Adobe Production Studio on Intel Macs

[gl]

Adobe is once again in full development for Macs:

Press Release (http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200701/010407ProductionStudio.html)

" SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 4, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that the next version of Adobe® Production Studio, the integrated video and audio post-production tool set that is part of the Creative Suite family, will be available for both the Macintosh and Windows® platforms. Film, video and web professionals currently using Adobe After Effects®, Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® on the Mac will soon be able to harness the power of completely new Macintosh releases of Adobe Premiere® Pro, Adobe Encore® DVD and Adobe Soundbooth™ -- all key components of an upcoming milestone revision to Adobe Production Studio. The software will have its first public demonstration during the Macworld 2007 Conference and Exhibition at The Moscone Center in San Francisco, January 9 - 12 (Booth 901). The next release of Adobe Production Studio is expected to ship in mid-2007."

-gl

[joemcmanus]

Although I can't ever see myself switching back to Premiere, this is still good news for all Mac users. Adobe is a big company and a vital part of the video production industry and any major comittment to Apple like this is to be seen as a major sign of confidence in the Apple platform.

Plus, since all of us have photoshop as an important part of our operations, and many of us use After Effects, Premiere Pro is well suited to steal some market share because of it's integration.

Certainly for me it will be time to upgrade from CS1.

[RatVega]

Call me a cynic, but I see this as a real crow-eating exercise for Adobe. In my limited experience and perspective, here's what I've seen:

In the pre-iMovie/FCP era, Adobe had a popular offering (the only other viable offerings were Avid and Media 100) because of their integration with Photoshop, etc. When Apple addressed video editing with a free (or dirt cheap if you were on an older Mac) product and a really pro-grade product in FCP, Adobe retalliated by dropping support (as did Avid) expecting an outcry from the user base that didn't happen.

In their zeal, they also let Photoshop for Mac slip some since they figured the Mac users were hooked and would just take whatever they could get. I know a major high-end printing firm who is still on Photoshop CS because CS2 is slower and has "issues". Then I hear photogs from our local PPVA telling each other that you need a Mac to work large photographs because CS/CS2 are just too slow on a PC (I'm guessing these creatives weren't used to the idea of keeping their computers in "edge of the envelope" configurations.)

Macs continue to gain power and acceptance in the serious creative sector. Avid sees the handwriting on the wall and responds with their Avid for Tiger offering to stave off FCP penetration into their mid-system base. Apple converts to Intel processors and siezes the only available cross-platform "mid ground" available. As WVP members are starting to demonstrate, the lines on hardware are getting blurred as users start to implement XP along with OS X on Macs to cash in on good software from both sides. And AutoDesk acquires the top two hard-core 3D applications (3Ds Max and Maya) at a time when a single cross-platform Photoshop replacement product becomes much more practical from a development standpoint.

I don't know where it all goes from here, but just as non-linear editing revolutionized how movies are made, I think that after more than a decade there is probably something pretty exciting in the wings to take image enhancement to the next level. Who will produce it remains to be seen but for the first time I can actually see the possibility of Adobe being displaced. With no disrespect whatsoever to Premiere users, virtually everything Adobe makes except Photoshop and Illustrator can be easily replaced with currently available alternatives. And if you feel the need to go very deep into motion graphics and serious compositing you may already have moved to a Mac. With the high end slipping away, Adobe needs to get back on the Macintosh platform to defend the middle ground where Vegas is currently eating their lunch...

But like I said, this is a cynical view. I've been wrong before. In a couple of years we'll know whether I'm a prophet or just a commentator. Either way, it'll be interesting to watch...

[gl]

Well, I think Adobe still owns some significant areas. Photoshop clearly but, almost all of their print apps are considered top draws by a significant margin (they have managed to dislodge Quark which no one thought they could). After Effects still has no equal in the price range and the fact that it and PS are most used tools form the low to the high-end tells you of their foothold in the industry. Now that they own Macromedia, they pretty much own the web as well (what parts of it you can own).

Where they have struggled in the last 5 years or so is in the NLE and audio areas. PPro is a good tool and has some advantages over FCP but for the general market FCP still wins but, I don't know that this will always be the case. One area where all NLEs seem to suffer is bit depth. Except for a small number of high-end options, all NLEs render in 8 bit color depth. However, PPro 2.0 enabled 10 and 16 bit depth rendering (depending on the effect) and due to it's tight integration with AE, you can also render your final PPro project completely in 16 or 32 bit depth in AE (this workflow is also popular with FCP by way of Automatic Duck btw).It also supports 4k resolutions and let's you mix any codecs or formats on the timeline. Two other FCP weaknesses.

The point is that Adobe is not clueless. They do have some good things to work from so I would not discount this change to just a "whoops, were back". I am sure they know what they are up against with FCP and must have some interesting things planned for such a bold move.

-gl

[joemcmanus]

Maybe I'll attend some Premiere seminars at Video '07 just in case we all have to start learning to speak Adobe ;)

I wonder.. does this include Adobe's DVD authoring app also? It would benefit DVDSP to have some competition in this area.

[gl]

Encore is going to come over as well. Having used both, I would still stick with DVD SP. Over all, I think the main benefit from this is just that there IS some competition. Right now, Apple has little to none in certain categories.

