Why subscriptions are bad for Adobe

[Dave Gage]

Joe,

I don’t have the time or need at the moment to make any changes in web video delivery, but I appreciate the link and will bookmark it for down the road. I think I can ride out the next year or two with what I have.

[Joseph W. Bourke] “I still deliver clips to my website in Flash, although I’m starting to transition them to H.264 Quicktime, for better compression vs quality reasons.”

I’d be happy to share more info if you’d like via email, but what I’m doing is using the x264 codec via Compressor on the Pro Res export from FCP X and creating two files for the Flash Player, one is an .MP4 and the other an .M4v file. The Flash player uses the .MP4 and then the HTML5 fallback uses the .M4V. I’ve not had a single problem in the last year or two with this system and any browser or mobile device. Let me know if you’d like more specifics.

Thanks,
Dave

[Andrew Kimery]

[Andy Neil] “Like what exactly? If you rely on After Effects and Illustrator for your work, what exactly “other options” are you going to move to? “

Are there options to switch to tomorrow? Maybe not, but there will be down the line if it does turn out to be a sizable percentage of users that are upset and want to change applications.

[Mike Smith]

xara is a very strong illustrator alternative – better in lots of ways – albeit Windows only ..

[Brett Sherman]

[Paul Neumann] “But I think only talking about Creative Cloud in terms of the programs is pointless when you don’t consider the other features that come along with your subscription”

Given that I only use Adobe software occasionally, I’m not sure what possible “features” would be helpful to me. The 20GB of storage is practically useless for AE and Pr users. And I get 100GB with Dropbox for $8/month that I can use for whatever, not just Adobe projects.

Part of the problem with the CC model is that it presumes all users use Adobe apps all the time. That simply is not true.

[Nicholas Zimmerman]

Well I’m leaving AE for Nuke, but I’m in school so I can still get their killer student pricing. I also prefer Motion for Mograph because of its real time playback and adjustments.

Shoot sh*t, Edit sh*t

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Nicholas Zimmerman] “Well I’m leaving AE for Nuke, but I’m in school so I can still get their killer student pricing. I also prefer Motion for Mograph because of its real time playback and adjustments.”

Good choice. The problem with AE – which will eventually dawn on more users – is that it’s not as quick as Motion for mograph and not as powerful as Nuke/Shake/Fusion/whatever for compositing.

Up to now students like you have fuelled the AE boom – that’s what they were taught – all they were taught – and that’s what they have been comfortable with.

Too comfortable in my view …

I once worked with a very talented mograph designer who said she never wanted to work in anything other than AE, and never saw the need to work in anything other than AE. What a waste of talent!

AE is great, fantastic and a lot of fun – but there is a world elsewhere.

Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Rainer Schubert]

That´s why I call them a monopolist.
And a monopolist shouldn´t be allowed to act like this.
– – – – – – – – – – –
CC = Cash Cow = Terminating the word “Archive” in future of digital work = Lifelong dependency = NoGo. Never Ever.

[Ronny Courtens]

It’s always good company policy to have options and Adobe does not have any monopoly anywhere, certainly not in the professional A/V world.

We have a number of CS6.5 Master Collection licenses and we have decided to not further invest in Adobe software. Not specifically because of the CC debacle, that’s not really an issue for us. But mainly because at NAB I haven’t seen anything that can justify spending more money on Adobe apps.

Since last year we have developed a new workflow around FCPX/Motion, Smoke 2013 and Resolve for national broadcast work in our 2 post houses and so far our creative people as well as our clients have been extremely satisfied with it. These apps work perfectly together and with every update the workflow gets stronger. Smoke was a no-brainer because we already have a Flame station in-house and the workflow as well as the features are very similar. Motion 5 is a perfect companion to FCPX and if Apple brings seamless integration between FCPX and Motion they will have a winning combination for realtime on-edit mograph jobs.

Even with the coming updates Adobe doesn’t offer anything that we cannot already do better in our current workflow, so I cannot justify any further investment in their software at this time.