Update - CineForm Adobe CS4/CS5 Support

[Simon Zimmer]

I agree with Bruce.

In order to get the full potential of CS5 we will need to upgrade our RAM and an Nvidia graphics card. I will do it though because I want a MUCH better performing CS5 than CS4.

Simon

[Martin Rahn]

Originally Posted by Brian Parker

I wonder if we could talk about a refund for my purchase then. I still believe in your proudct, and I may purchase it again in the future when it works (and when I can afford the next upgrade to CS5), but I didnt get what I paid for, and I gave you guys an awful lot of faith.

I agree with Brian Parker's comments entirely. I have no intention of purchasing a new system nor upgrading to CS5. Given Adobe's history, I think anyone who blindly upgrades is simply nuts. So a free upgrade to Prospect with CS5 means nothing to me.

For years, CF has been promising realtime monitoring of the timeline via an HD monitor with Aspect, then Prospect. Now that CF has abandoned Prospect with CS4, once again, no deal. To me CF has no credibility, none whatsoever.

As am amateur, I have invested $700 in CF products with little to show for it.

I would sympathize more with CF except for the comments that their engineers were involved with other projects as indicated in various threads, measning to me that they were not even working toward completing what they advertised.

There are probably few people in my position, or perhaps Brian's position. The least CF could do is offer us a refund, since they have clearly not delivered as promised.

Martin Rahn

[Brant Gajda]

Good news that there is a free Cineform upgrade. However the downside is the ability to upgrade my CS4 to CS5. Not sure about the funds.

[Todd Clark]

You won't even need a real time engine in CS5.

[Mike Harvey]

Todd actually brings up a somewhat good point... with the new Mercury Engine, what would the advantages be of the Cineform RTE? Do you know yet if Mercury will play well with Cineform?

[James Park]

heh... CS4... This why Japan avoids anything with the number "4". Elevators dont show a 4th floor. Businesses avoid the number 4 like the plague. Canon purposely skipped "G4" in there G series cameras. Overall 4 is just bad. It is considered an unlucky number over there. I'm not really superstitious but CS4 really didn't pan well I guess. Anyways, I do appreciate David(s) being open and honest with us about Cineform's development. I do appreciate the free upgrade but I do hope next time around, everything will work out better. Movement to CS5 was going to be inevitable anyways... I guess in the coming months I'll have to prep up for that.

[Pete Bauer]

In case the posters are wondering, I moved several posts that were ONLY referencing Adobe CS5 from this thread about Cineform's plans to this thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...ck-engine.html

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by Mike Harvey

Todd actually brings up a somewhat good point... with the new Mercury Engine, what would the advantages be of the Cineform RTE? Do you know yet if Mercury will play well with Cineform?

Yep me too?

Other than FL which I dont use is there?

[Desmond Sukotjo]

Haha... with all that said, ready your pocket to start investing on new high-end hardware.

[Steve Pesenti]

A free upgrade seems the right conclusion to acknowledge customers' dissapointment. But when you consider the revenue a small company like Cineform will sacrifice in making this decision you have to applaud their customer commitment.

Points have been made elsewhere about Cineform's ventures into new areas such as 3D distracting their focus away from sorting the RTE. However this diversification has probably made it more viable for them to offer a free upgrade. Moreover, as the problem lay in an Adobe bug it seems likely the problem was unfixable. Cineform made the right call and will be around to serve its customers with great products in the future.

I only hope CS5 will not require me to invest in a supercomputer! But that will be Adobe's fault not Cineform's.

[Mike Harvey]

Originally Posted by Martin Rahn

...For years, CF has been promising realtime monitoring of the timeline via an HD monitor with Aspect, then Prospect. Now that CF has abandoned Prospect with CS4, once again, no deal. To me CF has no credibility, none whatsoever.

As am amateur, I have invested $700 in CF products with little to show for it.

I would sympathize more with CF except for the comments that their engineers were involved with other projects as indicated in various threads, measning to me that they were not even working toward completing what they advertised.