-gl

[RatVega]

Well, I think Adobe still owns some significant areas. Photoshop clearly but, almost all of their print apps are considered top draws by a significant margin (they have managed to dislodge Quark which no one thought they could). After Effects still has no equal in the price range and the fact that it and PS are most used tools form the low to the high-end tells you of their foothold in the industry. Now that they own Macromedia, they pretty much own the web as well (what parts of it you can own).

Where they have struggled in the last 5 years or so is in the NLE and audio areas. PPro is a good tool and has some advantages over FCP but for the general market FCP still wins but, I don't know that this will always be the case. One area where all NLEs seem to suffer is bit depth. Except for a small number of high-end options, all NLEs render in 8 bit color depth. However, PPro 2.0 enabled 10 and 16 bit depth rendering (depending on the effect) and due to it's tight integration with AE, you can also render your final PPro project completely in 16 or 32 bit depth in AE (this workflow is also popular with FCP by way of Automatic Duck btw).It also supports 4k resolutions and let's you mix any codecs or formats on the timeline. Two other FCP weaknesses.

The point is that Adobe is not clueless. They do have some good things to work from so I would not discount this change to just a "whoops, were back". I am sure they know what they are up against with FCP and must have some interesting things planned for such a bold move.

-gl
hey... it was my cynic post... :)

I don't argue that Adobe still has some very strong points, just that I've started to spot a few chinks in their armor. I'm a big InDesign fan but was also amazed that it subordinated Quark so quickly. In fairness, I recall some of that was Quark's doing...

As for After Effects, my personal opinion is that it has the following it has mainly because it's an Adobe product and cheaper than the alternatives. I tried it back in the version 4 days and was unimpressed because I could do most of those things in the FCP timeline. I bought Boris RED to get what I wanted at a significantly higher price, but then I've been able to do what the latest AE versions do for several years now. For all the whining about how difficult AE is, I can't imagine it being nearly as nasty as RED or a lot fewer people would be using it. :grinning-smiley-021

I fully expect to see increased bit depth in FCP6; Apple has already gone there in Shake and Motion. With 32-bit float supported at the OS level since the advent of Tiger, it's just a matter of time. Perhaps the real question here is who likely needs this functionality and what are they using now?

I don't think Adobe is clueless (arrogant? maybe... ;)) but I think they've descended into the realm of mortals.
Will they win back the share they had of the Apple NLE market? I seriously doubt it.
Will they bring a decent product to the fight? I certainly hope so.
Will we all be better for Adobe's initiative? Probably yes, probably by Apple's response.

BTW, I didn't try to treat the issue of Adobe acquiring Macromedia not because I discount it but because I totally don't "do that" and am not qualified to comment. Where I come from, Flash is the first name of a '50s matinee hero... and he prefers to be called Mr. Gordon in his advanced age. :grinning-smiley-021

[gl]

I hear ya Rat. I am not exactly a newborn either. Ya know your getting up there when the design textbooks are referring to your time as an "era" :)

Meanwhile, I am going to be interested in what Adobe brings to the table. I am not planning to jump workflows but I will be watching with a little more than passive interest.

Where I have to rib you a bit is on the AE comment. At face value, it may seem that AE, even at 4.x, was just about layers and psd files. However, there are many things that you simply can't pull off in any other tool at that level. Admittedly, I have been an AE user since the Cosa days but, I have yet to see a replacement. Maybe Motion 3.0 will start to get there but it's more likely that Apple will poke at some of AE's major shortcomings like true 3D space. In either case, it's a win-win.

Nevertheless, I think we will all benefit in some way from this move. Even if it just means that you get some more mac-centric chatchkies from Adobe at NAB :)


-gl

[RatVega]

I hear ya Rat. I am not exactly a newborn either. Ya know your getting up there when the design textbooks are referring to your time as an "era" :)

Yeah, I hate it when I refer to "the Pre-PC era" and the young ones look at me like I'm referring to ENIAC...:grinning-smiley-021

Where I have to rib you a bit is on the AE comment. At face value, it may seem that AE, even at 4.x, was just about layers and psd files. However, there are many things that you simply can't pull off in any other tool at that level. Admittedly, I have been an AE user since the Cosa days but, I have yet to see a replacement. Maybe Motion 3.0 will start to get there but it's more likely that Apple will poke at some of AE's major shortcomings like true 3D space. In either case, it's a win-win.

-gl
Well, it's obvious you understand where I was... I made the decision to get Boris RED because it had full Z-space capabilities, dynamic vector manipulation of AI files, rastor/vector integration, advanced particle generation, yada yada yada... In many ways it was like getting an Astrophysics degree just so I could fuel the bleeping rocket :eusa_wall: but there wasn't much between the two.

One of the first thing I ran across was a guy who wanted to add some rain to a shot out the back window of a car; he needed to have the drops bounce convincingly off the trunk lid instead of the ground...

There is a 3D plug-in for Motion from ZaxWerks (Zax Dow mentioned it to us in Vegas about a year and a half ago) but I haven't had time to play with it so I don't know how good it is. I recognize that there are a few shortcomings in Motion, but the real-time aspects are pretty snazzy...

[gl]

A lot of folks swear by Zax3D and for it's real purpose (3D flying logos) it works well. I bought the 1.0 version way back when and decided I should just keep going with my other 3D tools. I hear the Pro version is pretty robust though. I personally felt constricted but that's because I am a Maya guy.

I look forward to a tool that integrates all of this a bit more :P

-gl

[shayes]

I will never drop my cash for an Adobe video product or AVID software either.
FCP reigns!