Just a quick note that we will be showing off Ae and Pr CS6 at user groups in both NYC and LA over the next month.
Los Angeles – May 15th:
NYC - May 31st:
Please come up and say hello if you can make it to one of these events!
S.
Wow. What a year. All I can say it has been an absolute BLAST putting together Ae CS 6 with the team in Seattle, as well as working with the rest of the whole Professional Video crew here at Adobe. After Effects CS 6 (along with the rest of Production Premium) is huge, dramatically different and to me – insanely cool. Here’s the link with more detail:
This is just a start. NAB starts soon and over the next week you are going to get a ton more detail on everything thats coming. In the meantime – check out the intro videos as well as the ‘What’s Inside’ links in the right hand column on the CS 6 reveal page.
Personally, this past year has been killer rewarding. I get to work with fantastic folks all over the planet, and the end result… you finally get to see NOW.
S.
SUPER excited to announce that I get to share a stage with Steve Wozniak, Rob Legato and Vince Brisebois at NAB this year.
NAB 2012 Post Production World Keynote
I think we are going to have some real fun talking about the future of technology and creativity with two of the most brilliant minds in their respective fields. In case you have been living under a rock – Steve Wozniak helped create something called the personal computer when he co-founded a little company called Apple. Steve is now the Chief Scientist at Fusion-io, and will be talking about a huge advance in technology that will impact our entire industry.
Rob Legato just won his second Academy Award for Visual effects this year for the fantastic Martin Scorsese film – Hugo. Rob will be discussing how he feels these types of advances in technology will fuel the next generation of film and creativity.
Vince Brisebois and myself will be talking specifically about those advances and how you can use them. I’m also killer excited because it will be the first time in public that I get to explain what I believe to be one of the biggest advances to Adobe After Effects in over a decade.
If you are going to NAB – you will NOT want to miss this.
Here’s the link to check it out:
S.
Adobe’s Todd Kopriva jotted this down before he heads out for a much deserved break. He mentions the top feature requests we receive and some thoughts on what we are doing / have done with them.
First – I am definitely not trying to pass the buck here. This decision rests purely with us, and I want to make it clear as to why.
If you are unknown to the problem, AE CS 5.5 introduced the requirement for adding your serial number if you wish to use the AE render engine that is included with every install of After Effects. With previous versions, you could install that render engine on as many workstations as you wish, just as long as you had purchased 1 copy of the full version of AE.
Here’s the rub. As of CS 5.5, we are now required to pay a royalty on every install of After Effects – ANY version (that is not a trial) that can render out any of these licensed formats. Now you can see the dilemma.
As an aside – this is why most other tools must charge for their accompanying render engine.
Therefore, a legal obligation is just that – an obligation. To correct this, we must restrict the render engine to the license agreement of full AE. This means you can install a single license on 2 workstations – render engine OR full. I know this is not necessarily what you want to hear, yet we will commit to investigating alternative solutions for a future release.
S.
[ Update: Instead of responding to all your comments individually - please check out part 2 of this blog post. -S ]
Oh blog – how I have ignored thee. Back in the saddle so to speak after some crazy time on the road (Siggraph, IBC, etc etc).
By now you have heard of our acquisition of IRIDAS technology (just spent 3 days with their team and am VERY excited about the future), and that Adobe and Automatic Duck have entered into a strategic partnership. Both of these developments are huge for AE, Premiere Pro and production workflow in general.
With that – I am also ECSTATIC that Wes Plate has joined Adobe, and specifically will be working with yours truly as the Product Marketing Manager (PMM) of After Effects (amongst other things). Not only has Wes been an integral part of AE workflows since time immemorial, he explicitly understands that production is not a walled garden. See what Walter Biscardi has to say about it:
Wes and I have known each other for years, and I can’t believe we are now on the same team. For edification, the Product Manager (PM) and Product Marketing Manager (PMM) essentially work together along with the entire AE team to define, then articulate what AE will be in the future.
S.
