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Is it just me?
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[Walter Soyka] “Finally, I’d agree that documentation has suffered and support does sound abysmal. I haven’t actually tried it. Is there even one person here who has had a very positive Adobe support experience that didn’t require intercession from Kevin or a member of the development team?”
The documentation is horrible. But it seems documentation has gone down hill across the board over the last few years. Or maybe I just got spoiled by the great documentation that came with FCP Legend. The only time I’ve gotten decent tech support from a vender is when I’ve been under a maintenance contract with them. ‘Free’ tech support always seems to be disappointing, but I guess you get what you pay for. I think I called Apple tech support one time for a question with FCP 5.1 and the support was so useless I’ve never bothered to call them about anything since.
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[Andrew Kimery] “The only time I’ve gotten decent tech support from a vender is when I’ve been under a maintenance contract with them. ‘Free’ tech support always seems to be disappointing, but I guess you get what you pay for. I think I called Apple tech support one time for a question with FCP 5.1 and the support was so useless I’ve never bothered to call them about anything since.”
We very quickly discovered that the AVID maintenance contract support was quite literally a joke – a couple of useless stock responses and that was it. In no sense was it worth what we were paying for it.
I don’t know if it has improved in recent years but I would be surprised if it had.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Walter Soyka] “Not to be too rah-rah Team Adobe here, but that’s not actually clear to me. How do you measure the pace of development? Adobe is now doing 2-3 minor updates per year, versus their old cadence of 1 major update every 12-18 months. No one individual update feels that big anymore, but there are a lot more of them in the same amount of time.”
The updates were better and with CC more bugs are introduced.
[Walter Soyka] “I definitely see the argument on quality assurance; it does seem that the latest releases are buggier than the releases of years past.”
I find bugs in Premiere Pro CC as well as Illustrator CC and Photoshop CC. Adobe does not have good quality control.
[Walter Soyka] “Finally, I’d agree that documentation has suffered and support does sound abysmal.”
We pay more but get less.
I am not and Adobe hater. I just know things used to be better. Can Adobe rebound at NAB 2018 or will BMD’s DR 14.5 rock the house?
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[Simon Ubsdell] “b) I was hugely underwhelmed by the “new” Title Tool in Premiere. I’m sure I’m not along in thinking they seriously dropped the ball on this one. Better to have done nothing than to have done what they have done.”
Me too. The titling system of Premiere Pro worked just fine. The new titling system does not have all the bells and whistles of the old titling system. It will allow templates to be made if you like using templates. I thought the Premiere Pro CC updates for 2017 were mediocre.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “a) The fact that the After Effects performance issue is still very much outstanding. The re-architected solution may well be just around the corner, as you say, but it’s starting to feel just not good enough that we haven’t properly seen the fruits of it yet.”
The Ae work has taken way longer than I think anyone, Adobe included, anticipated. That is personally frustrating for me because I feel like the creative toolset has to take a backseat until the architecture work is done, and I want to see Ae pick up some new creative tools!
I can only console myself with the the tale of Softimage/Avid DS, which Scott has alluded to elsewhere in this thread. DS (which I almost foolishly bought in 2013!) was 10 years ahead of its time when it launched. But it did not receive the level of continuous development required, so time time caught up and passed it by. Its architecture, an early advantage, became its fatal limitation.
I think we saw the same threat with FCP7. The application was limited by its own design, and couldn’t get significantly better without a lot of rework. Apple decided to scrap the project and start over and we got FCPX. With Flame, Autodesk hit the limit of the Discreet architecture, and they went through a dark period of 3-5 years while re-working the Batch and Action internals. In both of those cases, FCPX and Flame 2014/2015/2016 (it’s hard to draw the line) eventually emerged, modernized, competitive and significantly more capable than their predecessors.
How else does mature software get through the doldrums?
[Simon Ubsdell] “b) I was hugely underwhelmed by the “new” Title Tool in Premiere. I’m sure I’m not along in thinking they seriously dropped the ball on this one. Better to have done nothing than to have done what they have done.”
I would strongly urge anyone with ideas on what the title tool should be to file feature requests.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “I would strongly urge anyone with ideas on what the title tool should be to file feature requests.”
A tourist in Ireland asks one of the locals for directions to Dublin. The Irishman replies: ‘Well sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “A tourist in Ireland asks one of the locals for directions to Dublin. The Irishman replies: ‘Well sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’.”
Fair enough… still, I’d be curious about the principles, if not the implementation, that you’d like to see honored in the titler.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “I can only console myself with the the tale of Softimage/Avid DS, which Scott has alluded to elsewhere in this thread. DS (which I almost foolishly bought in 2013!) was 10 years ahead of its time when it launched. But it did not receive the level of continuous development required, so time time caught up and passed it by.”
So true. The good thing was that DS was so far ahead of it’s time that we got a lot of life out of them even as Avid foolishly let it languish. Softimage had an amazing team working on DS and it always was great to be in their HQ in Montreal. They knew that had something great.
Media Composer still hasn’t caught up with DS in many many ways.
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Walter Soyka] “I’d be curious about the principles, if not the implementation, that you’d like to see honored in the titler.
“The most obvious point is that they really should have implemented text entry in the Effect Controls and/or the Essential Graphics panel rather than solely in the Program Monitor.
You should be able to activate text entry without having to activate the Text Tool, for example by double-clicking or modifier-clicking the text object.
Modifier-clicking should automatically bring up the Effect Controls or the Essential Graphics panel.
Font selection should update as you scroll through the font library.
When you invoke the Essential Graphics panel wth text selected in the Program Monitor it should take you to the edit section automatically.
A text or other graphic object should have an interactive right-click menu in the Program Monitor.
Loading an Essential Graphics template seems much too slow. It should be instant.
You should have the option to adjust the anchor point without the text object itself moving as well.
There appears to be no way to reset the anchor point to the default in the EG panel other than by zeroing out the values.
You can’t animate in the EG panel, only in the Effect Controls.
You should be able to copy the properties of one title over to others.
Adobe need to rethink how they implement outlines.
Overall there’s too much unresolved conceptual confusion about how the EG panel interacts with and/or substitutes for the Effect Controls. This is really poo design.
More when I get the chance to think about it properly …
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Scott Witthaus] “Media Composer still hasn’t caught up with DS in many many ways.”
I don’t think it ever will.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]
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