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I think the time of the large tower are coming to an end – and the bloated software suits with it :-)
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[Carsten Orlt] “And I can see some development going towards to post pc area where you have many specific tools rather than one-fits-all. Of course they don’t make a finished film, but they will make part of what you need to do. And because they’re small in functionality they can be faster updated and maintained.”
What’s old is new again! The string-of-small-tools approach is the UNIX way: a broad set of very small, purpose-built, modular tools that be combined and recombined to suit the task at hand.
This is kind of the way I see suites working, but of course interoperability is critical.
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 -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “in terms of my own noodling – adobe anywhere – honest to god is anyone, (at all?), curious about the implications of adobe’s potential effort there? I’m a bit surprised we don’t bat around the potentially broad implications of anywhere.”
Anywhere looks amazing. I saw the NAB sneak peak in-person, where they ran the Anywhere server in San Jose with an editor working on-stage in Las Vegas and another (connected via video conference for the audience’s benefit) working on the same production in Seattle. There were a good number of dropped jaws and raised eyebrows in the house.
I’m not surprised we don’t talk about it too much here. Anywhere looks to be a pretty big-iron system (we’re talking servers and clusters), and we don’t really focus on those here.
If you have not read the IBC-era fxguide tech article on Adobe Anywhere [link] yet, click that link as fast as you can. There are a few things in particular that strike me as very interesting from an underlying-technology/philsophy perspective, even if Anywhere itself is a bigger solution than I’ll need:
First and foremost, Anywhere is a multi-user, shared, simultaneous-access database with conflict resolution. It doesn’t think in terms of project files; it thinks in terms of productions.
The Collaboration Hub has an API so that facilities can write their own hooks into the system, making it open and extensible. It is designed to work with existing asset management systems.
Anywhere is built for private clouds.
Anywhere has a cool proprietary codec for streaming high-quality video.
Pr/Anywhere can start cutting footage locally while it uploads to the production server in the background.
Finally, here’s a choice quote from the article:
“The reason the company is announcing Anywhere at IBC is part of a strategy to get customers to start working on the software and provide feedback before a full release.
Coleman says that the idea for the software came from talking to a lot of customers about collaboration, and concluded that ‘it’s not about the individual anymore. The competitive advantages comes when productivity improves. In today’s world, you just can’t talk about collaboration or working in a group without working remotely from one another.'”
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 -
Well, like most things Bret, it’s a matter of perspective. And my saying that ‘every NLE does a few things better than the rest’ can hold true in the area of audio for Premiere Pro as well.
Premiere Pro has had sample accurate audio editing since forever. It also has had sub-mixing buses, something that many legacy users had wanted. VST plugin support, inserts AND sends. Touch and Latch automation and probably a few more things as well. Do some other NLE’s have a limited number of tracks you can use? really? Not Premiere Pro.
Shane’s primary beef (I think) with Premiere Pro is that the audio mixer is track based rather than clip based. If you’re a musician and you use a DAW, you’re expecting a track based mixer. That said, you can do clip based audio mixing adjustments, they’re just not quite as handy as users would like.
Point is, there’s a diversity of users and even more opinions about audio. Avid, Apple and Adobe all have strengths and weaknesses as each solution tries to address as many types of users as possible.
Can we make some aspects of audio handling, mixing and the like better? Definitely. We’ll keep on working on audio just like we’re working on improving all of our products.
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[Dennis Radeke] “Well, like most things Bret, it’s a matter of perspective. And my saying that ‘every NLE does a few things better than the rest’ can hold true in the area of audio for Premiere Pro as well.
Premiere Pro has had sample accurate audio editing since forever. It also has had sub-mixing buses, something that many legacy users had wanted. VST plugin support, inserts AND sends. Touch and Latch automation and probably a few more things as well. Do some other NLE’s have a limited number of tracks you can use? really? Not Premiere Pro.
Shane’s primary beef (I think) with Premiere Pro is that the audio mixer is track based rather than clip based. If you’re a musician and you use a DAW, you’re expecting a track based mixer. That said, you can do clip based audio mixing adjustments, they’re just not quite as handy as users would like.
