I have had it with adobe
 

I deliberately didn't post this in the Adobe forum as the issue is broader than that. For two weeks now, I've been getting "warnings" that my Creative Cloud subscription was about to (and now HAS) expired. Except that I RENEWED it before the older one expired. Now the program has locked me out and when I try to launch Premiere Pro (CS6) I get a window telling me that the sequence I'm trying to open doesn't exist. I go into the program as a "new project" and there I find that ALL THE HI DEFINITION OPTIONS ARE GONE!! I AM FURIOUS!! Numerous attempts to get this resolved through Adobe's (outsourced) customer service department have been a gigantic waste of time...clearly, as my problem has not been resolved.

I am an event and corporate shooter (SPC) and would like some insights on the best alternative (PC platform, please) editing software, because I am PULLING THE PLUG ON ADOBE, and I'm going to be very outspoken about it. Adobe, if you monitor these forums at all, you've got one royally pissed off customer on your hands. And I've got screen shots of my PAID RENEWAL to prove it!

Sorry for the rant, gang!

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I use Sony Vegas Pro on my pc editing station (and CS6 Premiere Pro on mac at work), and it's been quite a solid platform for me.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Edius pro is my weapon of choice.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Edius is not the most well known or tied-in regarding plugins or 3rd party software but you will not find a faster more solid editing platform. I have been using it for 10 years and it has matured quite a bit from the early days.

I use an affordable Blackmagic Intensity for external monitor output. Once you learn the Edius way it is so very efficient.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

It depends what type of work you do, Lightworks strengths lie in narrative, story telling type editing, but it is another option. People have moved over from other NLEs because they like the way Lightworks works by putting the material first. You've the choice of a subscription or purchase.

Currently it's PC Windows and Linux, but the Mac public bets is expected on 11th June. It's not a newcomer, it was one of the two original NLEs..

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I really hate to beat a dead horse, and I know I'm not alone, but circumstances such as yours have been my worry ever since Adobe announced it would be employing a subscription-only model.

As a former SQA Team Leader at the corp HQ of a Fortune 500 company, I have some experience in testing requirements and procedures, as well as the pressure to release updates or entirely new versions of software. While testers can never please all the parties involved, my sense is that "fixes" are being made available by Adobe before adequate software testing has been done. (I think "exemplary" software testing might only be practiced in the case of life-sustaining systems, e.g. medical devices, and perhaps some security, battle-situation, and monitoring software).

I like Adobe's suite of applications when they work; when they don't they can cause projects to fall behind schedule. I've lost some time and money, and at least 1 deadline since subscribing to CC, and have learned to be suspicious of updates to it.

Personally, I don't like the subscription model Adobe uses; it seems your - and others' - experience lends credence to the "greed perspective", i.e. that they ensure they get their revenue before tending to customer needs.
Now, how much time out of your day will be spent searching for and contacting Adobe to iron-out the situation? Will you get a "credit" of any kind, e.g. a free month's worth of subscription? Not likely. Meanwhile, your project languishes and you - and your customer(s) - suffer the consequences of time, money, and reputation.

I sympathize with anyone who is paying for a service and cannot use that service to its' full extent. Consequently, I'm considering adding - and transitioning to - Edius for my "bag o' tricks".

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I wouldn't hold my breath on the Mac beta, they've been promising that thing for what, 2 years now?

The PC version is a solid choice, though.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

The Lightworks Mac alpha is being tested by users at the moment. The hold up seems to have been the Version 12, since they've had Lightworks publicly running on Mac since last year's NAB.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I started on Sony Vegas when it was at version 4 many years back and it has served me well ....For some reason I always found Adobe software painful to use and expensive so to be honest I have never installed any Adobe NLE's on my stations.

It's like buying a car ...everyone is different and some will swear by one model and others will rip it to shreds.... sadly the choice comes down to you and you alone. I also get wound up when I get ripped off so if that was me I would dump them immediately just out of principle!! Probably not the most practical thing to do but nevertheless satisfying!

Try a few NLE's .. Most have trial versions available

Chris

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I've just switched to Edius Pro 7. Loved you can throw any format on the timeline without a hassle, 4K ready (if I take the leap) and can output in many file formats.
Coming from Adobe I'ts a bit of a learning curve but not too stressful.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

When I was looking for a new NLE I wanted minimum learning curve and the quickest possible transition so I downloaded all the trials I felt would do the job and chose on the basis of "If I can use this without having to use any sort of help or manual, then that's the one I want"

Sony Vegas won hands down ..it was logical and simple and I edited and rendered a short clip very easily. Edius was a serious contender but although excellent just ground to a halt with workflow issues (even help didn't assist) so that got dropped. My buddy bought Adobe CS5 and said the manuals required to drive it were enough to open a small public library so I passed on that too.

