Todd Kopriva – Request from FCP editor ready to switch

[Tom Daigon]

I have done extensive research and testing of the current plugins that involve transitions (i.e.Sapphire, SpiceMaster,New Blue) and found them to be severely lacking in several areas. These include shortcomings like pedestrian effects, bad coding causing slow rendering, limited options for control and variation of the transition or exorbitant pricing for a very few effects.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / FCP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com

[Tim Kolb]

While I am not Todd, some oof your assertions deserve some comment.

1. Todd probably has the ability to interact with folks on the team who would manage these relationships, but from what I know about his role, I don’t believe his primary focus is in this area.

2. As a former product mgr for a plugin manufacturer, I can tell you that makikng effects plugins for Adobe is a far easier scenario than making te same for Apple. These manufacturers who are only developing for FCP are first focusing on unit sales, and if you’ve done your development as fxplug (Apple’s proprietary plugin architecture because having a plugin architecture that was originally based on AE and was therefore universally compatible wasn’t very Apple-like I guess), I’m not sure how easy it is to port…I know porting in the other direction wasn’t a snap.

3. There are no “contracts” with the host app company unless you’re making some agreement to place an effect “in the box” so to speak. Any of these manufacturers could port their poducts tomorrow and they get the AE and PPro customer base all in one shot. It’s up to the plugin manufacturer, the SDK isn’t exactly hidden in a mountain cave or anything.

4. On speed… Sapphire and Boris are very powerful and diverse effects libraries and they are GPU accelerated. I’m not sure what your system configuration is, but unless you have a substantial GPU in the machine, these effects are just very complex and high quality and they may be slower on older systems. If you have a newer system with a CUDA card, currently no 3rd party vendors have access to the CUDA pipeline, so traditional GPU effects have to “share” with CUDA effects and if you have them mixed on the same clip, that switching can affect speed rather substantially in my experience.

Basically I would wonder why companies like you mention are neglecting the rather substantial market of Adobe users more than I’d wonder why Adobe isn’t begging them to address the most substantial plug in market segment available (AE and compatible apps). Adobe products have the absolutely largest library of plugin effect support there is…why certain companies desire to restrict themselves to a specific niche probably isn’t a concern for them quite honestly.

We’ll alll probably know more about FCP’s future in less than 100 hours…then the 3rd party vendors who have confined themselves to that host app will have to decide how they see themselves moving forward.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tom Daigon]

Thanks for your observations Tim. I will address each of your points.

Just in case you missed my original point, I am searching for the kind of innovative and customizable TRANSITIONS that are now available for FCP to be available on PP since there is a strong chance I will be switching in the near future.

1. I have been in contact with Todd and have acted as a catalyst with both CGM and FX Factory.

CGM said …”have just downloaded the SDK and took a quick look at the examples. I’m impressed. That’s much better documented as the FXPlug SDK. ”

Fx Factory said…”We can certainly agree that the documentation of Adobe’s SDK is far better than Apple’s, but when it comes to functionality the Premiere Pro API is very limited. Please keep in mind that some people don’t even consider the native Premiere Pro plug-in API, and judge Premiere by its support for the AE plug-in API. (The link you offered is for the native Premiere Pro SDK, which almost no-one uses and Adobe itself doesn’t recommend.)

2. I was given a link to the SDK which I provided both vendors in order to start the ball rolling.

CGM is testing the water and FX Factory is not.

3. Speed (or the lack of it) was an issue with New Blue, which they explained was due to their multi app support. Saphhire has maybe 12 innovative transitions in a package that sold for about $1300, They were the exorbitant example, since cool transitions are ALL I need. Boris has none to speak of. And Spice just didnt have what I was looking for (mostly “organic wipes”.)

So there you have it. Hopefully I will be beta testing some transitions in the near future. I hope my motivation will provide PP users some neat options.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / FCP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com

[Todd Kopriva]

BTW, here is a link to a forum thread where Tom cross-posted his question and where he’s had quite a bit of response from us:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/3601960

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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