There are probably few people in my position, or perhaps Brian's position. The least CF could do is offer us a refund, since they have clearly not delivered as promised.

Martin Rahn

In Cineform's defense...

1) If they were waiting for Adobe to fix a particular bug, and unable to proceed with their work until this bug was fixed, what were their engineers supposed to do, sit around and twiddle their thumbs? That's losing money. Better to reassign them to other projects that they could work on, than sit around and wait for Adobe. They've been pretty open and honest about that.

2) And I don't mean to rag on you, but you're an amateur buying $2,500 of pro software that you knew wasn't fully functional when you bought it? You do realize that NeoScene is only $130, and the purchase price applies to a future upgrade to Prospect, right? That's what I did... bought NeoScene until Prospect had the RT engine. They've been open about their problems with Adobe. You can't blame them for a bad business decision when they offered a much cheaper alternative more suited to your situation.

3) It's not their fault they're abandoning an RT engine and other things for CS4, when they are waiting for Adobe to fix a bug and Adobe decides they aren't going to bother fixing it. That is something completely out of their control.

[Martin Rahn]

Mike:

Know what you are talking about before you jump to the defense of CF. It cost me $299, not $2,500 to upgrade to CS4 from the CS3 Production Suite and about $299 to upgrade to Prospect from Aspect which cost me $500. I paid for the Prospect upgrade SOLELY on CF's commitment to RT monitoring of the timeline using Prospect. THEY DID NOT DELIVER! They said nothing more than there was an Adobe bug. Well, what exactly is that bug? I have heard nothing but excuses from them. And then they abandon Prospect for CS5 which will cost big $$$ to buy another system to run CS5.

CF does not say their upgardes will work with CS5. They merelt say they are working on it as they said about CS4 and CS3.

The bottom line is that CF does not deliver. Period. If I do not hear from them about a refund, I will refer the matter to the Better Business Bureau or Small Claims Court.

[Brian Parker]

Martin,
If you want to hear from them about a refund then you should contact them directly, as I will do.
I see your point about promises made, and "a man's word" and all that, but I'm not entirely convinced that you have a solid case. You have a working product that allows you to edit cineform files and export to cineform from within Premiere. I guess that those are the concrete features that were advertised. It depends what their website told you at the time of purchase I guess.

In my case, I bought a product which advertised compatibility with mac cs3 Premiere, although after purchase and after going into the faq pages it turns out that there was a small caveat: Something along the lines of "Expected to work with mac PPRo CS3, but not tested by the staff".
At this time, there was no neoScene, and so I paid Y50,000+ for a slightly more pro product than I actually required at the time. I didn't mind though because I figured that I was only going to be getting better equipment over time anyway, so it was a future investment.
Anyway, it didn't work with CS3 at all. The video played back more jerkily than the native avchd files, and I was told to upgrade to the newly released CS4, as the company needed to move on, and couldnt go back and add support to CS3. They promised smooth playback on the mac PPro CS4 timeline within months. I dutifully upgraded to CS4 and paid another Y150,000.
Now it is almost years later, and I'm being told the same thing that I was told with CS3.

The statements earlier in this thread: "If we don't go back and support CS4 on the mac" and "we might consider...." are vague statements at best, and this is coming after concrete statements have been made and broken.

I really don't want to seem like someone coming here to vent and provoke. That's not my intention at all. I just want the product I paid for, because it's a really really good product. The one thing I won't do is pay any more money though. I feel that cineform owes me and other mac neoHD adobe users that bought the software within the last year.

[Pete Bauer]

The discussion is wandering from factual discussion to emotional flaming. I've removed some speculative (in other words, not factually supportable) inflammatory comments toward third parties, while still leaving the rather strongly worded on-topic discussion about Cineform undisturbed.

If you wish to arrange a refund or otherwise want to conduct individual business with Cineform, please do so directly with Cineform and not on this public message board.

[Paul Mailath]

I'm wondering if I should go back to CS3? - cineform works and the improvements weren't that much, I only moved up becasue of crashes in CS4 - I still got them only different ones.