Try them all and see what says to you ... "wow, that was really simple to do"

Chris

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

+1 for Sony Vegas. I switched from Premiere to Vegas right after Adobe went the subscription route.

I was a long time Adobe user, but was afraid of both subscription price hikes and problems like Terry reported. I know a few others who have had similar problems.

Rob

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Sad story
I have been with adobe for 15 years. I have studied the books, took the tutorials, bought the plugins, and spent many hours on the phone keeping our relationship working. I spend several hours a day with adobe. I knew as soon as I heard about CC that our relationship was over. Yes I tried to hang on then, adobe cut it off with an email. Adobe will no longer support CS6. I was crushed. Now I am starting to rebuild my life and am looking for a new special software to spend time with. I would however like one that is easy to transition to. Vegas is starting to sound good so I will be checking her out soon. Does Vegas work with Smartsound?

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I want to thank everyone for their valuable insights! The app seems to be running for now, but in one project I was working on, all the AVCHD files I had imported were suddenly "offline." If I weren't already pissed enough, this just amped me up another 10 notches! After my original import, I renamed the files to more closely match what I was doing (talking head interviews), so I literally had to go back to the raw files and relink them. I AM SO DONE WITH ADOBE!! I am going to clear out my in-work projects, and--as "The Donald" might say--Adobe, YOU'RE FIRED!!!

I'll be checking between Vegas and Edius. Both seem to support event and corporate shooters best. I didn't see any input on how Vegas handles multiple formats on a timeline, but I did see from the comments that Edius handles it well.

Again, sincere thanks for the feedback! DV Info ROCKS!!

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Post Script: Jeff Sengstack is a terrific guy and has done dozens of outstanding tutorials on Adobe products over the years, and I respect him very much. I think Jeff participates in DVInfo.net's forums. Jeff, if you're out there, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

~TW

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Hysterical! I have been dating her for 15 years too. And the milk was far from free! I refuse to buy the diamond and be forced into a commitment where I will surely suffer long term effects. Everyone changes after a marriage. Divorce is ugly, painful and expensive. I pity those who go to the alter, it is not to late to run!

Seriously...it is not just another software. It is as important to creating and delivering my product as my cameras are. This is a deadline driven industry. No one is going to hold my work hostage on servers called a cloud or anything else. Bailing on Adobe is not optional for me. It is mandatory. I am still very upset that I wasted years investing my time, money, and effort on a product I still want to use but cannot. CC is a business model, not a product upgrade, I am not doing it!

Steve

Steve

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Before I sold my Z1 I had zero problems mixing HDV and DSLR video in Sony Vegas. It works with multiple formats very well.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Good to know, thanks! I've been out of the loop lately, too busy!

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

+ 1 for Vegas with Edius a strong runner up.

Vegas video. Mix any format in any project at any resolution, any frame rate, PAL, NTSC, SD, HD, 4K, ProRes, MOV, DNxHD, MPEG, MXF, P2, AVCHD, XAVC and in 99% of cases you will be fine. No transcoding no re-wrapping. It handles them all natively. When I have had issues it has in 99% of cases been with something that has been mangled in QuickTime or some strange file out of Avid. Just yesterday someone gave me EX 35-mbit .MOV files out of FCP that only displayed the audio. Had to re-wrap them. For me Vegas is the best all round most stable and intuitive editor I have worked with. You do need a decent spec PC and GPU card to get the most out of it though.

Vegas audio. I haven't used any NLE that comes anywhere close to Vegas' audio handling capabilities.. Hardly surprising seeing that it started out in life as a Sonic Foundry product along side Sound Forge.

I also like working with Edius. It's now pretty resolution independent like Vegas, it will handle almost anything in any format or size mixed on the timeline. Edius has come on in leaps and bounds since being taken over by Grass Valley. For multi-cam it kills anything else. Show me another NLE that can take ten tracks of HD 1920 MXF files with each track being eight hours long and play all that back smoothly. Admittedly off a decent four drive raid 0 but all the same I have to say I was impressed the first time I did it. Any big multi-cam and I go straight to Edius for the switchcut then render out a switched track and then bring that into Vegas for finishing. My biggest down on Edius is the audio handling is still a bit primitive, especially compared to Vegas.

