[Andy Lewis]

I used Shake a few times back before apple dumped it and I actually really liked it. I found the nodal interface more intuitive and satisfying than layers. Actually satisfying is maybe the key word there.

In any software using layers it feels as if, as a project grows in complexity the chance of it developing some problem which I have no idea how to fix approaches 1. The question is whether or not I can finish what I want to do before I lose the sense of what it is I’m actually doing. When I close AE at the end of a job I give thanks to the compositing gods that they have chosen not to punish me this time. Though maybe that’s just my own lack of experience. Nodal interfaces seems to scale much better – complexity is additive rather than logarithmic.

I’m about to start learning AE properly. Would anyone out there recommend Nuke as an alternative? Given that most of my work will be simple fixes, keying, titles. I could be doing more complex stuff in the future though.

[Andy Lewis]

I noticed this. My project (from CS6) went from 510MB to 114MB. It was after I did a “save as.”
Seems like two things happened:

1. The interface got faster. This might be confirmation bias though.
2. It crashed a few times in the space of an hour but now seems to have stabilised. Not sure if related.

This thing really is fast. Changing window layouts takes less than a second. No perceptible lag playing back h264. CS6 played h264 fine but I could tell when it was a long-GOP codec in the timeline, now I can’t.

[Andy Lewis]

Before FCPX came out I remember looking at FCP7 and thinking “I hope they don’t turn clips into streamlined, shiny objects or anything… but I bet they will.”

I really like the flat simplicity of Premiere. A clip should look like the platonic idea of a clip. It’s only information, to represent it as an object is unhelpful. Maybe if it looked like piano roll – that’s at least providing a real world analogue.

If Ive has any influence on FCPX, maybe it will be getting rid of some of that pointless real-world tinsel.

[Andy Lewis]

Thunderbolt still isn’t fast enough for strudel. All layered pastries are PCI-only until at least thunderbolt 3.

[Andy Lewis]

It looks like fluorescent light phasing to me. Are you in NTSC land? Maybe the camera was set to 50fps or something.

Fixing will be hard. I’d try mitigation first. The lines are most visible over the grey background. I’d try keying the grey and desaturating.

[Andy Lewis]

Not touchy, I’m fine. The “Ha ha” was laughing at myself.

[Andy Lewis]

Ha ha. I knew the second I posted that someone would take issue with that part. It is a very unfair summary of Photoshop. Photoshop is a beast in both a positive and negative sense. It’s deeply powerful and flexible and also feels (to me) like a bloated mess. This is possibly inevitable with software that does so many different jobs. I can’t blame Adobe for that, particularly as the software experience I’d compare it to is Lightroom which is beautifully optimised for one workflow and also of course, made by Adobe.

The point still stands though, that Photoshop and After Effects are currently considered pretty much essential in various fields – and that could change. I’ll be checking out Pixelmator this year and I’ll also be on the lookout for an AE replacement to jump into. I actually like Motion but for all we know Apple might have decided to not develop it further.

[Andy Lewis]

A lot of professionals who are complaining about this are going to be joining the cloud anyway – myself included, at least for this year. I won’t bore you with the reasons why, but I really have no choice.

Adobe must have decided (with good reason) that their position is strong at the moment and that even a lot of very unhappy customers will still end up paying the tithe. Perhaps they also figured that their strong position in the industry could be threatened at any moment – so better lock people in now.

Anyone working in either print/photography or editing/graphics (arguably) needs access to adobe software no matter how terrible the terms are. Maybe the Adobe CEO’s nightmare scenario was waiting a year to force everyone onto subscription to find that 12 months have changed the playing field and Adobe software is much easier to ignore.

Imagine if this year:

1. FCPX 10.1 turns out to be killer and (crucially) Apple brings out a stunning update to Motion.

2. The 90% of photoshop users who don’t really need photoshop suddenly find an alternative – Pixelmator? Photoshop is surely vulnerable given how ugly and unpleasant to use it is.

[Andy Lewis]

Subscription is bad for consumers in the long run because it makes you less likely to change to a competitor. If you decide to jump ship next year, you’ll still have to pay adobe a subscription just to be able to open old projects – maybe for years. So you’re more likely to just stick with adobe even if things go downhill. Changing to FCPX (for example) will mean paying for both systems – including plugins and third party stuff, possibly indefinitely.

Disincentives to leave a platform mean less pressure on the company to innovate and iterate.

This is why you get such shitty service from your bank. It’s such a pain to change banks that people put up with it.

[Andy Lewis]

[Brett Sherman] “Timeline to timeline editing was how I ended up working. But, it was fraught with problems too. You either had to match frame into the viewer and insert from there (remember to mark your ins and outs again). Or you had to copy and paste which required you to split your clip in the source timeline thus losing the visual indication of where clips began and ended and also wouldn’t allow you to control what tracks it got pasted into.”

I suppose it’s too late now but you don’t have to split the clip in a source timeline. Option-A selects the range of the clip between in and out. Yes, not being able to control what track it pastes into is sometimes a pain.