Worth upgrading from CS5.5?

[Dan Burnap]

I edit AVCHD in CS5.5, there are no major issues and I'm not gagging for improvements in any particular area.

What would sway me to upgrade would be if CS6 encoded faster to DVD e Blu-ray in Encore? Or scrubbing the timeline was smoother and faster?

Thanks

[Pete Bauer]

Too soon to give you a personal benchmark yet, but those are both areas that Adobe improved. Encore is now 64 bit and has performance improvements. PPro interface and editing/trimming is vastly better. If in doubt, download a trial and give it a go.

[Richard D. George]

I am no expert, but I upgraded to Production Premium CS6. I have not yet used it much, but will when time allows.

Three of my reasons for upgrading:

1) I come from a "stills" background, and I have come to truly appreciate Lightroom. I have three licences for LR 4. I have read that Prelude for video editing is somewhat like Lightroom, which if true, would be a real plus for me. Prelude comes with the Production Premium CS6.

2) Production Premium CS5.5 did not have the latest version of Photoshop, but Production Premium CS6 does (per the Adobe person I chatted with).

3) Skipping upgrades might eventually come back to haunt me, so I have decided to always stay current. The upgrade price seemed reasonable ($375.00, if memory serves).

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Dan Burnap

I edit AVCHD in CS5.5, there are no major issues and I'm not gagging for improvements in any particular area.

What would sway me to upgrade would be if CS6 encoded faster to DVD e Blu-ray in Encore? Or scrubbing the timeline was smoother and faster?

For me it was worth it. And I didn't make the upgrade from CS5 to CS5.5, which wasn't worth it to me (even though I really wanted Audition, it wasn't enough to get me to upgrade).

The speed of an encode problem: Well, it depends. If you are using AE for a lot of your frames, then you should read this document all the way to the bottom, where it says: A linked After Effects composition will not support Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing.

What this means in practice is that AE will take your nice fast eight core machine down to one core for all the frames that AE touches, if it's dynamically linked, during an export operation. So, using Encore for DVD, which uses ME for exporting, if it dynamically links AE, takes a huge performance hit -- same as with CS5 or CS5.5 by the way. It's just not fixed in CS6. If you're interested in this, please make a feature request. The more requests we make, the more it pushes this up the priority ladder to where they might fix it.

Otherwise, there are tons of improvements across the entire CS6 suite. Scrubbing the timeline in PPro is certainly different and improved IMHO. I really like the JKL keyboard shortcuts for scrubbing. But if you really like the jog wheel, it's gone, which has upset some people.

I've had CS6 Production Premium up less then a week (installed it last Wednesday), so I'm not even scratching the surface yet. I've been mostly concerned with that dratted AE performance problem. But now that that's out of the way I can move forward and learn more.

Ah, one other caution. Part of what Adobe did with CS6 was to overhaul their help system. As a result, there are documents you might want that aren't available yet. Like all the PDFs of the main "Using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6" style user manuals. Not too bad for the mainline products, but for a brand new product like SpeedGrade, well, how do you use it? IDK. Wait for the manuals I guess.

[Dan Burnap]

Thanks chaps. I did install the demo version and had a quick play although you cant use encore unless you actually go ahead and buy it which is annoying.

I dont use much dynamic linking with AE but 100% of my stuff is DL'ed from Premiere.

[Richard D. George]

Vincent Laforet has a ultra-mini tutorial for Speed Grade on his blog, which provides at least a taste.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Dan Burnap

Thanks chaps. I did install the demo version and had a quick play although you cant use encore unless you actually go ahead and buy it which is annoying.

I dont use much dynamic linking with AE but 100% of my stuff is DL'ed from Premiere.

When exporting just from PPro, with little AE involvement, it just flies. This is perhaps due to ME being newly rebuilt as 64 bit.

I've had CS6 up for less than a week, and none of the projects I'm working right now are that close to Encore work -- maybe weeks away. But Encore is reportedly new -- 64 bit now. Supposed to be large improvements in building menus, buttons, speed of operation, etc. IDK, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

[Dan Burnap]

Went ahead and bought the upgrade today, that sort of money every 18 months or so isnt bad i suppose.

Will finish off my current projects before using it though, just to be on the safe side.

It will also mean I'll do a clean install of Win 7 and make a new ghost image for my PC. Lots to be done!

Thanks for all the info.

[Al Bergstein]

Dan, I've been experciencing bugs in 6.0. Enterwith caution. Fall back if needed.i'm back in 5.5 until some issues are solved. Many problems with mxf files. You might be luckier.I'm surethings will sort out w/ next upgrade.

[Pete Bauer]

I've done several long-form multi-cams with Canon MXF and CS6 has been rock-stable, as well as so much easier to edit than before.

Al, are you sure your problems are related to software bugs? If so, DO report to Adobe. But I wonder if you might have a system problem. I recently had to replace RAM after figuring out that a single stick had gone bad...only created problems when software tried to access that particular memory address. That's only one of many possible problems, of course. In any case, from my vantage point, I'm pretty confident it is not an "until the next upgrade..." situation.

PS: Bruce, you've cross-posted in several threads that aren't about AE or Dynamic link regarding Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously. I need to point out that this instance-spawning feature is distinct from multithreaded processing, which is still in force through DL. Beyond that, please locate that particular discussion in the rendering performance thread that Jay started:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...imes-free.html

or it's own thread.

[Al Bergstein]

Hey Pete. Yes, I think I have an underpowered graphics card, so I have just received a new nVidea dual slot one. The lack of a good one may be the cause. No blue screens so I don't think it's hardware, but I'll keep an eye on it. I have no problems at all with my setup other than with CS6.0 (though it doesn't always crash). I just completed a short piece with 6.0 today. It's the MXF multi cam that seems to be giving it problems, and with a underpowered card, well, that's likely the story.

So the concern is that while the same footage is rock solid with 5.5., with CS 6.0 I have to worry right now. More to report after I make the upgrade, which has to wait until after deadlines for paying work are met, and a decent restore point & backup is set.