Overall I find Edius a good all round Jobbing editor but if you want basic inbuilt 3D compositing and a pretty comprehensive creative tool set, in other words a Craft Editor, Vegas is my first choice. It is also one of the fastest NLEs to cut quickly on. That's my experience comparing Vegas to Edius, Premiere, Avid MC, Lightworks and NewTek's SpeedEDIT. SpeedEdit is a bit of a dark horse. I can see myself spending more time on it as it proved to be a very capable tool set.

Try them all to see what suits your workflow and requirements best. There is no perfect NLE for sure. I'm still waiting for one to appear... oh that elusive dream!

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Is speededit still supported? I thought they stopped developing it?

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Can't say I didn't see this sort of thing happening. I deliberately jumped off the upgrade cycle when they forced their subscription-only rental model.

You know what? CS6 is pretty good and meets all my needs, even after upgrading to my PMW-300 and entering in to the XDCAM type files workflow.

Andrew

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Hi Ron

Vegas brought out an alternative to Smartsound called "Cinescore" which they scrapped later so AFAIK there is no SS plugin for Vegas BUT check their website first.

I still use SonicFire to generate my Smartsound tracks and simply save them in the same folder as my projects so they are instantly available to the timeline. It does mean that you have to run a standalone though.

Smartsound used to have something called Quiktracks that was a plugin so see if they still have that?? Gosh the last time I used SS as a part of my NLE was eons ago when I used Corel's very first NLE called Luminere and it came with Smartsound tracks built in ... howver that was a LONG time ago.

I have no issues running SonicFire when I need to generate an audio track though.

Chris

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

It should be noted that Sony Vegas Pro has an audio section that rivals the main stream pro DAWs. (including SloTools). VP was a DAW before video support was added, way back when. VP supports both DX and VST plug-ins. The new ver.13 includes ATSC/EBU loudness meters, the NR-2 noise reduction suite, iZotope Nectar Elements and other Sony audio plug-ins... <font color="#FFFFFF">Enough for a video editor to totally screw up the sound track...</font color>

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Not that it matters that much anymore, but Edius also runs on almost any PC, no need for a nuclear reactor to power it. And you have to work really hard to manage to crash it - it's rock solid.

Audio handling is indeed a bit of a weak point, although it has improved a lot lately with the plugins that come with it. Very rarely I need to jump over to an audio editor for my needs.

VST plugins also work with Edius, as do Boris, NewBlue, ProDad (titling) and others.

Not negligible: if you need to use After Effects, there is now an Edius to AE bridge available.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I too am a lifelong adobe editor, and am not sold on CC, CS6 is still my program, but recently had 2 instances of that teenie little problem of: try to open that CC project. really quite annoying, and probably something adobe betting on, that many would upgrade just out of basic necessity to be able to read CC projects.

They're not giving a bone, none at all. no way for CC users to export a proper backwards compatible file (XMLs can work, but not for everything) and cutting off cs6 is just harsh, i bought it less than a year prior.

my guess: they tallied up an estimate of just how much they've lost over the years to pirated copies, and figured there would be no way they'd piss people off more than FCX did.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Since I am one of many that is going to jump ship on Adobe I Am very interested in this thread and a few others that are discussing alternatives. The first thing I have learned is all the great input about Sony Vegas. For some reason I had it categorized in my mind as more of the "top of the consumer line" software editor. It is sounding really attractive to me now. Part of that is because of the ease of use comments I read. Frankly, my goal is to keep working productively and make the transition as painless as possible. Learning curve matters to me. I know it shouldn't, it is just software, but I am not excited about it at this point in my career.

The issue goes beyond Premier. I use the creative suite. I will still be able to use some of those programs for time to come but not indefinitely. I was glad to hear Vegas has decent audio tools. I use Audition when I need to go above Soundbooth, that happens most of the time.

What do you guys use for software in addition to Vegas? For example, I am always in Adobe Media Encoder, Encore, Photoshop and Audition. A little After Effects but not much, I do mostly corporate work. I don't use all the other programs in Creative Suite very often. Before CC came along Adobe made great strides in making their programs integrate well with each other. Now, BOOM, they blew the whole thing off the map as far as I am concerned!

Steve

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I've used Vegas since v1 when it was one of the first non-destructive multitrack audio editors for the PC (no video). I teach a college Audition course.

