This is more a personal observation than a report or a tutorial. Its purpose though is to inform those who might be interested in changes taking place in my personal workflow.

As regular readers know Chris and I have been heavily involved in producing educational and travel videos for LuLa for more than ten years. Chris has been a Director / Cameraman / Editor for more than 30 years and I’ve worked in the TV and film production industry for decades as well. I also have an interest in video production and cinema for personal projects.  Until now I have been doing video editing in Final Cut 7 and then Final Cut X. 

As mentioned recently elsewhere on the site, we have on order 4K Blackmagic cameras as well as Blackmagic Pocket cameras. These shoot raw video, and will supplant the Panasonic AF100, GH2 and GH3 cameras which we have been using these past couple of years in our productions. Learning DaVinci Resolve has therefore been part of our anticipated workflow with raw video files.

Finally, we are working with a team of editors for our commercial products who use Adobe’s Premiere Pro, and so this needs to be on Chris’ machines, if not mine.

But, on September 9, 2013, Adobe announced that they would be adding CinemaDNG support to Premiere Pro in mid-October. This changes the equation, because rather than having to process Blackmagic’s raw files in Resolve and then transcode for Final Cut, Premiere will be able to work natively with CinemaDNG files. DeBayer, Grade and Edit in one app. That’s a big deal.

Then there’s the  Adobe Creative Cloud issue. It’s been very controversial, to say the least, and I’ve done my best to remain neutral on the issue, and hadn’t commented publicly or made a move in that direction, at least until the Premiere Pro announcement of raw video support.

I then looked at the fact that I use Lightroom and Photoshop extensively, and need to stay current with both. Adobe’s new $10 / month offer was very appealing. But then with the Premier Pro announcement I looked at the full Creative Cloud Suite which will cost me $29.95 under Adobe’s current introductory offer. That means not only could I get Photoshop and Lightroom, but also Premiere Pro, Speed Grade, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign – all of Adobe’s apps in fact: the whole suite, constantly updated, for $30 / month.

Simply put, this pushed me over the fence. I’ve now signed up for the Creative Cloud Suite and have put the arguments behind me. Next to my cable bill, my cell phone bill and other similar recurring monthly costs, $30 is not significant, particularly since these programs are the tools that I use, not only to make a living, but also to pursue my passions. Sure, I can do the math, and depending on what programs I use and how often I might update them there are considerations, but in the end, particularly now that I’m starting to use Premiere Pro and other programs in the Suite, the convenience as well as the financial case are clearfor me.

This may not be what other people decide to do, but then how we each spend out money is always a personal decision, and not one that others can really kibitz about without being in one’s shoes.

Finally, don’t be surpised to see many other publishers move to a subscription model, including ourselves. More on this in the days ahead. (Don’t worry, the site will always remain free, and our video offerings will be much enhanced with this program.)

September, 2013