Adobe alternative

Surf it Mike said:
IMO Never trust adobe for long form projects be it narrative or factual . You are just asking for it. Avid still works the best in this environment whilst it's crap-tacular for short form TVC' s and the like . Fcpx and premier both work well here.

The dark horse is Resolve & with Fusion coming online a possible signpost for the future.

One thing for sure the subscription model at the moment isn't working well . The web appears to be awash with ops. bemoaning the constant crashing of CC. Premier & they're been charged a monthly fee for the privilege.
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I am working on a long form doc on PP 2015 and so far no major problems (knocking on wood), but to be honest I edited most of it in FCP7 and switched it over to PP for CC and some audio fixes. I have heard that PP is not great for feature length work, but I am hoping they make strides in the near future...
 
I've edited and exported many long form (45min - 3.5hours) multi camera projects for years using premiere pro. Mainly versions 1.51, 2.0, cs5 and cs6. Cs5 and 6 rarely crash.
Can't say anything after cs6 though, as I don't do the cloud and will be moving away from Adobe thanks to the forced subscription.
 
DPStewart said:
I agree with Pinky and The Brain...Resolve is going to take over the world.
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If Avid's support response doesn't pick up, I might be there with you (my facility upgrade to 8.4 not going so smoothly). But in reality I bet all it does is drive the price on MC Symphony down. The price of Lightworks is low enough that it should gain market share. And I really think Adobe is pricing itself out, cloud would cost us $330 each a year educational rate (some discount there???), MC is $99 each a year. We have 27 computers that need to run video editing applications, even with the new 20 count minimum floating license server crap (20 floating and 20 dongles), Avid is still a lot cheaper. Just need to get our people using an alternative audio and image editor and I can be done with them.
 
I've been using Lightworks for a couple of years now. It is still under rapid development, but it works just fine with high level professional media with timecode, both audio and video. Some people have issues with compressed streaming formats like H.264 MP4 and MP3 that are designed as delivery formats, not editorial formats. Lightworks is best with uncompressed or lightly compressed i-frame codecs and studio grade 16 or 24bit 48kHZ BWF format audio. It will run uncompressed 4:2:2 800Mbps broadcast HD video in AVI or MOV like butter if your drives can keep up. It tends to choke on highly compressed codecs running less than 25Mbps, since it trys to decompress and buffer all B or P frames to ram. Needs tons of ram and a fat GPU to do this.
I find it to be by far the most efficient NLE I've ever used for organizing media and doing first pass rough cut editing. Resolve seems very clunky by comparison. But I think the combination of editing in LW and finishing in Resolve from an EDL. AAF, or XML edit list may work best for me. The latest 12.5 beta version runs CDNG raw footage native like any other video codec, though as with Premiere, the debayer is IMO not finish quality. But it eliminates the need for transcoding dailies.
There is a definite learning curve as it follows a narrative feature film editorial paradigm. If you think and organize like a film editor, you may love it. Works best with keyboard and a jog shuttle console vs a mouse. I'm using a Contour Shuttle pro V2 and the LW custom keyboard. But it is definitely very long form friendly.
 
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LW is a battle tested long form NLE, unlike P.Pro (although hopefully that is changing, with Gone Girl and a few others adopting), but as Razz mentioned there is a learning curve, especially coming from FCP legacy. What I like most about LW/Resolve is their "open" philosophy about their software (both offer free light versions and LW took a lot of feedback before launching LW beta). I think the only issue with LW, especially on the East coast is that not a lot of post houses use it, so if you're a professional editor looking for work it may be an issue, but if you're an independent editor on your own system you're good...
 
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I cannot understand what Adobe is doing. This is a recipe for a disaster. Software released should be at least fully supported on Apple machines - they're still used by professionals the most. If this software will bite professionals, info will spread very quickly through various channels (reviews, opinions etc.). Then it will influence nonprofessionals as well. I think this CC model is biting them. They've promised increased development, more features, now they have to deliver - no matter what.
 
alohype said:
I cannot understand what Adobe is doing. This is a recipe for a disaster. Software released should be at least fully supported on Apple machines - they're still used by professionals the most. If this software will bite professionals, info will spread very quickly through various channels (reviews, opinions etc.). Then it will influence nonprofessionals as well. I think this CC model is biting them. They've promised increased development, more features, now they have to deliver - no matter what.
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Doesn't seem to be biting them much at all in my editing circles.

Most everyone I know in the DC market has switched and is more than happy with the whole CC suite.
 
mcgeedigital said:
Doesn't seem to be biting them much at all in my editing circles.

Most everyone I know in the DC market has switched and is more than happy with the whole CC suite.
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I was quite happy with it as well till the latest revision - PP15. So many errors and problems that I even have doubts if that was beta tested at all... For me this is totally unusable software atm. My point is that if something is half finished they shouldn't release it (just look at Resolve 12). But because they promised faster development they sort of have to, whether it's finished or not. This model can cause things start to fall apart...
 
I have not done PP15 yet, but I have had issues with the CC updates.