I prefer to finish audio in Vegas. If you're used to the Waveform tab in Audition, well, Vegas doesn't have it, but you can apply all the "process" oriented plugs right in V's multitrack timeline at the clip, track, bus, master, or project level. If you've got to have a waveform editor, Sony's Sound Forge is a great companion app, but I use it very rarely.

If you're serious about audio, I LOVE Izotope's Ozone mastering plugin suite. The beautiful loudness maximizer alone may be worth the price, but all the other (6?) tools are excellent as well.

Sony's Noise Reduction plugin is an excellent NR, I find it slightly easier to get good results with it than Audition's. Getting the NR plug, well, it comes with some bundles and not others. At this moment I'm not entirely sure there's a 64-bit version, gotta' look into that. The current Vegas Pro is 64-bit only.

For encoding, Vegas has Sony's own as well as Main Concept encoders built in. Native batching is rudimentary. But there's a scripting architecture, and there are inexpensive 3rd party scripts that can really enhance some workflows. I do use (free) Handbrake for almost all my web video, its x264 codec is best-in-class, and it has decent batching. Of course if you're maintaining your CC license you can use AME.

Some people like Vegas' multicam, others swear by 3rd party. Both work, but the native version is pretty constricted to a particular workflow.

You may find that you do less in AE, Vegas has some integrated tools that overlap AE but don't replace it. You'll probably still need PS, if it's important in your workflows.

Yes, Vegas is the original swiss-army-knife, and has been well ahead when new camera codecs come out. And so much 3rd-party support with extensions, stabilizers, scripts, looks, titlers...

There is a vocal minority of seriously pissed-off users and former users. Sony doesn't seem to have really mastered wide compatibility of their GPU-assist functions, and some users report crash after crash. For most of them just turning off GPU functions (in Vegas prefs) restores full stability... but not all. You can do the trial offer and find out quickly if there are problems on your hardware.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I asked the Adobe CC folks at NAB this exact question (after calling the move to subscription model an "a-hole move" to his face, to some applause from those around me) and the rep said that Creative Cloud had NOTHING to do with piracy and that pirates had circumvented the Cloud security within 2 weeks and he maintained the Cloud model was SOLEY to do with roll out of updates quickly and easily. To which I reminded him that PROFESSIONAL editors aren't the ones who install updates immediately upon release, preferring to wait to see what systemic issues might arise from them.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I am very curious, Shaun, what was Adobe's answer to this last remark... if any...

The very first thing I do with all my new (or reformatted) computers, even before connecting to the net, is to turn off automatic updates for Winnie and all other software.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

There was none, which I'm sure isn't a surprise.

To be clear - despite my reputation, I DID go in in order to find out IF there was a way I could jump ship from FCP7 to Adobe in a way that would work for MY business model (buy a suite outright and legally) and use the stable version until I retire the software/hardware combination it lives on, typically a 3 - 5 year cycle for me.

Once my edit bay is stable, I stop updating.

I walked out with no clear winner in the NLE wars. I NEED what Premiere can do now that Apple has abandoned the traditional editing model and none of the others do what I need. Not even AVID who seem to be ignoring a 4k edit need in favour of story editing with conform.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

We, users, still come out ahead even if we don't update immediately. For example, under the old model of a big, ready-or-not CS upgrade every 12 months a cautious user might wait 2 months, for good measure, to see if anything unsavory pops up. If Adobe releases new features, say, every 4 months, users can wait 2 months to upgrade and we still end up with three upgrades in a 12 month time span w/CC vs one upgrade under the old model.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I do not understand why adobe would just let go of all these customers. You would think that they would at the very least maintain CS6 to sell as a box set for those customers that will not go the CC. If I could not afford to buy the box or needed all the extra stuff I would consider CC. I just do not need all that software and I sure do not need the headache that comes with being in the cloud. I also like to get my hardware and software working right then disconnect from the web and use that editor until it is time to upgrade both. Adobe should really listen to its clients before they are someone else clients. Adobe get your head out of the cloud or your a$$.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

They do. You can still buy CS6 and Adobe is still currently maintaining it (i.e. bug fixes, security fixes, OS compatibility, etc.,).