Point is, there’s a diversity of users and even more opinions about audio. Avid, Apple and Adobe all have strengths and weaknesses as each solution tries to address as many types of users as possible.
Can we make some aspects of audio handling, mixing and the like better? Definitely. We’ll keep on working on audio just like we’re working on improving all of our products.
“I have to second this. The overall quality of Premiere’s audio is fantastic. I can’t speak to improvements, since I’ve only just started paying attention to it in its current incarnation. It is a terrific package. It provides the best mixer, by far. To my mind, though its implementation misses a few things I like, it is the best audio package I’ve seen on an NLE (with the possible exception of Vegas, which I have not used in years, but started as a DAW.)
What I’d like to see most in its next implementation is Control Surface support, using a generic controller. But I’m very impressed with it as it is.
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[Steve Connor] “[Dennis Radeke] “As it is, we are public about saying that Adobe is on a yearly release cycle. Of all the major NLE vendors I think most people would agree that Apple does not win the blue ribbon for best communication historically. I can’t say it any more politely than that! ;-)”
True, but what I’m saying is that in reality Adobe aren’t actually TELLING us anything beyond the fact that you are listening and that you know the areas that need to be addressed, even if some of them have been problems for considerably more than one release cycle.
“I’m not sure this is a fair cop. Adobe has been pretty good about demonstrating what their thoughts are down the road. And the amount of support material they make available is almost overwhelming. From my perspective, Adobe is the absolute front runner in terms of trying to build a lasting relationship with the creative community.
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[Chris Harlan] ” Adobe has been pretty good about demonstrating what their thoughts are down the road. And the amount of support material they make available is almost overwhelming. From my perspective, Adobe is the absolute front runner in terms of trying to build a lasting relationship with the creative community.
“Absolutely, I agree with you on this, I’m not criticising Adobe at all, it’s great that you get a few tech demos of future features, but like other NLE Companies they still play their cards close to their chest when it comes to fixes and when features will be available.
Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure” -
[Steve Connor] “like other NLE Companies they still play their cards close to their chest when it comes to fixes and when features will be available.”
True, as well. I think the issue exists in people’s minds, not because other companies don’t keep secrets, but because Apple made such a hard left with X.
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[Steve Connor] “but like other NLE Companies they still play their cards close to their chest when it comes to fixes and when features will be available.”
Well, this makes sense though, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t want us to make promises we could not keep. To top if off, we’re a public company. I’d say that most editors are not even aware of Sarbanes-Oxley and how much trouble we could get into for divulging what we’re about to do.
As a video editor that came into the world of software programming via tech writing, it seems that users expect fixes and features are to be executed at the drop of a hat. It’s not possible in most cases.
What users don’t realize is how difficult it is to fix a long standing bug, or to create and test a new feature. Fixing bugs and creating features often break things in complicated software like Premiere Pro. Between the law and the complexity of maintaining and creating software, there’s simply so much more than meets the “editor’s eye.”
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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[Chris Harlan] “I think the issue exists in people’s minds, not because other companies don’t keep secrets, but because Apple made such a hard left with X.”
It wasn’t just X as Apple did show that months in advance at the super meet but that EOL of FCS without a transition period rattled people. Even Apple’s own history normally includes long transition periods. We’ve been down this road before. Apple’s biggest problem is its PR in this regard.
Even though Apple’s been more forth coming about “catch up” features, I don’t think they’re likely to talk ahead of anything major and new.
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My amateur understanding of Sarbanes-Oxley is that if you talk about a new feature, you must defer revenue on the product until the feature is commercially available.
It’s worth noting that Apple has yet to charge for an FCPX update — so I’d guess there’s no financial penalty for discussing their catch-up features. It’ll be interesting to see what’s in the first paid update, if such a thing occurs.
It’s might also be worth noting that Adobe rolls out new features to Creative Cloud (subscription users) that are not available as free updates to Creative Suite perpetual licensees.
But I’m not a lawyer, so maybe I’ve misunderstood?
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
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