Has anyone removed Adobe CC completely from their PC?

[alaskacameradude]

I didn't say A was better than B, nor did I say "it is no different than Mac Finder". And I have been an Adobe user in the past. And I certainly don't need a sales pitch here to jump back on board.
I'm happy that it makes you more productive.

The other thing that forums can be good for - is helping those with less experience, gain knowledge and insight from other professionals. My opinion differs from yours on the helpfulness, or ability of Bridge or any other subscription Adobe product to make my workflow faster or more productive.
Carry on.

Exactly this! There is not a single subscription Adobe product that makes my workflow ‘faster’ (Resolve and FCP both are so much faster than Adobe I don’t even know how you say that with a straight face) or ‘more productive.’ And for the record, I too am a professional sharing my opinion on a forum so that those with less experience can gain knowledge and insight.

Might there be people that Adobe can help? Of course. Especially if you work as part of a team or interface regularly with ad agencies or others who use Adobe. But as this thread’s very existence shows, for a growing number of us, Adobe is totally not necessary and doesn’t offer a compelling reason to use it over the competitors.

 

[NorBro]

My love for FCP is unmatched; it's been so amazing to me for 20+ years (old and new).

I have turned down work in the past when I couldn't use it and I will never learn Premiere or Resolve (I simply just do not want to).

With that said, FCP or Resolve are not going to be "much faster" for someone if they don't know them well (or at all). If they are extremely proficient - like real life proficient, not resume proficient - in any Adobe product (or any other software for that matter), another option isn't going to compare.

And even if a person knows EVERYTHING as well as the developers/engineers, he or she may still have a preference based on any number of variables, not just speed.

 

[Doug Jensen]

Exactly this! There is not a single subscription Adobe product that makes my workflow ‘faster’ (Resolve and FCP both are so much faster than Adobe I don’t even know how you say that with a straight face) or ‘more productive.’ And for the record, I too am a professional sharing my opinion on a forum so that those with less experience can gain knowledge and insight.

Might there be people that Adobe can help? Of course. Especially if you work as part of a team or interface regularly with ad agencies or others who use Adobe. But as this thread’s very existence shows, for a growing number of us, Adobe is totally not necessary and doesn’t offer a compelling reason to use it over the competitors.

Relax, man. Don't take this stuff so personally. We're just having discussion. Nobody's insulting you personally, holding a gun to your head to force you to use certain software, or doubting your ability to earn a good living.

And for the record, I'm not really advocating for the entire Adobe suite -- mostly just Bridge. Which I still contend ought to be part of a professional's tools because there is no substitute. And it's free.

 

[alaskacameradude]

the

Relax, man. Don't take this stuff so personally. We're just having discussion. Nobody's insulting you personally, holding a gun to your head to force you to use certain software, or doubting your ability to earn a good living.

And for the record, I'm not really advocating for the entire Adobe suite -- mostly just Bridge. Which I still contend ought to be part of a professional's tools because there is no substitute. And it's free.

But I will add, I don't see how any professional can get by without Resolve for grading. And it is free. Yeah, you may not want to use it for editing (I don't) but every frame of video looks better having undergone some grading in Resolve. But don't take that personally if you disagree!!!. Keep calm and carry on.

I do use Resolve for grading. Pretty good program.

 

[alaskacameradude]

My love for FCP is unmatched; it's been so amazing to me for 20+ years (old and new).

I have turned down work in the past when I couldn't use it and I will never learn Premiere or Resolve (I simply just do not want to).

With that said, FCP or Resolve are not going to be "much faster" for someone if they don't know them well (or at all). If they are extremely proficient - like real life proficient, not resume proficient - in any Adobe product (or any other software for that matter), another option isn't going to compare.

And even if a person knows EVERYTHING as well as the developers/engineers, he or she may still have a preference based on any number of variables, not just speed.

There are so many places where the speed of both FCP and Resolve is much faster than Adobe. Im not talking about stringing together a rough cut in the timeline because you know the keyboard shortcuts, but actually doing something like rendering out a 12 minute video from the timeline. That is where I have seen huge gains in speed over the old bloated Adobe code. Pretty easy to find people who can show you the time savings of using Resolve or FCP over Adobe if you look on YouTube. Or just test it yourself like I did. Rendering and exporting are both much slower in Adobe.

