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Buying it over and over and over again!
Several years back I bought Final Effects (from Cycore or was it somebody else?), then a couple of years later the Final Effects Complete upgrade from ___. (Who was it that was selling ICE at the time?) Then, after a few years the OSX- compatible (or was it AE 6 – compatible?) version from its then owner, Media 100. Anyway, this put me at version 4.0.1. Last month I upgraded my CPU to the Quad processor and for simplicity sake just moved the drive over and bought a new drive for the old CPU.
Then the problems started. Quark XPress (yes, we do more than just video) had me on the phone for half an hour, but after typing in a ridiculously long decode string (two of them, no less!) Quark worked again. Adobe products were far more polite and after a few seconds of identifying themselves over the net, resumed normal operations. Could the multi-orphaned FEC be so nice. Not even possible.
Boris, FEC’s current owner, has now told me that I must upgrade to 4.0.2, for $99 no less, in order to re-install and have a working version.
In other words… US$100 for a .1 version upgrade. Let me repeat that, US$100 for a .1 version upgrade. This in a world where all the apps and all the capabilities in the Final Cut Studio bundle sell for US$1,299!!!
So I’m about to take a deep breath, double my blood pressure medicine and fork over $99 to Boris for a .1 version upgrade just so I can re-open an older project that used their effects. One more time… US$100 for a .1 version upgrade.
Thanks, Boris. Thanks a LOT.
(There. I fell better now.)
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7 Replies
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I believe I mis-stated. FEC didn’t come from Cycore and the plug-ins are totally different from what’s now bundled with AE. And that’s another one, but oh well, I paid several hundreds of dollars for Cycore only to have it bundled a couple of years later. C’est la vie. That one I can live with. But $100 for what Boris says is basically just a different installer and very minor bug fixes — that still has me ticked.
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I feel your pain about buying plugins that are soon included for free in software. I bought Cult Effects from Cycore and Evolution from Atomic Power, within a year of buying them Adobe bought them and started including the majority of them in After Effects. I think Boris needs to take a critical look at their pricing. $300 for a version upgrade in Red? Compared to Adobe’s $200 AE upgrade.$1000 to go from Red to Blue? I dunno…
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I also understand your frustration, but by the same token, Boris bought media100 which came with final effects. Also, the so-called upgrade from Red to Blue is not an upgrade….Blue is a seperate program, Boris is being generous and offering Red users the chance to get their new Blue for half price…..pretty nice of them, if you ask me.
Nick, have you contacted Borisfx with your concerns…I have always found them to be very helpful
Regards
Mark -
Right. More of a cross grade. But exactly what is Blue? Looks pretty much like what Red would evolve into. Looks like more refined 3d tools but still it’s a compositing program right? It’s not a full fledged 3d program is it? For $2000 what 3d program could I buy? For that matter since I have Red already what 3d program could I buy for $1000? $1000 for a “cross-grade” $300 for a version upgrade and $100 for a point(bugfix?) upgrade is by no means generous. Compared to competitors it’s a little on the steeper end. Adobe letting me buy the CS2 Standard Suite (Photoshop,Illustrator,and Indesign) for $549 on a Photoshop 5.5 upgrade is generous. Upgrading After Effects 5.0 to version 7.0 for $200-that, is generous.
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“have you contacted Borisfx with your concerns…I have always found them to be very helpful.”
Yes. I’ve contacted them. That’s how I learned that I needed to buy 4.0.2 to “solve” the problem. The tech guy was sympathetic but took the attitude “yea, it sucks, but what are you gonna do?” He did however point out that I could use it in demo mode for 14 days before it would X-out the results. Time to seriously look at which of these are redundant with what comes in AE 7. I did mention that this whole thing became an issue because I needed to re-use an old project and it called for the FEC plug-ins on launch.
Oh, well. With the emotion of this subsiding I guess the money is not that big a deal. But I am still struck by the amazing contrast wherein Final Cut Studio is $1,300 and this meager update is $100.
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Nick, and Mark,
I see both of your points….really I do. I too had final effects on our old macs….we even bought the ice boards which are now gathering dust. I would love to be able to cross grade the old mac plugs and use them. Final effects did some pretty cool stuff.
But, I now have BCC4 and find that it does most of what FEC used to do (Doesn’t help you in any way Nick, sorry)Mark, while Blue can be seen as the evolution of Red, it is not the way Boris sees it. That is why Boris doesn’t force anyone to get into the upgrade loop to buy it….that is also why they are continuing to develop Red. When they release the next Red it will be independant of Blue and should be priced in a way to reflect that. I would love to try Blue, but unfortunately it is built around Nvidia cards, and guess who has an ATI card.
All the best
Mark -
Couple of points:
Boris payed how much (?) for the FEC software from Optibase (the former owners of m100). I don’t know how much, but I’m sure it was vastly MORE that $99. Boris also immediately invested engineers in updating the software @ significant salary. (so by your logic, Boris FX should take a loss on this investment in technology)
What would have happened to your projects had boris NOT purchased FEC and Optibase killed the line off? You’d have to completely rebuild ALL of them. How much time would THAT have taken, and then, how much is your time worth? (More than $99)
If a client of yours comes to you and asks you to update a project you created for them 6 months ago or a year ago, do you do that for free? I hope not…
Last point. The version of FEC you had previously would likely NOT have worked with AE 7, and definately didn’t work in Tiger with QT 7.
Yeah it was a bug fix, and OS update, and it simplified the licencing… It’s only $99. Cost of doing business. It was $99 I was happy to spend to not have to recreate years worth of work!
My $.02
~AD
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