[Dennis Radeke]

[Bret Williams] “On the same machine in Premiere Pro one layer of Pro Res starts to play, the apps appears to freeze, but no, it’s just playback that doesn’t work anymore, I try to see what the hell is going on and the app crashes as always and as expected. Just like every other version of premiere with Pro Res and a matrox on every other Mac I’ve ever tried.”

I use ProRes all of the time with Premiere Pro. What version are you using? What kind of sequence settings, etc??

Also, while Matrox will work on FCP, Premiere Pro and Avid, I’d hesitate to say that the same driver will work the same with all three NLE’s. That might also be a part of your problem.

At NAB last year, Premiere Pro CS5.5 was playing 3 streams of uncompressed, 10-bit QT files through a Blackmagic I/o box to an external monitor. The data rate of each 10-bit file was 162 MBytes/s. Given that, I think Premiere Pro can more than handle 6 streams of ProRes.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Lance Bachelder] “Premiere Pro has always longed to be FCP and aside from the 64bit and CUDA goodness, is still playing catch up to legacy FCP in features and use”

Oh my Lance – how can I walk away from one like this. 😉

64-bit goodness – if that’s all we ever did, it would be a huge one in comparison to FCP7 as MANY people will attest.
GPU goodness – something no one else is really doing still to the level that we are.

Besides that? Well, with good humor, let me say “How about:”

– leading file based workflow (no transcoding)
– never have to render because it’s always real-time, or another way to say the most flexible and powerful software playback system in NLEs
– generally better, faster encoder in AME
– RED source settings – non-destructive color and metadata
– METADATA – been leading that since CS3
– good built-in, 2D titler
– when that fails, best of class integration with Photoshop for graphics
– AE integration (perhaps unfair since it’s an Adobe product, but hey, it’s a standard)
– truly usable, real-time chroma keyer

I could go on, but that’s enough for top of mind. Do we have room to improve? ABSOLUTELY! Can you probably point out some warts of our software? If you can’t, I sure can! However, your lack of information in this area prompted me to reply. I like to say that EVERY nle has some good and unique features. Maybe even Movie Maker or similar! So, to be so dismissive of Premiere Pro I think is a tad unkind.

[Lance Bachelder] ” I mean I don’t know anyone using it to deliver shows for national TV”

I do and I’ve mentioned them here before. They’re also on the Adobe website. News, TV, Film, etc. They’re all there. A nice new one will be out soon. 😉

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

Key points here:

– consistent Adobe UI – yes mimicking FCP X wouldn’t be a smart marketing move to most types here…
– I don’t have a lot of hair left, so please don’t make me pull the rest out by asserting that Apple was thinking about metadata before us. We had a full metadata panel in all apps except AE since CS4.
– you can’t wiggle bits out of me though as usual, I would love to tell all and share all. 😉

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

[Danny Skarka] “What is the best output format from Avid and Premiere that will reformat well in FCP?”

For Premiere Pro, put the ProRes codec on the Premiere box ala $50 Compressor (if it’s a Mac) and then you can create and render out a ProRes preset.

Failing that, there’s also Animation and AVC-I 100 that would work as DI’s to ProRes.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Chris Harlan] “a general acknowledgment that a single power user is likely to have both a laptop and a workstation.”

Ah, I see. The Adobe EULA (end-user license agreement) allows for two activations and installs supporting either a back up license or an install on two systems. So, I think we’ve got you covered in this case.

This has been the case for as long as I’ve been at Adobe and I don’t see it changing. Thanks – and let me know if you have more questions Chris.

Dennis

[Dennis Radeke]

[Chris Harlan] “Dennis, is there any possibility that Adobe will ever adopt a cross platform licensing agreement like Avid has, so that I can–for instance–have CS6 on both my 8 Core and a corresponding HP or Dell laptop?”

unlikely Chris. Avid always has a hardware component potentially at play and their software is lacking the completeness that Adobe’s has (Photoshop for example). It makes sense for them to do this. For us, it doesn’t as we’re just software and the value of our suite is very compelling. If we were to allow cross platform licensing the only result we would get is a loss of revenue.

That said, we do support moving from one platform to another when upgrading. For example if you’re moving from PC to MAC (or the other way around) you can call our support and we’ll move your licenses to the other platform with no hassle.

I know this may not be what people want to hear, but at the end of the day, Adobe wants to make a buck too, just like you guys. Making a license cross platform would be a bad business decision for us and like it or not, we are a publicly traded company with a responsibility to our shareholders.