Now this is an awful solution but it has worked for me well so far:
I build my OS Drive as fully as possible WITHOUT the CC apps, then I image it off.
When the major updates come, I revert to the old clean OS image and install the new CC package fresh.
Oh yeah, it sucks - tons of other things to reload and custom settings to reload BUT.. when done as a fresh install all of my CC apps have worked essentially perfectly.

Kills huge amounts of time.
Can be considered "not a professional practice".
Hugely annoying.
But it's the best solution for stability I have ever come across when I just need the damn device to WORK.
 
In regards to"Gone Girl" being done within the Adobe CC yes it was. But how many Adobe tech support people where in the next room troubleshooting ? This is a world removed from current Adobe Customer support coming out of India & the like.

@DPstewart ...... Interesting hint .......sounds unworkable in an edit facility.
 
Surf it Mike said:
In regards to"Gone Girl" being done within the Adobe CC yes it was. But how many Adobe tech support people where in the next room troubleshooting ? This is a world removed from current Adobe Customer support coming out of India & the like.

@DPstewart ...... Interesting hint .......sounds unworkable in an edit facility.
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Probably yes ;) Their mistake is bringing more and more features to PP which should remain just a hub. Hub where you put all pieces together, cut it and export it. It should work faster with each revision, be more integrated with other apps (AE, Audition, Speedgrade etc.) but stay simple. Now they're adding features from AE, Speedgrade (look at Lumetri) and others which all slows it down and brings more issues then solutions. It looks like they don't really know which way to go (look at workflow panel in CC15 - so similar to the one that can be found in Resolve). Soon instead of precise, razor like tools for each field we will have almost the same apps doing everything with just one feature put slightly forward. Adobe's strength was always small, right tools for a particular job instead of one massive software that will do all. They're slowly killing that concept.
 
alohype said:
I cannot understand what Adobe is doing. This is a recipe for a disaster. Software released should be at least fully supported on Apple machines - they're still used by professionals the most. If this software will bite professionals, info will spread very quickly through various channels (reviews, opinions etc.). Then it will influence nonprofessionals as well. I think this CC model is biting them. They've promised increased development, more features, now they have to deliver - no matter what.
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I'm not one of the Adobe sympathizers. But looking at the Adobe performance as a company - one of the best performers in software business. EPS are through the roof. Last earnings reported in June - grew more that 70% over the previous quarter; on annual basis, if my memory serves me right, about 40%. While averages for the sector are currently mostly negative. And I hate to admit but as a CC subscriber I've contributed to the bottom line. So, alas for the moment its recipe seems to be just fine.
 
Surf it Mike said:
In regards to"Gone Girl" being done within the Adobe CC yes it was. But how many Adobe tech support people where in the next room troubleshooting ? This is a world removed from current Adobe Customer support coming out of India & the like.

@DPstewart ...... Interesting hint .......sounds unworkable in an edit facility.
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What -- you mean I'm not going to get the same tech support as David Fincher:)!?!?!
 
OP, I partly agree with cc2015 begin a bit slugish, the look was also a huge change from 2014, but I found that simply dialing the background color to a more light grey one helped a lot to begin with.
As for being slower, I haven't tested it enough to agree on that. I just bought a new pc and my bigget issue so far was finding out how to handle ProRes still.... really silly work around that included Miraizon, QT 7 Pro and so on.

For some reason Premiere wouldn't play back the ProRes files properly if I hadn't started up QT before opening Premiere.

That said.... I'm liking Resolve 11 Lite and if 12 is going to be as good in NLE as hyped, I could easily see myself ditching Premiere and AE for Resolve, and then only use AE for compositing if needed.
Heck... maybe I just haven't played enough around with the new Premiere color adjustments, Resolve just seems more intuitive.
 
Mark Williams said:
I am very happy with Edius. Adobe burned me on version 6.5 so not much they can do to win me back. Also, I prefer not to edit in the cloud.
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I also edit with GV Edius since version 1 , I am on Version 7.5 and just got my Version Pro 8 Workstion , all i can say it is solid . 4k is a breeze with no rending , everything is realtime.
 
And here we go again. Wasted another hours because of PP - CUDA not working so have to use a software renderer (at least 4 times longer exports). Will give it a last chance by installing fresh Yosemite and then I'm done with it.

Anyone thinking that I am being an exception and exaggerating read this thread:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/7779123#7779123
 
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I just jumped ship from Premiere to Avid. I was holding out for Resolve 12 as long as possible, but I needed something reliable to cut with now and CC 15 wasn't up to par. Same story with After Effects, which has caused me to leave for Fusion. Photoshop still seems solid, as does Lightroom and Muse, which is now the only three products I use. If I could just dump Muse too, I could drop to the Photographer package as far as my Adobe needs :)
 
El Director said:
I just jumped ship from Premiere to Avid. I was holding out for Resolve 12 as long as possible, but I needed something reliable to cut with now and CC 15 wasn't up to par. Same story with After Effects, which has caused me to leave for Fusion. Photoshop still seems solid, as does Lightroom and Muse, which is now the only three products I use. If I could just dump Muse too, I could drop to the Photographer package as far as my Adobe needs :)
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Unfortunately After Effects is still the best for motion graphics :/ All other Adobe software is working great for me, my only issue is that damned Premiere Pro :/
 
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