Announcing Neo Family Version 5

[Marty Baggen]

Stephen.... you raise a good point.

Even though I have made the move to Edius 5.5, I have years of projects that I will need to access in CS4.

The offer of free upgrade to the Neo Family may not be wise in some cases.

If nothing else, I would hope that a rollback to Prospect HD 4 would be an uneventful task if need be.

[David Taylor]

Jay your point is exactly correct. We've been supporting PPro since PPro 6. At that time the Adobe engine was hopelessly underpowered and couldn't do HD. Cineform was the only way to do HD, and we were 3X-4X faster than the Adobe engine. But our own RT engine was a lot of work to evolve through the always-changing SDKs from Adobe, and was impossible to port to Mac.

In light of faster CPUs plus improvements in Adobe's own engine, we elected to drop our old engine and build our new engine using more Adobe components. Ultimately that offers more features for our customers and also cross-platform compatibility. It also frees up time for innovative new products like First Light.

Ray, I will respectfully offer that there will be significantly more value in Neo 4K v5 than in Prospect 4K v4.

Further, many on this board were with us when we began shipping Aspect HD in 2003 for $1200. When we discontinued Aspect HD it was $499. Volumes were lower in the early days and we needed higher prices to pay for development. As volumes increase we're pleased to drop our prices, but we hope you don't think it's because you're getting less! It's similar with the current move from Prospect to Neo. We're packing in a lot more, and are able to offer a lower price (relative to Prospect).

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by Marty Baggen

Stephen.... you raise a good point.

Even though I have made the move to Edius 5.5, I have years of projects that I will need to access in CS4.

The offer of free upgrade to the Neo Family may not be wise in some cases.

If nothing else, I would hope that a rollback to Prospect HD 4 would be an uneventful task if need be.

Wise in the business sense of keeping current customers...and for bringing us into the possibilities of a starting to work in a new 3D world...

[Robert Young]

Wow.... looking at all of the CS5 info on Adobe, plus all of David's clues about Neo4K v 5, looks like we are entering a new era.
I hope it is all true. The big question is-will it actually work ;-)
We will see!!

[Stephen Armour]

Now we just have to wait until the end of May to find that out, Robert! At least some of those bleeding edgers w/ the hp to make the upgrade worthwhile! In the meantime, we just hope NEO 4K 5.0 runs our oldware.

[Geoff Gartside]

I just upgraded from Prospect HD to 4K about 4 weeks ago for the normal upgrade price. ( It's still not working properly.)

Sorry, I just didn't realise that it was going to be available for nothing if i had just waited for a short while!!!

[Marty Baggen]

Stephen... the great news for me has been CFHD compatibility with Edius. I will eventually jump onto the i7 processor parade and CUDA GPU, but for now.... with my typical single stream edits.... there is no need. I've been editing silky smooth CFHD clips, togehter with Canopus' codec, and MXF files on the same timeline for a couple of weeks now, and it's wonderful. After a year or more of CS4 frustrations, I nearly forgot what "realtime" was.

After Effects remains, and may see an upgrade to the new version... but Premiere is now a legacy tool to enable me to access old projects.

[Stephen Armour]

I hear you, Marty. Hard part is parting with the suffering...I must be masochistic. But the idea of updating two CS3 machines and one CS4 workstation to CS5 is leaving me cold. That's a cool $2200 bucks just for upgrades and a wide open invitation to ship jumping, irregardless of the real or perceived benefits!

Where is Adobe in our real world of crunched budgets and strangled update money? Seems like they're still living back in 2006...

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Stephen Armour

I hear you, Marty. Hard part is parting with the suffering...I must be masochistic. But the idea of updating two CS3 machines and one CS4 workstation to CS5 is leaving me cold. That's a cool $2200 bucks just for upgrades and a wide open invitation to ship jumping, irregardless of the real or perceived benefits!

Where is Adobe in our real world of crunched budgets and strangled update money? Seems like they're still living back in 2006...

