scharky
Veteran
So here is my experience thus far. When After effects refused to open because of some security key issue, I went through all my options and decided to finish the project on my laptop, no big deal because I just bought my laptop and it's pretty decent, still my 20min change turned into a 4 hour ordeal copying files back and forth, trouble shooting, installing, etc. I got the project done the next day at Microsoft Studios and when I got home I called Adobe. After trouble shooting with them for about 30 min we finally figured out that it was CINEFORM that was the culprit. A little back story on this, I purchased Cineform earlier this year and have been using it with all my projects. At one point I was updating NEO HDV to a newer version when suddenly my activation key no longer worked. I emailed Cineform and they sent me a new one that worked. Well about 2 weeks ago I updated NEO HDV once again and while it didn't ask me to Activate it this time because the key was already in it decided to just go into 15 day trial mode. Since I wasn't capturing anything in those days I never noticed it until I went to capture just 2 days ago. When I went to capture it said that Cineform had expired and that I needed to enter the key, I did and everything was cool, that is until I went to open After effects. For some reason Adobe plays God at this point and decides that because Cineform has stored somehow two activation keys that my system is no longer legit. Only after uninstalling Cineform could I get After effects to open up, but now it's mad at me and will not install additional components . Plus I really can't not have Cineform installed on my system as all of my files are Cineform . . . poo poo. So I decide to cut my losses, do a reinstall on winXP. So last night I finally start reinstalling programs, this time I install After effects before installing Cineform, just to see if it will open, everything seems good. I then go to install Cineform and guess what, my key no longer poo pooing works. So it's back on the 15 day trial, but guesses what, After effects now works with no problems. So I have a problem report sent into Cineform asking for yet another new key so we'll see what happens there.
So who is to blame for all of this, well I would have to say it is equal parts Cineform and Adobe, as both of these companies are crippling their users with their software because of activation keys and what not. I fully support companies earning profit from their hard work, but this is getting ridiculous. A change to a project that should have taken 20 minutes has now caused me to spend over 20 hours of extra work just trying to get things working properly on my system.
If I really wanted to Pirate software I could just go on any Bit torrent site and download both After Effects and Cineform, and most likely they would not have these problems. So what has their BS Activation really done? Well it hasn't hurt the pirate as that stuff still exists. All it has done is hurt the consumer, the person that actually pays them for the software.
So who is to blame for all of this, well I would have to say it is equal parts Cineform and Adobe, as both of these companies are crippling their users with their software because of activation keys and what not. I fully support companies earning profit from their hard work, but this is getting ridiculous. A change to a project that should have taken 20 minutes has now caused me to spend over 20 hours of extra work just trying to get things working properly on my system.
If I really wanted to Pirate software I could just go on any Bit torrent site and download both After Effects and Cineform, and most likely they would not have these problems. So what has their BS Activation really done? Well it hasn't hurt the pirate as that stuff still exists. All it has done is hurt the consumer, the person that actually pays them for the software.
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