Hope this helps,
Dennis – Adobe

[Dennis Radeke]

[Lance Bachelder] “Correction as far 64 bit. Sony Vegas Pro has had side by side 32 AND 64 bit versions since Vegas 9, long before CS5 was released. I cut my last indie feature in Vegas Pro 10 64bit because the constant crashes we were having in CS5. 5.5 seems much better and I would think 6 will be even better.”

Thanks for the info. Yes, Sony Vegas is a 64-bit app and I didn’t realize it was back in version 9 as opposed to 10. Looking at Wikipedia, Sony release 9 on 5/11/2010. Premiere Pro CS5 (64-bit both platforms) was released 4/30/201. I won by a couple of weeks. 😉

In my best Homer voice, “Hmmmm…. CS6….” 😉

Best,
Dennis

[Dennis Radeke]

[Ken Zukin] “Your posts always seem intelligent, reasoned, informed, etc., and they inspire trust in your company.
And at some point, I will probably become a Premiere Pro user, as FCP X isn’t going to cut it for me.

But what you wrote here is classic misleading marketing: you’ve made it seem as though Adobe did something to benefit Mac users; unless I’m mistaken, the move you describe here followed Adobe abandoning the Mac platform, which left it’s users high and dry.”

Ken, First off – thank you for your kind words. While I’m an Adobe employee, part of DNA is always trying to be a helpful person and this is an avenue where I can do that. I do think that Adobe is listening and caring about the customer in a way that is singular in the industry right now. Of course, I’m biased! 😉

To your point about returning to the Mac: Yes, we did move to a single platform for three releases (Premiere Pro versions 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0). At the time FCP was growing on the Mac platform and in order for us to make Premiere Pro full featured for 1.0 (no missing features), then we had to lose the Mac platform for a time. Trust me, we didn’t want to! Our decision around it at the time was multi-faceted but I would say the biggest reason was that our PC/Mac ratio at the time was STRONGLY favoring PC. Like Apple, you have to go where you feel the business is. At that time, it was more around the PC.

I’ll take the hit for that, but I would argue that the point is that we invested in the Mac platform at the absolute height of FCP popularity (FCS2). It was the right business thing to do, it was just the right thing to do.

Thanks,
Dennis – Adobe guy (or Adobe shill??!?!?) 😉

[Dennis Radeke]

[Lance Bachelder] ” I was a tester from PPro 1 through CS3 – also After Effects and a little Photoshop during the same period. The PPro team was always a problem – NEVER listened to a word we said and never implemented a single feature we asked for. I had real hope for the program and still do but many of those features we asked for are still missing as my post states. I would have loved to stay involved but you can only handle so much rejection and closed minds.

Glad there is a new regime handling PPro and really hope you keep up the good work, but other than Mercury Engine I still still NO PROGRESS in simple day to day editing tasks.”

Lance, thanks for your input. Clearly, things change and evolve over time. We probably wouldn’t have so much lively debate about Premiere Pro if FCP X hadn’t disappointed a percentage of their existing user base.

As to listening to our users, I see your point and yet I would counter that we were listening. The fact of the matter is that with ANY release, there is only so much you can do. During the time that you were testing it, we had major things we had to accomplish that came before some of the ‘craft edit’ type things you might allude to.

With Premiere Pro 1.0, we had a complete code rewrite. Premiere Pro, is over 1 Million lines of code. We changed the edit methodology from Premiere’s AB+FX track to the single track (professional) methodology. We kept nearly all of our core features and removed old ideas and things that didn’t matter. We also added a resolution independent engine way before anyone knew that this would be cool.

With Premiere Pro CS3, we came back to the Mac specifically for Mac users. At the time FCP was going super strong but we had some users that wanted an integrated workflow. We again listened to Pro users and made that decision as part of our commitment to open and platform agnostic workflows.

With CS4, we went from a project based codec to timeline/sequence based codec. A very important underlying idea that encouraged multiple types of media in the project.

With CS5, we were the FIRST company to be a TRUE, NATIVE, 64-BIT application. A big effort. On top of that, we added the GPU goodness, more codecs, XML import and export and continued to lead with integration between our apps and also third party apps.

With 5.5 we’ve started to work on those little things that craft editors need but we know we still have a way to go.

That leads to our next release. I will not talk about it, but I can say that while no release will ever have everything that everyone wants or needs, I am tremendously happy about what it brings to your original point – listening to customers.

Time will tell, but I hope that moving forward you will entertain an open mind to Adobe’s efforts to the professional editing community. Once again, thanks for your input.

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Dennis Radeke]

Does anyone have a link to whether this can be officially done in some capacity? I’m trying to decide if I want to get a new laptop now or potentially wait for the next one and one of the big factors for me is whether a 17″ laptop can truly hold 16GB of RAM.

Thanks!
Dennis – Adobe guy