For me it was necessary because Adobe Premiere does not have a batch job setup. When I put movies on the web which is nearly all of them I do it in a few formats. Being able to drop the source file, select my presets and then have it uploaded automatically via FTP is a huge time saver, I can setup the jobs and goto bed and wake up done. The other huge factor was that I was able to buy it with an educational discount which saved quite a bit.