So Lion is now out. Many users will be asking how this will impact applications such as AE.
To give some insight – Adobe engineers have been testing our applications since the first drop of Lion was available to developers. In many cases, there has been a dialogue between Apple and Adobe about where issues have arisen and how to address / fix them.
For After Effects specifically – there are no known specific issues to report with CS 5 or CS 5.5 running on 10.7 Lion. There are however a few changes in the OS that you should be aware of in your production workflow (for installing applications, accessing prefs etc):
We do know of an intermittent crash on quit with AE CS 4 in Lion that was being addressed by Apple. We are working on determining if this was fixed by Apple in the final shipping version of the OS.
S.
I get a huge amount of email from passionate AE users asking for improvements, new features etc. I also get several emails from folks who aren’t exactly happy with decisions we’ve made in terms of supporting this or that, or what we haven’t done right etc.
It’s a very cool thing. You send me this stuff because you CARE. That is HUGE.
Many also ask how to get more involved.
Here’s one way. It’s called the “Product Improvement Program”. (Click: Help –>Product Improvement Program from within AE)
First off – I know this all sounds very formal, and yes – Adobe is a big company. But this information is a BIG DEAL when it comes time for us to make tough decisions.
Here’s what happens. AE will anonymously (ANONYMOUSLY!) send data about which functions (ie – effects) you used in AE to a server here at Adobe. It will also send info about any errors you encounter, what types of formats you export and import and so on. There is NO information about you or your project that is collected. If you would tell us via the form what type of work you do, and size of company – that gives us just enough info on who and where AE is being used.
Why is this important? Myself and my peers on the AE team look at this data almost on a weekly basis as we try and make decisions that we think you will care about. This data is a HUGE help.
Here is a link to the FAQ on what we store and how: Adobe Product Improvement Program
Therefore, PLEASE say ‘Yes – participate!’ when you select Help –>Product Improvement Program within AE.
After that – please keep the emails, forum posts, blogs, tweets coming. The great, good, bad and ugly – all are welcome as they help us make better software.
S.
I had an overwhelming response to my previous blog post about where Adobe stands as a company in the professional market. Many of you commented via the blog or email that there should be some sort of incentive to switch to Premiere Pro and CS 5.5 Production Premium while moving from your current toolset.
Well – in the spirit of putting our money where our mouth is, we are now offering for a limited time – 50% off either CS 5.5 Production Premium, OR Premiere Pro CS 5.5 standalone. This is open to anyone, worldwide, coming from either Apple or Avid workflows.
As an example, in the US store, this means a FULL license of CS 5.5 Production Premium suite can be bought for $849.50. A FULL license of Premiere Pro CS 5.5 can be bought for $399. Again – this promo is worldwide, I’m just using the US store as an example.
Remember – you need the promo code ‘SWITCH’ and you need to click the ‘get 50% off’ icon on the right hand side of the page.
I don’t believe that Adobe has ever had a promotion like this in history.
S.
The last blog post on Warp Stabilizer for sometime – PROMISE!!
That being said – when we launched CS 5.5 at NAB this year in Las Vegas, a number of users were asking for a comparison between AE’s new Warp Stabilizer and the just announced stabilization feature of FCPX. The great news – both work entirely in the background allowing you to work in the application completely unhindered by the analysis and stabilization of footage. As you can tell – this is a sign of all things in the future. Compute intensive tasks being done in the background so it doesn’t get in the way or make you ‘wait’.
I wanted to post the results now that we can test the software in an ‘apples to apples’ fashion (pardon the pun). The clip is the same as what I used in the warp stabilizer sneak peak on Adobe TV.
Both AE’s Warp Stabilizer and FCPX stabilization were left to the default settings of stabilization and rolling shutter removal. – no tweaking was done whatsoever.
Here it is: AE Warp Stabilizer is the bottom clip, FCPX the top. The focus of this test is the quality and fidelity of the stabilized image. The clip is looped and should be viewed at full screen.
S.
