You lose access to everything you created with CC7.

This would not be a problem if a CS7 upgrade were offered. Then you would retain the possibility to edit all CS5.5, CS6 AND CS7 projects whenever you want. You would still have the problem of backward compatibility, but you can access all three versions all the time and not be the victim of Adobe greed.

For perpetual licenses the upgrade policies have already been tightened, you can only upgrade from CS5 and higher, no longer from CS3 or CS4, but if you join the CC Crowd, you can still profit from the 12-month reduced pricing from CS3 and up. It is clear where they want to go. This raises another question, why are CS3 owners, who skipped CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 upgrades, treated equally? Is that right? It does not feel that way.

[Steven L. Gotz]

Andy,

Fair question.

First let me say that I am fully aware that the Creative Cloud was pitched directly ay people like me. I just checked and I have actually used 8 of the applications since I signed up. I am also using Behance and Prosite and I am using Muse - which is only available by download. It never had a box to begin with.

If I have ongoing projects, it would probably never occur to me to quit paying. However, during a pause, let's say I decide I really am not getting the same value as I used to get.

Let's back up to June 17th of this year first. I look at the amount of money I would have paid over the few years you specified. I look at the $50 per month I would have to pay if my wife stopped teaching. Let's go with ten years. That would be $6000. Let's assume a price increase of around double over the years. So let's make it a total of $10,000 paid to Adobe just to really jack it up high.

If I stopped what I was doing and called my financial guys, I could tell them to put about $10,000 in an annuity to cover the lifetime costs associated with Adobe software for the rest of my life. The growth on a guaranteed 6% annuity would just cover it, and I would expect the increases to match the increases in the value of the annuity, so that would do the trick.

I didn't pay that $2500 so I only need to cover the subscription. I believe that paying $2500 for CS6, then paying an upgrade fee for CS7, then CS8 and so on, it would probably come to about the same amount over the years. And I would have had to wait for releases to get new features.

Now, a lot of you folks already paid that $2500, so I think if you paid for the next upgrade to CC, then you should get to keep the software you are renting when you stop paying. But that is something that does not apply to me.

Once again, since I am using so many of the products, and the online features, they would have to really screw up before I even noticed the lack of new features. Unless I bought a new camera that was not supported, of course. I have done that before with HDV and had to wait for Adobe to catch up.

Heck, I can't say for sure that this is going to work out for me. I can tell you it is pretty much aimed at me, and other people like me. People who use fewer applications than I do, and who do not want to be connected, they are certainly going to suffer with this model. But not me.

The Creative Cloud let me back into the game for rock bottom prices and I am pleased as can be with the results.

Your mileage may vary.

[Andy_Bay]

Sorry Steven, I'm not really sure that I understood your actual answer to my question, so let me rephrase it "What are your exit options if you ever, during the rest of your life, get dissatisfied with Adobe and the quality of their software?"

I'm not sure why you started talking about annuities? Is this to convince me and others that 10k is not that much money if invested elsewhere? I can certainly personally think of better use for 10k than an annuity.

[Jim_Simon]

What are your exit options if you ever, during the rest of your life, get dissatisfied with Adobe and the quality of their software?

The same as they are now, move to something else.

[Andy_Bay]

Jim that's a huge over-simplification and you now it.

It's certainly very easy for me at the moment to move to something else, since I know I can return to my long-term projects when I have time to do so. I can switch to Avid or OpenShot and create my new projects there. And because I have perpetual CS licenses I don't have to worry about my unfinished Adobe projects, because I can return to them whenever I feel like.

If I spend a year "in the cloud" I can't move to something else, because now all my files are in the CC formats. That would mean I loose hundreds of hours of work if I ever dare to stop my cloud subscription.

[tclark513]

Jim that's a huge over-simplification and you now it

That's what he has been doing for the whole thread!  It's obvious that he's fine with getting ripped off and I finally chose to ignore his comments all together.  For me they don't have any value due to the fact that he can't see the obvious problems that the other thousands of people see with the new CC.

[Jim_Simon]

Jim that's a huge over-simplification and you now it.

Granted.  So...here's the long version.

I think the overwhelming majority of projects are one offs.  We do the edit, get approval, and move on to the next job.

I think some small percentage of projects we'll go back to and change weeks, months or even years later.

I think an even smaller percentage of projects will be updated on a regular basis.

(The above is considering all Premiere Pro projects on the whole.  There may be specific editors who have a majority of continuing or frequently updated projects.)

So here are the general options beginning June 17th.

1. Upgrade to CC for everything, confident that as long as your in business, you will have the funds to keep using Adobe software.  (Just like you're confident that you'll be able to pay the electricity bill, which is required to use any NLE, and in my neck of the woods at least costs even more than CC.)

2. Upgrade to CC for one offs and keep using the boxed version for those continuing projects.

3. Upgrade to CC for one offs and switch to something else for the continuing projects.

4. Finish your one offs and then switch to something else for all projects, assuming (perhaps falsely, given FCP X) that whatever software you switch to will remain relevant to your 'current' needs.

