New Adobe Suites

[pauleveritt]

Adobe has introduced their new suites and given us all the opportunity to choose between paying our rent, a new HD camcorder, or buying the new suite.

My experience with Adobe products was quite poor in the beginning and discovered that new MS service pacs reeked havoc on the Adobe products. I talked to Adobe tech support and got the usual run around, but eventually PROVED that the Adobe products and the MS service pacs were incompatible. I am not looking forward to this process again.

For the REALLY BIG BUCKS with no upgrade path that Adobe is charging for their products, things will have to work out of the box. Hopefully the early adopters will not have to wait on that update to fix basic functionality like burning a DVD.

Hopefully the suite integration and the work flow will be MUCH improved. I use Premiere Pro 1.5, Audition 1.5, and Encore DVD 1.5. The user interfaces look like they came from different planets, the integration is virtually none existance (I use them like stand alone products.), and the Encore DVD workflow is an exercise in confusion. Oh BTW, I am a computer person with 20+ years of software experience who is moving from training and support into videography. I know what a good user interface should look like and how it should work!

It is nice to see that Flash Video is now integrated into the product offering. With Internet Video coming to life, this will be very helpful.

If you upgrade, don’t skimp on machine power. Switch to SATA drives and stripe them together. Get lots of fast memory.

Oh, and Adobe, make sure that the shipping product actually works out of the box and don’t think us all idiots and blame other software for the failure of your product to work. Warn us IN ADVANCE on your website if we should not download an MS service pac. Apple just MIGHT come out with OS X on a PC platform and then we can all switch to Final Cut Studio instead.

Ok Videomaker, hold Adobe’s feet to the fire on these quality issues.

[Anonymous]

I too use all of the Adobe products and when I crawled around their website to check out what the latest and greatest updates were, I was shocked!

All I can say is this, I think that Adobe may have just put their software out of reach for the common man who was maybe thinking about getting into video editing and using their software. I have been working with this stuff for quite a few years and I am somewhat surprised as to the complexity they’re taking it to. I’m sure the hardcore (like me) will somehow get up to speed on this new stuff but holy cow you almost need a PHD to figure this stuff out now.

In fact the more I think about it, I’m not real sure that I’m going to upgrade only because I just don’t want to spend the time learning all of the new features. I rather work on my projects. Besides, I’m sure it will be loaded with bugs at first and I already paid a kagillion dollars just to get this far. I’m just happy with what I got I guess.

BTW: Thank God they have Elements available for the people that don’t want to spend a year of their life learning Premiere Pro and the rest of the stuff from scratch.

RAM

[Anonymous]

Hmmmm… I’ve been considering switching from Pinnacle Studio to Premiere Elements, thinking that if I ever get into this hard-core I can switch to Pro have a head start. Is that not the case?

[Anonymous]

Actually… if you’re going to go with Adobe PP, Elements would be the best way cut your teeth. PP can be kind of intimidating when opening it up for the very first time and it’s getting worse. Going your way will help because its a lot easier and very similar so when you do make the switch it wont be as traumatic. However… I’m not going to lie, PP does take a while to learn.

Don’t get me wrong, I love PP. I know it like the back of my hand! It is LOADED with all of the features needed but it’s just that I’m getting kind of tired spending all this money every 3 or 4 years for these upgrades. Some of the upgrades are so subtle that I just dont see a huge return for my money. The features are great if youre buying for the first time and comparing with the other monster apps but for us upgraders I really wonder if its worth it.

RAM

[pauleveritt]

BTS Wrote:

Hmmmm… I’ve been considering switching from Pinnacle Studio to Premiere Elements, thinking that if I ever get into this hard-core I can switch to Pro have a head start. Is that not the case?

I have not worked with Elements. However, but chosing Premiere Pro I evaluated four other editing programs. Elements will just be a “slide to the side” and not an upgrade. They are very equivalent programs.

When it comes to upgrading ANY program, ask yourself, “What CAN’T I do with the old version that I CAN do with the new version?” Until you can answer this question, DON’T upgrade or change programs. I stayed with Windows 95 until XP came out. I have saved a lot of money this way.

[Anonymous]

pauleveritt Wrote:

When it comes to upgrading ANY program, ask yourself, “What CAN’T I do with the old version that I CAN do with the new version?”

Exactly!

[Endeavor]

Oh man, by the way you guys were talking I thought it was going to be $3000. I can upgrade for $599 and Get PSCS2 and Illustrator. Plus, new featues like this will make it all worth while:

Eliminate delays for rendering with this exclusive Adobe Production Studio feature. Use After Effects compositions in Adobe Premiere Pro and Encore DVD projects with no intermediate rendering. Edit a composition in After Effects and view your updates instantly in the other Production Studio components.

That one thing alone almost makes this thing worth it. I use AE all the time and I hate having to render from ae then import into premiere and edit back in ae if i need to change it. This is Awesome! Every time a new version comes out, they talk about how much better the integration is. I think this time they finally got it almost seamless!

[Anonymous]

Endeavor,

I’m not real familiar with the latest upgrade(s) so forgive me but at some point in time you’ll have to render your AF work right?

I have to think the answer is yes so I guess for me anyway what do I care where it renders? Mind you all of this is my opinion of course. Remember that everyone uses the various tools in different capacities. It also looks like Adobes latest upgrades is targeting total integration with all of their apps… BUT… for me, I just use PP and AF so this integration philosophy doesnt really have a big impact on me. In other words I would just upgrade PP and AF and I have to look and see if it merited me coughing up more money or not. That’s all!

My other concern is that their apps are starting to get more demanding on existing hardware and I have to think that this will cost people even more money to upgrade that just so that they can run this stuff.

RAM

[Endeavor]

Actually, yes, you will have to render but only once. Right now, if you want to use after effects material in premiere, you have to render it FIRST. With the new one, you can import the composition into PR just like you import a timeline into AE. Then, as you continue your editing, the project will use the source files instead of a rendered avi. So, if you need to change something in the AE clip, you can now switch to AE, change the clip, switch back to premiere and voila! Changes are instantly viewable in PR (and the same goes for Encore, Audition and PS). Then, you can render the whole thing once at the end of the project and you’re done. With the current method, you had to make the change in AE, render the comp as an avi, re-import it into PR and when you’re all done, render the final vid AGAIN, and repeat every time you make a change (which stinks, believe me)!

[Jackal]

Yes. The integration of the Adobe suit is great. Like Endeavor said, PP, AE, PS, Encore and Audition are all seemlessly integrated. You can create a DVD menu in PS and open it directly in Encore, ready to use. Make a modification in PP and it will update your in AE. All sorts of crazy stuff.

They just upgarded from all the “.5” to “2.0”. Now, it’ll cost me about $700 to upgrade. If I had only waited… :'(

[Anonymous]

Jackal Wrote:

They just upgarded from all the “.5” to “2.0”. Now, it’ll cost me about $700 to upgrade. If I had only waited… :'(

This is one of my points! Let’s say a guy had PP version 1.0. Last year he went up to 1.5 for I think it was $199.00. Now version 2.0 comes out so now he has to come up with another $199.00. Sure you get what you pay for and I realize that but what if some little guy just used PP and nothing else. As you said Adobes game plan with this upgrade was total integration but how is this going to help a guy who has nothing else to integrate with? Other than that like someone quoted earlier, what will this individual be able to do now that he couldn’t do before and does it merit another $199.00?

IMO: This latest upgrade seems to be aimed more towards the power users than the little user <BUT> Adobe is actually very smart too in what their doing from a marketing point of view. They are trying to get you to use all of their app tools instead of the competitors by creating this seamless integrated environment. In other words they are capturing all of the customers (old and new) attention with this integration theme along with their money. Thats why people should invest in their company like me. 😉

You guys are great and I love this forum. Somehow talking to my wife about this stuff doesnt get a very strong reaction. X-D

RAM

p.s I’ll probably upgrade too even though I hate paying for the third time for something I already had. I just like starting fires!

[Endeavor]

Somehow talking to my wife about this stuff doesnt get a very strong reaction.

LOL. I hear ya man!

I wont be able to upgrade just yet either. I have other stuff I need first (thank God for EIC!).

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t think about upgrading yet. I just got the suit a couple of months ago. Premiere was kind of easy to figure out the basics, but AF is a horror trying to learn. I am liking the adobe suit though. I have not yet gone through the whole start to finish with the suit yet but I’m slowly getting there. Anybody know of some good inexpensive tutorial books, sites, or dvds for the beginner adobe guy. Oh yeah. Out of curiosity, adobe has the 24p presets for, i think, the panasonic camcorder. If I used a canon xl2’s 24p feature what difference would there be if I couldn’t use those presets vs. useing them with the panasonic?

[Endeavor]

http://www.adobe.co.uk/education/special/curriculum/dv_curriculum.html

Here’s a great place to learn Adobe. BTW, in AE, once you get it, you get it. Keep trying. As soon as it clicks, its like the lights come on and you can do anything. I agree it’s hard to learn but keep trying (and if you think AE is hard to learn, try learning Flash. It is way harder to get the hang of than AE).

[Anonymous]

See all this junk up there everybody^^^

That’s exactly why I’m switching to mac.

I have lots of Adobe products (Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements, Photoshop, InDesign, Audition, and Encore DVD) and have been using them for many years. But once I started using macs at my college class, the difference was night and day. No buggy errors or any stupid $#^! like that, just things integrating and running how they should be.

And by the way, the new quad-cores can encode 2 hours of DVD compliant MPEG-2 7 Mbps SD footage in the time it takes to take a shower.

[Endeavor]

I get no buggy errors. And I paid way less than you will.

[Author]

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