 

[NorBro]

There are so many places where the speed of both FCP and Resolve is much faster than Adobe. Im not talking about stringing together a rough cut in the timeline because you know the keyboard shortcuts, but actually doing something like rendering out a 12 minute video from the timeline. That is where I have seen huge gains in speed over the old bloated Adobe code. Pretty easy to find people who can show you the time savings of using Resolve or FCP over Adobe if you look on YouTube. Or just test it yourself like I did. Rendering and exporting are both much slower in Adobe.

With the quality and media playback options ("optimized" for a long time before "proxy" was introduced), I don't think I have ever rendered in FCP X/FCP.

The traditional 2005-ish real-time rendering I was doing for playback has been unnecessary; it's been quicker to just export the video and watch it, lol.

But, in general, I think your statement could also be about Apple computers more than anything else. Apple has worked so much on optimizing FCP for their M-series chips. (There's a graph somewhere showing all of the benefits with each generation and all the spec improvements, they're day-and-night compared to the Intel machines and the older versions of FCP.)

But about the exporting...I think that's too broad of an assumption to provide any notable value. You have to consider the codec and its spec, the user's hardware and of course what's done to the footage! (So important.)

___

Here's a good article which particularly discusses why Premiere might be slow for some: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...sS8S4QygNlMCBnK3N4IJQyOezUz3DiUfCOxdtiKLmChTQ

If you don't read it, here's the first paragraph:

Premiere Pro has had supported for hardware decoding of H.264 and H.265 (HEVC) media for quite a while, but until recently, it was only available if you had an Intel CPU that supported Quick Sync. In Premiere Pro 14.5, however, Adobe added GPU-based decoding which made hardware decoding a possibility for the majority of Premiere Pro users.

Unfortunately, not all H.264 and H.265 media will be able to utilize hardware decoding. On top of the codec itself, both the bit depth (8-bit, 10-bit, etc.) and chroma subsampling (4:2:0, 4:2:2, 4:4:4), as well as the hardware capabilities of your system, impacts whether you can utilize hardware decoding.

___

I can't compare how FCP is to anything else and I always thought it was blazing fast until I hit a brick wall with Canon's 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 from the R5 in 2020.

At that point in time, it was pretty new to be coming from cameras (they might have been the first ones to offer 10-bit 4:2:2 HEVC) and it broke my M1 and FCP.

1-minute of lightly graded 8K H.265 (no noise reduction or anything) took like 10-minutes to export while it took like 45-seconds to export 5-minutes of 8K REDCODE RAW (only utilizing the built-in RED controls for any manipulation).

___

So when we discuss all of this to educate ourselves and/or others, I think it's best to consider the entire landscape of codecs, formats, hardware, workflows, effects, noise reduction, whatever. All will impact a user's experience.

In this case, I actually did think you were speaking about traditional editing/shortcuts, etc. because all of that stuff is so quick and implemented so well in such a clean and enjoyable interface.

But exporting...too many hardware variables, even down to SSD speeds and things one might not think about like exporting a file on their MBP on battery power vs. plugged-in, or using some poorly created third-party effect that is wreaking havoc and introducing unnecessary computational complexity.

As far as the so many other places you mentioned, I would love to watch any specific links if you might have some. I have seen hundreds in the past while continuing to work on my knowledge, but I rarely ever learned anything new as most of the content was general info.

 

[Doug Jensen]

There are so many places where the speed of both FCP and Resolve is much faster than Adobe. Im not talking about stringing together a rough cut in the timeline because you know the keyboard shortcuts, but actually doing something like rendering out a 12 minute video from the timeline. That is where I have seen huge gains in speed over the old bloated Adobe code. Pretty easy to find people who can show you the time savings of using Resolve or FCP over Adobe if you look on YouTube. Or just test it yourself like I did. Rendering and exporting are both much slower in Adobe.

First of all, I don't agree that rendering times are the most important metric. How much stuff are you rendering???? Why is that purely mechanical, unmanned processing, more important to you that the task of actually sitting in front of the computer and making hundreds of decisions and perhaps thousands of commands? That is where the bulk of my time is spent.

In your example of a 12 minute video, I might spend spend a few hours or a even a day or two sitting in front of my computer manually editing such a video together, depending on the complexity of the project, but when it comes to rendering the final project, what difference does it make how long it takes? I'm going to go do soemthing else while it processes, whether that is 2 minutes or 2 hours. I'm not cranking out multiple videos every single day and sitting at my desk ewatching the progress bar. Are you?

You seem to think there is a huge difference in rendering speeds and that metric should hae a big influence on someone's choice of NLE. I couldn't disagree more. How slow do you think Adobe is at rendering? How long do you think it takes to render a typical 12 minute video?

There's another thread called "How to Choose, Setup, Balance and Operate a Pro Video Tripod" with a 37:08 video that I edited in Premiere and posted on YouTube. It's a mix of HD and 4K footage, narration, music, SFX, graphics, transitions, etc. I called up that project in Premiere this morning and rendered it again while I timed it. How long do you think it took to render? How long do you think it would take to render (not edit) in FCP? Make a guess and then I'll tell you how long it actually took.

 

[Doug Jensen]

BTW, I m not saying FCP is slower or faster for actual EDITING than Premiere or Resolve or anything else. There is no way to quantify that. We all have the freedom to choose the platform we prefer and feel most comfortable with.

 

[markfpv]

Yeah this is all an interesting point. Because if I were to be stupid enough to pay Adobe, it would cost me not only money, but time. Both FCP and Resolve utterly eat Adobe’s lunch for both speed and stability. I would not only be spending an utterly useless amount of money every month for stuff I could do in a cheaper app, but it would take me longer to do it.
And yes, I do end to end corporate productions, where I do all the shooting, editing, motion graphics and text, music, voiceover, or anything else needed and have never come across anything which I used to be able to do with Adobe which I cannot do with cheaper, faster alternatives. There is zero reasons for someone like me (who isn’t working as part of a team, working for an ad agency, or similar where you have to interface with what they want to use) to use Adobe. I don’t care if it’s ‘cheap’. Want to know what you call something which is ‘cheap’ but doesn’t actually help you be more productive or do anything that you can’t already do with what you have? Answer is overpriced. There is a reason I have been in business for over 20 years in a tiny isolated Alaskan town. I don’t just throw money at something because I ‘can afford’ to and it’s not a ‘sad commentary’ on my situation that I choose not to be wasteful. I can ‘not bat an eye’ at the cost of things if I wanted to as well but I don’t think it’s a flex to pay for stuff that is unnecessary even if it is cheap. I have a truck and house paid off and 4 kids in college that my video business has paid for so I’m doing just fine, your not so subtle verbal jabs not standing.

Well said... and rings true with myself as well. Small market, 20+ years in successful end to end productions with no mortgage or vehicle payments.

 

[markfpv]

I do use Resolve for grading. Pretty good program.

If you've not tried or heard of the Color Finale plug-in for FCPX... I can't say it's as extensive or as good as Resolve... but for quick turn around editing / grading, I'm much faster using it than I am Resolve

 

[markfpv]

My love for FCP is unmatched; it's been so amazing to me for 20+ years (old and new).

I have turned down work in the past when I couldn't use it and I will never learn Premiere or Resolve (I simply just do not want to).

With that said, FCP or Resolve are not going to be "much faster" for someone if they don't know them well (or at all). If they are extremely proficient - like real life proficient, not resume proficient - in any Adobe product (or any other software for that matter), another option isn't going to compare.

And even if a person knows EVERYTHING as well as the developers/engineers, he or she may still have a preference based on any number of variables, not just speed.

It's funny to me. I was very much one of those people that thought Apple lost their mind when they created X as the successor to 7... and I moved to everything Adobe and began editing with Premiere (again). The backwards incompatibility was a huge hurdle for me also at the time - as I was doing lots of agency work.

Once the subscription started at Adobe, and I started to see I was getting very little updates / new features for that monthly payment (don't even get me started on what color grading was like with Adobe back then) I gave X another try. And then they started coming out regularly with new updates for X like every month while Adobe crashed on my system and came out with no new features. Adobe actually sort of did me a big favor by pushing me away...
The magnetic timeline - and the many other ways to save time in editing, once I explored it more and gave it a chance, were truly revolutionary. (and I say this as someone who has edited proficiently in at least 4 or 5 other software systems).