If you buy the annual CC subscription you only have to connect it to the Internet once every 99 days.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Here is what Adobe says about CS6


Dear Adobe Customer, At Adobe, we’ve always been steadfast in our commitment to providing you with state-of-the-art creative tools. That’s why, effective June 1, we’re making Adobe Creative Cloud your exclusive source for all future creative licensing.
This means that Adobe Creative Suite 6 will be discontinued under our TLP and CLP licensing programs. All other Adobe products available under volume licensing, like Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Presenter, will be unaffected by this change.
Rest assured, we'll work with you to help make the move to Creative Cloud smooth and without disruption to your team's projects. If you prefer, you may still buy individual copies of CS6 on adobe.com; however, the apps will not have been updated since CS6 was released two years ago.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Sadly, for a certain segment of editors (I include myself here...), Apple's move away from a traditional editing model (FCP7) to The New Paradigm of FCPX and AVID's steadfast determination that 4k will be conformed in post and not edited natively, Adobe was our last remaining hope.

I've tried working with other edit software and none of it does what I need for corporate and occasional broadcast. I need more than a picture editor; I need editorial, light colour correction, light duty compositing in a traditional managed-by-me media format that "plays nice" with 3rd party I/O devices.

A lot of editors working on narrative fiction never use more than three tracks of video - I ROUTINELY have 10 or more in my timelines due to clients needs. BMD is promoting their new Resolve 11 as an edit solution. Sure, if Media100 in 2000 is the control you need for an editor.

I don't want FAST, I want precise.

Adobe offers that but the subscription model is what I referred to when talking to the CC Rep at NAB as "forcing editors to keep suckling at the Adobe teat".

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Vegas goes out of this world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONaP...ature=youtu.be

I doubt whether Sony will ever go down the Adobe, Avid and now Digital Juice subscription roads so Vegas is probably pretty safe to consider as an alternative NLE.

Sony's philosophy has been to put Vegas out there at an easily affordable price. Sony doesn't have to rely on the sale of its editing software to survive. Sony knew that no matter how tardy other NLE software vendors were in supporting Sony cameras and codecs they could guarantee that there was one was NLE, Sony Vegas, that would support your shiny new Sony camera as soon as it came out. That is why Sony bought out Sonic Foundry, for Vegas, to be able to offer a workflow from camera to program completion. Vegas detractors in most cases don't know or have not worked with Vegas. Sony never really did the blitz and bling marketing that Apple did with FCP, which funnily enough started out as a Windows only NLE but then that's a different story. Maybe that is probably why Vegas is not considered a 'serious' NLE. For those of us in the know though we smile because we 'know' what it is capable of.

Over 400 TV shows, countless corporates and dozens and dozens of TV spots later plus a major doco for the Australian Government and not once have I ever regretted transitioning to Vegas. The pressure of putting out fifty weekly TV shows a year as independent productions for Fox and FTA plus the corporate and TV spots work was a pressure cooker environment. A solid highly stable production workflow was paramount and we got that from the Sony XDCam cameras we used for acquisition right through to the Sony Vegas software we used for the editing and program delivery.

It was the sheer intuitiveness, reliability, stability even with ten to fifteen track deep timelines and Vegas' ability to handle any type of footage natively plus capture SDI or HD-SDI and convert it in real time to 50-mbit MXF that won out with our three editors who were pushing this material through. Vegas' capture via Blackmagic's Decklink cards with real time convert to MXF was a big plus for us. Especially earlier on when most of the SD footage was coming off Digi-Beta or DVC Pro 50. All our TV programming was cut and delivered 50-mbit 422 on XDCam disc to the networks and this capture to MXF capability really streamlined our workflow and gave us a good balance between image quality and storage space. SDI capture is not so important these days as most acquisition is now disc or card based but the minute you have to go back and work with archive footage off tape it's a very efficient way to work.

As you can gather I’m a Vegas convert but for a very good reason. It has been the mainstay of my business since I left Discreet edit* behind in about 2003 and it has delivered for me solidly ever since. So yes I guess I’m one of those rare creatures. A Vegas fanboy. You could do worse than to try it out if you are being put off by Adobe's new business plan.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Purely in the interest of furthering our knowledge of ADR, I post the following link that has some relationship to the current thread. Possibly NSFW, particularly if your office speaks German. Enjoy.

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

I can't type, there is tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. If you don't think that is funny you must be dead. Thank you Battle....That says it ALL!!!

Also, Thank you Seth for the detailed post on page two.

Steve

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Battle, I have seen a LOT of these over the years and this may well be my new favourite! Thanks for sharing!

Re: I have had it with adobe
 

Yeah. You can still buy CS6 though it's now longer being offered under some volume licensing plans (TLP and CLIP specifically). While CS6 isn't getting any new feature updates (which is par for the course for EOL versions of software) it is getting bug fixes and maintenance updates. AE CS6, for example, received a maintenance update last October.