[Ryan Holmes]

[Tom Daigon] “Given their experience with rendering and displaying, they have some reservations about how slow and frustrating using it to its full capacity will be on AE. “

You’re probably right here. 3D can become very complex very quickly – lighting, texturing, camera, animating, etc. But my guess would be that Maxon will begin to customize more of it’s software towards working inside/with AE. C4D has a pretty solid following from broadcast motion graphics designers for its speed and ease of use. I would expect over the course of the next year or so that they will greatly refine the workflow to speed up the “it works in AE” tagline.

But I fear the early days of using it may be a little rough. Especially if a user doesn’t have a pretty stout hardware setup – GPU, RAM, CPU, etc. I mean this would probably be a nightmare on a laptop or similar…I think the only way it performs smoothly is on high-end desktop workstations. Unfortunately, I’m sure somebody will complain that it takes too long to render a scene on their MacBook Air. I’m guessing before summer is out we’ll see posts like that here on the COW!

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Stab in the dark here…but I’m getting a sense they like the new strategic alliance between Maxon and Adobe! 😉

Seriously though, this really does put AE into a whole new category.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Alex Gerulaitis] “If OpenCL does get a nice boost in GPU acceleration in CS, that’d be great news for a lot of people, especially on a Mac, don’t you think?”

It certainly won’t hurt. But that will really be for older Mac’s.

The only Mac’s sold today with ATI cards is the nearly 3 year old Mac Pro (which is rumored to be getting an update this year….or it could be dead!). The other computers use Intel Integrated graphics or Nvidia cards. And this is likely why the FCP X team pushed so quickly to get updates out for FCP X to shore up their Nvidia card support as it wasn’t very strong upon first release.

All of my shop’s Mac Pro’s, save for 1 of them, run Quadro cards of some sort. From what I’ve seen, admittedly this is entirely anecdotal, the CUDA technology has been far superior to OpenCL. But this may be changing (or at least closing the gap) in the near future. Good move for Adobe, but I’m probably sticking with Nvidia cards as much as possible since there technology seems to be the primary driver of more software apps that I use (Premiere, Resolve, etc.)

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Someone correct me if I’m wrong here, but the Quadro K2000 is not a very high-end/powerful Nvidia card. That’s what AMD (or Tom’s Hardware) ran the test against. A K2000 only has 384 CUDA cores, even the Quadro K4000 has 768 CUDA cores, the newer Quadro K5000 has 1536 cores.

https://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-desktop-gpus.html

I’d take these test as more a marketing plug from AMD than real world, apples-to-apples comparison. Though I would expect the OpenCL integration to be better in this version of CS than in previous iterations. Adobe has every reason to support more cards and more configurations in order to increase market share.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Tom Daigon] ” I think this a a crucial time to talk about this with the recent policy changes at Adobes in regards to software ownership and distribution.”

It seems to be a change within the industry as a whole, and it’s the idea of software moving from being a product you buy once to a service you pay for access to. Adobe’s new model seems to make software a strict pay-per-access service like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu Plus.

The middle-ground as Walter mentioned, leaves it floating in between a full-on product or a full-on service. So paying $XXX to buy the software, and then having a yearly (or monthly?) subscription contract would allow the user to choose whether they want to maintain the updates or not. If they drop the subscription then they could get back into it, but would have to some type of additional fee to get back into the subscription.

Maybe Adobe could run a full on service approach and a licensed maintenance approach. Some users may only want the seats for 2-3 months as they ramp up for a production (live event, film, location shooting, etc.) and then don’t need it again for a year or two. In that case, the cloud/all-digital approach is great. The other side would be the maintenance license for people who perpetually use it – educational, corporate, broadcast, post-house, etc. and they may want to maintain a license year to year. Or they may just want to buy it once and use it as-is for 2-3 years with no subscription plan and then purchase again down the road.

I don’t have the answers, but I can certainly ask a lot of questions! 😉 Hopefully Adobe reads this and has more discussions internally (or externally with a test group) as to what’s best for both its business model and its customer base.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Jeff Pulera] “You can certainly purchase the Adobe Install Media for $25 if you want to have DVD hard copies of the software on hand.”

I was (still am I guess) under the impression that Adobe is doing away with discs. As in, you will not be able to buy them in the future. However, Walter’s point that you can make discs off the downloaded file makes sense and could be a way around that. But I thought Adobe was moving to an all digital solution. No more discs.

[Michael Hendrix] ” am of the mindset that if everyone were on the subscription, why would Adobe have to wait for a specific, timed release of a new version. They wouldn’t make anymore money on it because they would have everyone’s monthly subscription fees.”

The “digital is faster to update” mantra seems like it always is pitched as a benefit (Apple does it now with their App Store), but like Tom said, those that live on the “bleeding edge” tend to bleed quite a lot – incompatible drivers, software conflicts, hardware conflicts, etc. I like having the latest and greatest version after it’s been tested out and patched because no software ever operates at 100%, especially not on day 1. But nobody is forcing you to download and install the update, so you could just wait a bit I suppose.

I guess you’re correct that this wouldn’t tie Adobe down to a set release schedule, but they do seem squarely set on a new showing at NAB with release in May/June of the same year. In between the “updates” are just bug fixes, not major upgrades. The only companies I see doing major upgrades between NAB has been Apple with FCPX and Blackmagic with Resolve. Avid, Autodesk, and Adobe usually just roll out small patches for things. Major updates are left on a yearly cycle at this point.

[Walter Soyka] “I don’t always lose Internet connectivity, but when I do”
[Walter Soyka] “I don’t always re-install, but when I do”
[Walter Soyka] “I don’t always drop my subscriptions, but when I do”

Walter this sounds the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” lines. Maybe we could change it to the most interesting editor in the world…, 😉

[Walter Soyka] “I think maintenance is the best of both worlds. The customer gets regular updates and doesn’t feel locked in. The developer gets a regular revenue stream. I’d love to see Adobe offer something like this.”

I think Walter is exactly right here. This is the “middle ground” and also where I’d like to see Adobe move. As Walter said, it’s nearly identical to the Autodesk solution, which I like.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[walter biscardi] “Really makes me happy we made the switch to Premiere Pro.”

[Mel Matsuoka] “Holy crap, this is awesome. Totally vindicates my decision to switch from FCP7 to PPro.”

This. +1.

I must have said the same thing about a dozen times today at the office. Glad I moved my shop from FCP7 to PPro back in 2011. No regrets so far.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Have they ever worked? Do they work in other programs that the MC Color panel supports (Avid, Smoke, Color, etc.)?

If not then maybe you have a bad board?

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

[Joewi Verhoeven] “Sorry for not stating clearly, the footage I’m talking about is not graded yet, and I’m just prepping it for the color grade, which will be done in Resolve most likely. So I guess I’ll just straight export a QT then?”

Not your fault man! I’m just having a hard time reading words tonight apparently.

Did you try XML as well as EDL? If both fail, then like Shane suggested you can export a ProRes 4444 file, bring that into Resolve, do a scene detect from which you can create an EDL, and then go about your grade.

You won’t lose any quality if your footage originates in ProRes 4444 and you export out a self-contained QT movie in ProRes 4444.

I’m going to bed now…… 🙂

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

@Shane – I guess I’m confused about why you would be going back to Resolve via EDL if you’ve already done color grading (and I’m assuming the OP had already graded). If you’re going to Scratch or Smoke via EDL then I guess you’re looking at finishing which would make perfect sense…I didn’t pick that up in the OP message.

But I may just be tired tonight….its been a long day. You’re probably right that it’s for finishing, that didn’t cross my mind for some reason when I read the post.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost