Crickets chirping in this forum now

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Herb Sevush] “I cannot imagine any circumstances where Adobe would make the CC free.”

Herb,

In App purchases.

1.00 per Undo.

I stole that joke.

Franz.

[Lance Bachelder]

I still don’t have my head wrapped around it yet but the whole “rooms” thing is pretty cool – interface customization is more flexible than other NLE’s including having a space for each type of workflow exactly like you want whether picture editing, sound editing, etc.

Setting up a room for each sequence in a project and opening any of them any time – i.e you’re working on sequence 10 of a 50 sequence feature film and someone wants to see version 6 of sequence whatever – just pop open that room. Say you ask your assistant to cut in some b-roll or sound fx in a sequence – you can have that room open on your desktop and watch the assistant work while working on your own sequence – great for training an apprentice Editor. One thing I’ve found is it’s best to have matching monitors in a dual set-up – I have a 30″ Dell and 24″ Dreamcolor and it’s not great for desktop customization with Lightworks – dual 27″ would be ideal.

Other features like adding window burns for myriad of useful things like date, shot, timecode and even letterbox in a render are simple checkboxes – no filters/fx to add and adjust – just check the item you want and where on the picture you want it and it will be in your render.

Still a LOT to learn on my side – it’s not an NLE you can just pop open and figure out – you gotta watch the tutorials and read the manual or you’ll miss how powerful it really is. Almost everything from adding a dissolve to color timing to titles is different than any other NLE but it all starts to make sense the more I play with it.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Herb Sevush]

[Walter Soyka] ” so what if it’s profit or not? You still have to pay. I guess it’s not about the money — it’s about the money.”

The comparison to Lightworks does not hold up in any way. The fee’s from Lightworks are a pass along from other parties. Lightworks is offering their software at no cost. You can perpetually use it, open files, manipulate your timeline, export data at no cost. If Adobe included Colorista and was charging a subscription to use it, nobody would be complaining, since you can choose to work without it and still access your files. I also have to pay a monthly electric bill to open my computer to work on the files, but I don’t hold that against Lightworks either.

It’s not just about the cost – it’s about the dongle of monthly, not yearly log-ins to implement, the lack of faith in Adobe’s future pricing policy’s and then for some yes it’s also about the cost.

For me the CC cost seems quite reasonable but the dongle implementation does not.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Walter Soyka]

[Herb Sevush] “The comparison to Lightworks does not hold up in any way. The fee’s from Lightworks are a pass along from other parties. Lightworks is offering their software at no cost.”

So when is subscription not subscription? When the vendor doesn’t profit on it? Does that change the fact somehow that critical features expire if you don’t pay up?

I actually want my vendors to make money. I need them to stay in business, so they can keep providing me tools I want to pay for.

[Herb Sevush] “You can perpetually use it, open files, manipulate your timeline, export data at no cost.”

But if your subscription license for reading or writing any modern codec other than DNxHD expires, what can you actually do? How can you meaningfully use the software without decoding the video sources, or encoding video output?

I am not so good at my job that I can work on a set of clips that all say “Format Unlicensed” and then just tell my client about the great work I did without actually exporting it.

I want to see Lightworks succeed. I’m not trying to bash Lightworks. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see them release a perpetual license in partial response to this mania. Lance has mentioned a couple times that they’re trying to figure it out.

I just don’t understand the argument that subscription is unacceptable when Adobe does it, but totally fine when EditShare does it.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Herb Sevush]

[Walter Soyka] ” just don’t understand the argument that subscription is unacceptable when Adobe does it, but totally fine when EditShare does it.”

If you go to the “Adobe or not Forum” you will find that many posters are asking for an Adobe Lite perpetual version as a compromise. This is what Lightworks offers now. As a matter of fact the free version would have been all I ever needed up until 2 years ago when I switched from DVCPROHD to ProRes. The free version handles DVCPROHD and uncompressed just fine, which means it’s a viable free offering for many workflows now and in the future. If I wanted to get mad with someone for the subscription fee for the Pro version it would be with Avid and Apple, who are the companies charging the fees.

If I have the pro version and later dropped the yearly fee I can still open my timeline and export XML’s and EDLs to my hearts content. I can choose to selectively transfer my assets to either uncompressed or DVCPROHD and have full access to my projects – in other words I have options, workflows that might be a pain to deal with, but that still offer ways to access my project files without ever having to pay anything. There is nothing equivalent in the CC offerings and I find it to be a huge difference.

While I have said before I find the CC pricing to be quite reasonable and I don’t see them raising the monthly prices drastically anytime in the near future, the one area I am concerned with is the whole “if you need it in the future just pay the one month fee.” I can easily see a future where Adobe has succeeded in converting it’s offerings to Cloud only and decides to impose a 2,3,6 or more month minimum on Cloud membership. This won’t bother current subscriber’s who think they’ll never drop out, and even if it does, what can they do about it. This would mean it might cost anywhere up to $300 or more to gain future access. Paranoid you might say, possibly I would answer, but I can guarantee that one of the things that would quell this uprising would be written guarantee’s about future pricing going 5 years out, and it’s one of the things that Adobe will never do.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf