Should I upgrade to Premiere CS6 before Adobe drops the boom on us?

[El Director]

For me, I can't see a reason not to go with CC. If you're a hobbiest, you can just use it for a month, cancel, and do it again when you need it (albeit at a little higher price). If you're a pro or run a business, you'd probably always want to be running the latest updates anyway. CC gives you this, at an affordable price. I love it. My internet sucks where I live, but so far, I haven't had any issues with the subscription. I wonder when these kinds of "I will not pay monthly!" threads will stop popping up?

 

[Amadou]

You don't get the point. The CC Policy forces you to pay whenever Adobe wants you to pay. If you are satisfied with your current version of CC and you don't want to upgrade, Adobe will still force you to upgrade and pay for the software just to be able to keep it. Nothing prevents Adobe to change the rules on you anytime. You will soon notice that wheras before you could upgrade every few years and skip defective versions, now Adobe will force you to upgrade every month, and if you don't pay the rent they will cut you off. They become a landlord or even a drug dealer. You are the sheep who needs to pay this racket every month whether you like it or not. Worse yet, if you don't have acess to the internet you will be cut off automatically. This means you now become dépendent of the Adobe server and head office. The day they change the rules, you will be stuck with a pole so far up your asss, you won't even know what hit you. In short, they will force you to buy an upgrade copy of Premiere every year and you have to pay whether you like it or not. And if you ever cancel the suscption you will wind up having given large sums of money to Adobe and owning nothing in return. I say NO WAY!!! They are trying to push this new Policy because all the large companies are getting greedy and are trying to turn customers into cash cows. Don't go along with it. This is about freedom.

 

[David W. Jones]

And yet you are willing to give Adobe more money to upgrade to CS6?

If you have that much disdain for them why not go with a different edit platform?

 

[SHARBOR]

"now Adobe will force you to upgrade every month"

Updates are not automatic with CC - the user chooses IF and WHEN to install any updates. Your mind is made up apparently, but I mention this for the benefit of others ;-)

Jeff

 

[adkimery]

You don't get the point. The CC Policy forces you to pay whenever Adobe wants you to pay. If you are satisfied with your current version of CC and you don't want to upgrade, Adobe will still force you to upgrade and pay for the software just to be able to keep it.

No, Adobe doesn't force you to upgrade. Yes, you still pay the same amount whether your choose to upgrade or not. Via CC I currently have CS6 and the latest CC versions installed and running side by side (one guy I'm working with just has CS6 so I need to stay compatible with his system.

And if you ever cancel the suscption you will wind up having given large sums of money to Adobe and owning nothing in return.

Hopefully people that subscribe to CC get paid more than the $50/mo the full priced subscription costs. I mainly work as a hired gun so I don't own any of the projects I cut anyway and paying for CC allows me to make w-a-y more money than boycotting CC would save me. Not everyone is stuck in the same boat as you Amadou.

 

[Andrius Simutis]

You don't get the point. The CC Policy forces you to pay whenever Adobe wants you to pay.

We get the point, but I just can't get too worked up over it. As I mentioned earlier this isn't a plot by Adobe to scam you, but a way for them to manage cash flow so they can spend money on development without taking on too much risk. Under the old model, they had to work and spend money for over a year on a release and hope that everyone buys it. Under the CC model, Adobe knows how much money is coming in and can then spend money without risking debt. It's all business and in their interest to keep the development going so that people stick with Adobe. The positive side effect of this is that Adobe can make incremental improvements and updates without having to wait for the next major release.
I will admit that I personally don't like it as a customer. I also realize that eventually I will be on the CC model and paying monthly. Oh well. If it averages out close to what it was costing to buy updates, then fine. I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot by boycotting the tools I need to make a living.

 

[hscully]

No, either get CC or move on, I say. It's been mentioned though that the subscription model provides a disincentive for Adobe to innovate, regardless of how secure their cash flow. No doubt it's good for them for all the reasons you describe but with the old model they needed to provide new and wanted features to get someone to upgrade. Now you pay whether they innovate or not. ... just sayin'

 

[Andrius Simutis]

It's been mentioned though that the subscription model provides a disincentive for Adobe to innovate, regardless of how secure their cash flow. No doubt it's good for them for all the reasons you describe but with the old model they needed to provide new and wanted features to get someone to upgrade. Now you pay whether they innovate or not. ... just sayin'

In theory, I suppose that's a distinct possibility. The question is if they're actually going to do that. Currently they're still developing away trying to make the products better to keep their subscribers happy (or as happy as they can be in a subscriber model). You could also argue that Adobe is still a business that needs to maintain its position in the marketplace, and to do so they have to innovate or they'll be passed by someone who will. But yeah, a new CEO could come in and try to maximize short term profits by slashing development budgets. Let's all hope that Adobe does the right thing and takes advantage of the new model to free up resources into real innovation.

 

[Amadou]

I think those who accept this without complaining are sheep. This rental Adobe Policy is abusive and they are now charging the equivalent of a major upgrade every year (whether the sofware is upgraded or not). From here on out you will have to go along with anything they decide and you don't own any software anymore. You just pay Adobe. If you don't you get cut off. My advice to everybody is to upgrade to CS6 and then not to upgrade to CC until Adobe changes its Policy.

 

[Jim Simon]

My advice to everybody is to upgrade to CS6 and then not to upgrade to CC until Adobe changes its Policy.

That's just bad advice because it's not going to happen.

Meanwhile, my work has been getting done faster and with greater ease using CC over CS6. As good as CS6 was at the time, it'd be a real step backwards for me now.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

No, either get CC or move on, I say. It's been mentioned though that the subscription model provides a disincentive for Adobe to innovate, regardless of how secure their cash flow. No doubt it's good for them for all the reasons you describe but with the old model they needed to provide new and wanted features to get someone to upgrade. Now you pay whether they innovate or not. ... just sayin'

And yet since cc has come out they have pushed out NUMEROUS updates with new features.

So much for your theory.

 

[Amadou]

The rental Policy is a scam to turn clients into cash cows. With the old Policy, they had to satisfy clients and earn their living . Now they can simply wait the monthly payment. I'ts abusive scam.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

And since they have a dedicated cash flow, they can better manage their resources/programmers to better get out the updates, which have been coming at a good clip.

If you don't want it don't buy it.

This argument is growing rather dull.

 

[hscully]

And yet since cc has come out they have pushed out NUMEROUS updates with new features.

So much for your theory.

So far so good, right? We'll see. So far they have offered new innovations, OK. Then they have some other incentive to innovate say, - happy subscribers. The theory is that when the ONLY way they could get more from their current license holders was to provide enough innovation for them to choose to upgrade, that this provided a strong incentive to innovate. Now they don't. The theory is fine. That old incentive is gone. That's a fact.

Perhaps keeping happy subscribers, or losing editors to the competition, will provide enough incentive to innovate. Good for subscribers.

 

[Scott F]

Meanwhile, my work has been getting done faster and with greater ease using CC over CS6. As good as CS6 was at the time, it'd be a real step backwards for me now.

I'm caught somewhere in the middle of this argument.

Take this in the spirit in which it is intended....I'm not trying to be a wise ass.....Can you (or anyone) cite credible differences between CS6 and CC that you find are a boon to your editing workflow?

I'm over the moon with PP CS6 as I delve into it....and also working with Premiere CC in smaller doses, but not seeing much of a difference.

Don't point me to some online PDF or Adobe bullet points, I want to hear it from your mouths (I mean posts) what recent upgrades in CC you are finding to be great versus CS6.

PS: where did the twirl-downs go for expanding both audio and video tracks? Help!

 

[Paul Cronin]

I would not go with PP CC. I have and it is a mess, crashes, lost render files which is huge loss of time. Image every time you come back into a project you had to render it. Then save it and come back the next day and render it again. Now that is a bug in my opinion. Yes, some will not have the problem but a lot are dealing with it.

I have been with help for days with them on my computer and they can't fix it. These are know problems and their point was not enough people have the problem to call it a bug and fix it.

Hate to say it but looking at going back to Final Cut Pro and moving up to X since I shoot with Sony F55 and need XAVC and up to 4K.

 

[Amadou]

Adobe knows that once clients switch to CC they will have to pay every month no matter what defective version comes their way. Even worse: when a bad version comes along, clients will still have to pay for it every month and keep their suscription open just to wait for the update when it becomes available. This rental Policy has "sheep" written all over it.

 

[adkimery]

The rental Policy is a scam to turn clients into cash cows. With the old Policy, they had to satisfy clients and earn their living . Now they can simply wait the monthly payment. I'ts abusive scam.

Many companies (Avid, Quark, etc.,) that did not have a subscription service still managed to turn their clients into cash cows and failed to turn out meaningful, cost-effective product updates which opened the door for the competition. If Adobe wants to keep users they will still have to create compelling software (especially on the NLE side of things where there is very healthy competition between Adobe, Avid and Apple).

So far so good, right? We'll see. So far they have offered new innovations, OK. Then they have some other incentive to innovate say, - happy subscribers. The theory is that when the ONLY way they could get more from their current license holders was to provide enough innovation for them to choose to upgrade, that this provided a strong incentive to innovate. Now they don't. The theory is fine. That old incentive is gone. That's a fact.

The old incentive didn't guarantee onwards and upwards product development either. For example, how much time do software engineers waste trying to come up with something new, shiny and marketable for the next big release while less sexy updates/fixes get ignored year after year because they won't look eye catching on a press release? Steve Forde from Adobe put up a blog post a few weeks ago and basically asked the AE community how they would feel if for all of 2014 the engineering focus on AE was just to make it incredibility faster. It was a bit of a thinking out loud type blog post, but in the comments there is resounding support from users for spending the whole year on just getting a much faster version of AE. There's no way in hell this concept even gets entertained if Adobe was still on a traditional release cycle.

I'm caught somewhere in the middle of this argument.

Take this in the spirit in which it is intended....I'm not trying to be a wise ass.....Can you (or anyone) cite credible differences between CS6 and CC that you find are a boon to your editing workflow?

The multicam can sync by waveforms and is pretty much ridiculously easy to setup (coming from FCP 7 and Avid for comparison). Media relinking is much improved. Using the Media Browser you can enter other PPro projects and have full access to all media, sequences, bins, etc., contained within it. There is now a setting to enable GPU acceleration even if you aren't using an officially supported GPU (no more hacking text files). There is now dupe detection (not a huge thing but I use it a lot). SpeedGrade looks to be getting a lot of updates (I've only toyed with it).

I didn't use CS6 very much but after using CC for a couple of months going back to CS6 would be painful.

PS: where did the twirl-downs go for expanding both audio and video tracks? Help!

Just double click on the empty space to the right of the eyeball on the track to expand/collapse it.

I would not go with PP CC. I have and it is a mess, crashes, lost render files which is huge loss of time. Image every time you come back into a project you had to render it. Then save it and come back the next day and render it again. Now that is a bug in my opinion. Yes, some will not have the problem but a lot are dealing with it.

FWIW I've been working on a gig with CC for the past couple of months and the app has been stable (maybe a crash ever 3-4 weeks) and I haven't lost any render files. Coming from Avid and FCP 7 this is the first time I've really put any version of PPro through its paces and I'm very pleasantly surprised.

I'm an editor for hire and I lose access to my work at the end of each gig (it belongs to the production company, not me) so I'm less worried (well, not worried at all really) about being tied to Adobe indefinitely. Even if I use it on my own work I've been generating XMLs and/or EDLs as part of my personal archiving process for years.


-Andrew

 

[hscully]

There's no way in hell this concept even gets entertained if Adobe was still on a traditional release cycle.

Precisely my point! Ahem, asking the "community" if we could hold off on features (innovation) so we can improve performance is exactly the slip in value I'd expect from a subscription model. These are not mutually exclusive goals. Maybe you're right. I hope so for all the subscriber's sake.

 

[adkimery]

Precisely my point! Ahem, asking the "community" if we could hold off on features (innovation) so we can improve performance is exactly the slip in value I'd expect from a subscription model. These are not mutually exclusive goals. Maybe you're right. I hope so for all the subscriber's sake.

Since when is performance a slip in value and when did 'new feature' become synonyms with 'innovation' (ex. I remember when Apple touted the big TC window and colored tabs as big, new features in FCP 7)? A big performance boost improves the value of AE for every user while adding a new feature might be great to some and utterly worthless to others. Did you read the blog post and the comments? It was a hypothetical question (Steve said they have no plans to just work on performance for a year) but the community was like, "Hell yeah, that'd be awesome!" so maybe the AE team might spend more time on performance because that's what users have enthusiastically asked for. How that can get twisted into something negative is beyond me.

I swear software devs are perpetually in a no-win situation. If they spend time tweaking under-the-hood performance and fixing longstanding problems the community complains that the new version doesn't have enough new features. If the devs spend time coming up with new features and not doing enough tweaking/fixing longstanding problems the community rakes them over the coals for releasing the same slow, buggy software year after year.

Time will tell if Adobe coasts or not but that's true of any company regardless of their business model.