BUT... and here's the siren's song... if it all actually works as advertised, and all of the predecessors (CS4, etc.) were secretly just beta versions, and this is really THE ONE... then you'll be set- for years maybe. Then, all you'll have to do is actual video production- you won't know what to do with all of your spare time.
Actually, you would get used to it in about a month & decide that you just have to make the move to 3-D ;-)

[Stephen Armour]

Worst part Robert, would be seeing "red Corvettes" all primed and ready to roll...but the real engines (new CPUs + Fermi cards) missing! We'd need to pay for new engines too! Add it all up for our 3 workstations and it's close to $12k. Just for an upgrade? Cineforms done their part in this story, but it just seems Adobe is still living in "what used to be in 2003".

Throw in two new cams we're needing (choke choke choke)...and things start looking skinny indeed!

For a US-based "just lease 'em" scenario, maybe that's viable, but for much of the rest of the world...I'm afraid most will be left way behind, putting along in their VW's! I love the rush of Corvettes, but I guess we're probably more needing a crew cab pickup for the day-to-day work. Something we can better use for our workgroup type approach. Surely not sexy or standout, but cities aren't built by Corvettes!

It's getting harder and harder to justify heavy layouts for incremental benefits gained. Lot's of red paint and noise there, but we'll have to see some seriously good reasons now to make it worthwhile. Slick new features are great, but only if they truly add value and give serious gains in productivity.

How many times would we REALLY need these new features, and are most of them truly useful/productive for our workflow? I guess those are questions to weigh carefully before betting the farm on Red Corvettes.

Thanks again to Cineform for offering serious "bang for our bucks" and updating many of us for free, yet still allowing those with VW's to keep rolling forward. Too bad Adobe doesn't have that corporate mindset!

[Marty Baggen]

In the driver's seat of my VW (Edius), it feels like a Vette.

Hmmmm, looks like a car wreck up ahead...... Oh nope, not a wreck. Just another stalled CS4 on the side of the road.

[David LeGroin]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

DID YOU PURCHASE DURING 2010?
---------------------------------

Any customer who purchased a CineForm license during 2010 will get a free upgrade to version 5 of the equivalent product.

This is great news. I was just telling someone today to wait until v5 is released to place his order, but when I read this I told him to go ahead and order now!

How will these updates be handled? I purchased NeoScene for myself in February 2010.

[Stephen Armour]

No crash yet, Marty, but the VW might be nice. If you get low enough (like in the fiber bodied sport VW's), it feels like a Vette for sure. Long as it starts right, runs right, and gets good gas mileage, we'd probably feel very much at home.

When we download the "tryout" for Edius 5, then you'll know we're REALLY close. And if that's coupled with a sweet enough "jump ship" offer, we just might be seriously tempted to do it!

[Chris Barcellos]

So I ordered the Cineform Neo HD upgrade today, and because I have NeoHDV and NeoScene, I assumed I could upgrade for the $300.00 NeoHDV upgrade price, even though I had upgraded to Neo Scene earlier using that same serial number.

After I submitted my order, I got an immediate email message that said they needed to verify my account to determine that I had NeoHDV. So I submitted my NeoHDV serial number back immediately by return email. I thought all of that was quite strange, since I have been a regular customer of Cineform since HD connect days, and I don't understand why they had no record of my account under my email..

I received no response back from customer support over the next 5 hours. I am wondering was is up. I sent a second email asking for information on how long I was to wait, but still no response.

Edit: For some reason, I had to re-register my email address for an account, and can't figure out why that would occur either.

Next morning update: Resolution reached: As is usual, Cineform staff resolved the problem, and I am up and running again.

[Charles W. Hull]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

UPGRADE PRICING FOR PROSPECT FAMILY OWNERS
-------------------------------------------------

- Prospect HD v3 or earlier to Neo HD v5: $149
- Prospect HD v4 to Neo4K v5: Free. Yes, All Prospect HD v4 customers will get a free upgrade to Neo4K.
- Prospect 4K (any version) to Neo4K: Free.

-------------------------------------------------

A NOTE FOR THE ARITHMETICALLY CHALLENGED:
If you upgrade from a previous version of Prospect HD to version 4 of Prospect HD ($199) before we ship version 5, you will get a free upgrade to Neo4K v5.

Challenged I guess. I'm currently running Prospect HD v4, but I've gone through several updates and have no idea what the version was when I originally purchased Prospect HD, v3 or v4. Is the Neo4K v5 offer based on the version I'm currently running, or is it based on the version when I purchased Prospect HD? If it's the latter, how do I find out what version that was?