Cs4
 

Has any testing been done with Prospect and CS4? Prospect stable with Vista 64?

Prospect HD 3.x is not CS4 compatible. We will be releasing PHD 4 to CS4 a short while after CS4 hits the streets.

Will there be a grace period for people who have just bought the current codec? (ie. people who bought the codec in the last 8 weeks get a free upgrade to the new version, or something like that)

Yes, we normal have around a 90-day peroid for free upgrade with major version changes. If think anything purchased now when be covered, not sure about 8 week ago, but we won't know until the 4.0 release date is final. We have stated that Prospect 4K is getting a free upgrade.

The same is true for Aspect HD?

Yes, CS4 requires new versions of all our product line up.

I plan on upgrading to CS4 as soon as it's released to begin a project shortly after (probably a week max). Even if you guys haven't released an official update for Aspect HD (with support for Premiere Pro CS4), I should still be able to edit just using the codec, just without any of the effects or real-time playback support, even though it will probably playback in real-time anyway.

Is this most likely correct?

No that is not the case, CS4 is different enough to break decoding support (that supprized us to.) We hope to release patches for that before the offer new releases of our software, however it will be risking for you to upgrade to CS4 before we have confirmed decoding support.

David, do you think it is smart for anyone to jump right into CS4 with a production project?
Based on how CS3 came out, and the length of time to fix some bugs, I know I will sit back for a while and let others find the issues. CS3 is working smoothly, and I have no desire to go back with a new program and have issues.

Dave

I would stay with CS3 until all the tools you need are supported.

The reason I'm so eager to upgrade is due to a few little issues I have with Premiere Pro CS3, I'm hoping CS4 will get rid of all if not most of these issues. It would be great if Aspect HD 6 was released within the first week CS4 is released. Is that a possibility at all?

Tom, it's not a possibility at all. Our understanding from Adobe is that the third-party version of CS4 - that includes hooks for the SDK - won't be available until about a month after CS4 begins shipping. We have the CS4 SDK today, but Adobe won't be shipping the hooks in the commercial version for us to attach into until after the general release of CS4. That puts it in late November at the earliest, and I suspect we won't have support that soon. Obviously supporting CS4 is a high priority, but we don't have definitive data from Adobe yet to have confidence in announcing a ship date.

David, thanks for the great information and transparency!