 

[NorBro]

I always wondered why Premiere was so heavily used everywhere (like especially during those years when it was only really FCP and Adobe on the mid-level (maybe some Vegas) and Resolve was just getting going and Avid was for bigger places).

For me, it was a prime example of people's misunderstanding about FCP that hindered it in some ways...trashing X, comparing it to iMovie, etc. etc.

 

[briandrys1]

My understanding at the time was that FCP X was missing the features that professional editors required. It sounded like Apple introduced it too early, since these features were later added.

 

[Doug Jensen]

My understanding at the time was that FCP X was missing the features that professional editors required. It sounded like Apple introduced it too early, since these features were later added.

Yes, that's a big reason it didn't catch on. Plus it was too different. Not the way I, or a lot of more experienced editors wanted to work. Comparisons to iMovie and other prosumer apps were completely valid at the time. I don't know if things have changed, but that was a perfect description back then. Premiere has been 99.9% stable since I switched and it allows me to work the way I want to work. Not only am I glad I switched, I regretted not getting out of FCP sooner.

 

[DustinSchmidt]

but when it comes to rendering the final project, what difference does it make how long it takes?

I would imagine that it differs for everyone here and also differs based on the client and the project.

Occasionally I will work with ad agencies that want to work together through live editing sessions.

I may have had an initial couple of days to come up with a first cut, but as things progress and we get down to smaller, final details then I've had 4-5 people on a zoom call, all of us watching the edit together, making notes in real time and working to finalize the cut.

I've often had to tell everyone to go grab a quick coffee while I export the latest changes, quickly re-upload to frame.io and have a revision waiting when everyone gets back to their computer so we can continue the conversation.

This is only possible because of the speed of my computer in rendering and exporting, the speed of my internet connection in uploading and the speed of frame.io in processing the file for viewing.

In this specific situation, speed is of the utmost importance.

 

[Doug Jensen]

In this specific situation, speed is of the utmost importance.

I agree, that is an excellent example of where rendering speed would be paramount. In the typical situation you have described, what would you say is the length of the final video and how long does it take to render? What is your NLE and/or rendering engine?

 

[NorBro]

I was going to tell this story earlier but I was thinking there is too much to go into, but I'll just share the short version as another example.

About 15 years ago, I had to supply game film to coaches and eager parents/players. We sometimes filmed about a dozen games per day and had to digitize each tape and then export the raw film (sometimes cleaned a little up, dead air).

Naturally everyone wanted it within an hour after the game but it just wasn't happening...a generation of humans too early for the tech.

Took a few hours to export one 1-hour, 15 minute game...then a few hours to upload and for Vimeo to process.

Everyone got used to expecting it at some point the next day but, man, was it a grind. Always behind...

Sure would have been nice to shoot on SD cards, import the footage within a few minutes and take a few minutes to export the 1080p footage with today's offerings.

Eventually it got better every year but you know.

 

[alaskacameradude]

It's funny to me. I was very much one of those people that thought Apple lost their mind when they created X as the successor to 7... and I moved to everything Adobe and began editing with Premiere (again). The backwards incompatibility was a huge hurdle for me also at the time - as I was doing lots of agency work.

Once the subscription started at Adobe, and I started to see I was getting very little updates / new features for that monthly payment (don't even get me started on what color grading was like with Adobe back then) I gave X another try. And then they started coming out regularly with new updates for X like every month while Adobe crashed on my system and came out with no new features. Adobe actually sort of did me a big favor by pushing me away...
The magnetic timeline - and the many other ways to save time in editing, once I explored it more and gave it a chance, were truly revolutionary. (and I say this as someone who has edited proficiently in at least 4 or 5 other software systems).

Almost exactly my story as well. After the FCP X disaster of an introduction, I
switched from my beloved FCP 7 suite to Adobe everything. Used their creative suite for a few years until
they moved to subscription only. Once they did that, I was done using them and switched back to FCP and associated tools. Luckily they had added back in most features and by this time there were a lot of great third party plug ins available to patch any holes.