And within those general options there are any number of suboptions, like choosing option 1 now and then option 4 later.  Continuing projects may have to be rebuilt from scratch, or they may not (if you export an AAF and switch to Avid, for example).

Each editor will have to make an evaluation of how many occasionally or continuing updated projects they work on, how likely they are to keep using Adobe software in the future, and make a choice on what's best for them.  But there ARE choices.  Only one option has been taken away, the ability to use new versions of PP without paying the subscription.  If you want that option back, fine.  I've no quarrel with that.  But the doom and gloom hyperbole is waaaaay out of hand.

[Andy_Bay]

I think the overwhelming majority of projects are one offs.  We do the edit, get approval, and move on to the next job.

I think some small percentage of projects we'll go back to and change weeks, months or even years later.

I think an even smaller percentage of projects will be updated on a regular basis.

It might work like that for some, sure. I'm constantly working on my own art projects, whenever the commercial ones allow that. And it certainly happens even with the commercial projects, that I need to revisit them. A few months ago a client called about a corporate video, which was finished in 2010. They wanted to include new material because they had bought brand new machinery. No problem for a perpetual licence.

So here are the general options beginning June 17th.

1. Upgrade to CC for everything, confident that as long as your in business, you will have the funds to keep using Adobe software.  (Just like you're confident that you'll be able to pay the electricity bill, which is required to use any NLE, and in my neck of the woods at least costs even more than CC.)

2. Upgrade to CC for one offs and keep using the boxed version for those continuing projects.

3. Upgrade to CC for one offs and switch to something else for the continuing projects.

4. Finish your one offs and then switch to something else for all projects, assuming (perhaps falsely, given FCP X) that whatever software you switch to will remain relevant to your 'current' needs.

A few comments. First of all you write "confident that as long as your in business, you will have the funds to keep using Adobe software." I am confident indeed that I will have those funds available (unless  of course Adobe raises the prices even more in the future). The problem is, there is no way for me to know if the product will be worth paying for. By the time I find out, I'm already screwed with no real exit option. It's not the money that worries me, but loosing the only way I can to push Adobe to strive for good software development. If I can't vote with my wallet, the I can't really vote anymore. I just have to do with whatever crumbs Adobe decides to throw from the table.

I also think you forget a couple of great options:

5. Stick with CS6 since CC doesn't offer any major improvements anyway. This option is good for at least 5-10 years based on the fact that CS3 still works great on all of my computers.

6. Make noise and educate enough people of what's going on to start a movement, which will eventually make Adobe put it's tail between it's legs and make a full turn begging it's not already too late.

The crazy part is that Adobe is selling expensive digital goods with a huge margin. It just doesn't make sense to turn down free money people are ready to throw at them in exchange for copy paste ones and zeroes.

But the doom and gloom hyperbole is waaaaay out of hand.

Did you see what happened to Netflix when they tried to do something their customers didn't want? And that was nothing compared to what Adobe has just done to it's long time customers. And there are many people who just got a 3 x price increase. How many times is it ok for Adobe to multiply the price before people can start with some hyperbole?

[Biggles_Lamb]

For the benefit of Student users, let us look at the 18 month version cycle

In the UK the full student version of CS5.5 Production Premium cost £300, after using it for 18 months that equates to £16.67 per month. 

Then it is time to upgrade

Now Adobe are offering a Student CC at £15.88 per month for the first year so that is £190.56 paid to them in the first year. 

Now £300 - £190.56 = £109.44 which is the amount a student user would have to pay in the next six months to break even over the 18 month product cycle

The £109.44 would mean a monthly subscription of £18.24.....just how realistic is this? 

Any other subscription higher just is not value for money

[Biggles_Lamb]

Andy

Thank goodness you have joined in and are trying to get those who like the prospect of being ripped off to see sense..............alas I believe that you will fail. 

Harm's excellent price models fail to convince those with the head in the Cloud.

I posed a question..................as far as the functionality is concerned just how good have the updates since CS3 been?  

From posts readers are not reading the question, it is a functionality not performance, in reality there have not been any significant improvements in the functionality of Premiere, CS3 played back in real time, as did all the versions up to CS6, the tools are in the main the same, the effects are the same, the audio mixer is similar.

Yes, the performance demands on Premiere have increased due to the changes in media format, BUT how we use Premiere has changed very little, OK so the desktop has changed .........what else?

The fact is that those who have updated every version as far as Premiere is concerned have had little benefit in terms of value. 

I went from CS3 to CS5.5 and found very little difference.

CS 5.5 edits my AVCHD files so why on earth should I upgrade, so I'll continue to edit with Premiere until it fails and the registration no longer works (as it no doubt will one day) then I will move over to another edit system such as Edius, Lightworks or HitFilm, meanwhile all of you in the cloud will have paid thousands of bucks for very little

[Jim_Simon]

Harm's excellent price models fail to convince those with the head in the Cloud.

I actually thought Harm made a pretty sensible argument in post 452, and said so in post 463.