 

[alaskacameradude]

With the quality and media playback options ("optimized" for a long time before "proxy" was introduced), I don't think I have ever rendered in FCP X/FCP.

The traditional 2005-ish real-time rendering I was doing for playback has been unnecessary; it's been quicker to just export the video and watch it, lol.

But, in general, I think your statement could also be about Apple computers more than anything else. Apple has worked so much on optimizing FCP for their M-series chips. (There's a graph somewhere showing all of the benefits with each generation and all the spec improvements, they're day-and-night compared to the Intel machines and the older versions of FCP.)

But about the exporting...I think that's too broad of an assumption to provide any notable value. You have to consider the codec and its spec, the user's hardware and of course what's done to the footage! (So important.)

___

Here's a good article which particularly discusses why Premiere might be slow for some: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...sS8S4QygNlMCBnK3N4IJQyOezUz3DiUfCOxdtiKLmChTQ

If you don't read it, here's the first paragraph:

Premiere Pro has had supported for hardware decoding of H.264 and H.265 (HEVC) media for quite a while, but until recently, it was only available if you had an Intel CPU that supported Quick Sync. In Premiere Pro 14.5, however, Adobe added GPU-based decoding which made hardware decoding a possibility for the majority of Premiere Pro users.

Unfortunately, not all H.264 and H.265 media will be able to utilize hardware decoding. On top of the codec itself, both the bit depth (8-bit, 10-bit, etc.) and chroma subsampling (4:2:0, 4:2:2, 4:4:4), as well as the hardware capabilities of your system, impacts whether you can utilize hardware decoding.

___

I can't compare how FCP is to anything else and I always thought it was blazing fast until I hit a brick wall with Canon's 10-bit 4:2:2 H.265 from the R5 in 2020.

At that point in time, it was pretty new to be coming from cameras (they might have been the first ones to offer 10-bit 4:2:2 HEVC) and it broke my M1 and FCP.

1-minute of lightly graded 8K H.265 (no noise reduction or anything) took like 10-minutes to export while it took like 45-seconds to export 5-minutes of 8K REDCODE RAW (only utilizing the built-in RED controls for any manipulation).

___

So when we discuss all of this to educate ourselves and/or others, I think it's best to consider the entire landscape of codecs, formats, hardware, workflows, effects, noise reduction, whatever. All will impact a user's experience.

In this case, I actually did think you were speaking about traditional editing/shortcuts, etc. because all of that stuff is so quick and implemented so well in such a clean and enjoyable interface.

But exporting...too many hardware variables, even down to SSD speeds and things one might not think about like exporting a file on their MBP on battery power vs. plugged-in, or using some poorly created third-party effect that is wreaking havoc and introducing unnecessary computational complexity.

As far as the so many other places you mentioned, I would love to watch any specific links if you might have some. I have seen hundreds in the past while continuing to work on my knowledge, but I rarely ever learned anything new as most of the content was general info.

Very good points. The codecs and specifics will make a difference. And the new Apple silicon chips are probably a big reason I have seen such a difference as the Max and Ultra chips have hardware encoders and decoders built in for h.264 and ProRes which are two of the most requested codecs from my clients. What is interesting to me is that Resolve has managed to also harness these hardware encoders and decoders as it is even faster than FCP sometimes. Adobe however has not yet seemed to be able to make use them, maybe because Adobe is tuned to make use of specific Nvidia GPU cards instead? You make good points though, the number of possible variations, codecs, and systems makes it hard to pin down without appropriate ‘controls.’
In my specific situation, using a new Apple Silicon ‘Mac’ and ‘Ultra’ computers, the speeds are multiple times faster for the common codecs I am asked to use in FCP and Resolve as opposed to Premiere.

 

[Doug Jensen]

"In my specific situation, using a new Apple Silicon ‘Mac’ and ‘Ultra’ computers, the speeds are multiple times faster for the common codecs I am asked to use in FCP and Resolve as opposed to Premiere."

@alaskacameradude

Wow, that is very impressive.
Please go back to post #67 and look at the questions I've asked you about your rendering speeds. You boasted about how much faster FCP is than Adobe and it doesn't seem like it should be to much to ask for you to put some numbers to those statements. I thought you'd be very eager to provide some evidence to back up your claims if the difference is as big and important as you say it is.