After 3 years, is CC working? Worth it?

[Les Nagy]

When CC became mandatory, I was very vocal here about not wanting to go along with what I saw as a draconian measure by Adobe. I did not like, and am still very wary of this idea.

So what says the herd? Is it working? Is it worth the money? Anyone ever get trapped with it not working when you needed it?

Maybe I am starting another flame war or didn't search enough for old discussions but I would like new opinions based on 2015.

Thank you

[Shaun Roemich]

Les, I certainly can't answer your questions about whether CC is working in 2015 but given that from where I stand, there is little other choice - I'm preparing to order a special order iMac to run it on as the support for newer codecs and formats is becoming increasingly difficult to find and Adobe seem to be the best at staying current. Of course, my 4 year old iMac running FCP7.0.3 and Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium isn't being dismantled or sold for parts either...

Like you, I hope stability CAN be found with CC.

[Les Nagy]

I am still using CS6 and so I am starting to see some issues with not keeping up too. This is why I ask. MY other NLE of choice is Vegas. It does what I want for most things but for some more "advanced" things I think need to get more onto Premier/AE. But if the consensus here is not great on CC then I might move to something else completely.

[Shaun Roemich]

I've seriously considered Edius if I was prepared to jump ship to PC.

[Andy Young]

For me, it's completely worth it. I haven't had any trouble running it on a 2010 iMac. For everything I do, it just works. It's one less thing for me to worry about.

[Kyle Root]

I was very hesitant at first about their new pricing structure as well.

I've been on it for not quite a year and am absolutely loving it. The $50/mo is a hit, especially when you combine it with all the other monthly bills like Vimeo, SmugMug, and Animoto... it works out to a couple hundred bucks a month that comes due every month. So I basically have to book 1 wedding a year just to pay account fees.

Anyways, on the Adobe thing, having full access to Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Speedgrade, Muse, and Acrobat.... it's worth it to me. I'm so embedded into my Adobe workflow that something very disruptive such as a doubling or tripling of the monthly fee would have to happen in order for me to even begin to consider leaving the ecosystem.

[Robert Young]

I've been on CC from day one and it has been frictionless for me.
Everything works well, stays updated, and has been stable.
I'm still using a 5 year old Win 7 64, Intel i7, 24 GB RAM machine and see no need to replace it yet...
Looking at my past upgrade habits, I'm sure I spent close to $500-$600 per year on Adobe product upgrades for many years- so I'm not really seeing a lot of extra expense, and am truly having a happier experience.

[Tim Paynter]

I think Adobe pulled the rug from underneath the feet of those who had a single price product and were forced into a monthly billable product.

Nice to hear most people are pleased with the results. I grew up on Adobe, but may soon move to Edius. Vegas is nice but falls short of the Premiere capabilities.

[Gabe Strong]

I'm gonna be the one swimming upstream against the tide. I don't like
monthly subscription payments. I just don't. I remember friends that 'leased'
cars instead of buying one. They told me they always 'needed' a new car so
even if they bought one, they'd just trade it in, in a year or two so they
just lease. They have basically resigned themselves to having a car payment
every month for the rest of their lives. That's what CC reminds me of.
Someone who 'needs' each and every update of every program Adobe
makes.....so they just pay monthly. I've never been that person. In 2009
when the economy crashed, the thing that kept me in business when others
were failing, is that I live beneath my means as much as possible. Keep
those monthly bills as low as possible, In fact, I have never even taken a
business loan out. I've got FC Studio 7. I've got CS6. And I've got FCP X
with Motion and Compressor. I can get by with those. Moving forward, I will
probably be going FCP X/Motion and use good old Photoshop
CS6 for graphics stuff. Shooting with a FS700 (haven't upgraded that
to a FS7 either). I also have an iPhone 4 and a 2001 Isuzu Trooper. :)
Sometimes it's good to remember that every time something new comes
out we don't have to buy it......or 'rent' it as the case may be.....

[Adrian Tan]

Well, CC 2014 isn't stable for me. My problems aren't problems that a majority of Adobe's customers have, but I can see by threads on Creative Cow and elsewhere that I'm not the only one. Main issues include: frequent crashes (and having to restore from autosaves); and weird flickering generated on rendering that have cost me days of work to resolve (redoing projects from scratch).

So, I'm in two minds. CS6 worked fine. CC worked fine, and I love the warp stabiliser. I've seen many features on CC 2014 that look good to me, including the ability to apply effects at the Project level that trickle down to all clips, and the new morph cut and grading functions. But I can't yet use them!

[Andy Wilkinson]

I had enormous issues with CC2014.1 on my new Mac Pro - details on this thread.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...-resolved.html

CC2014.2 has been a lot more stable. I still get some bugs and the occasionally crash but nothing (so far) that I have not been able to work around (quickly, but often requiring closing a project and then opening an auto-saved one, or previous edit version, again...sigh).

Meanwhile, CS6 on my old Mac Pro is pretty much a solid, totally stable and feature rich workhorse...so far none of my cameras/codecs I use have needed anything newer (but that might change shortly as I have my eye on some new 4K cams!)

Is CC worth it - yes, to a point and some of the new features are great (and some not so great/a step backwards...keying etc. with blue markers rather than golden yellow ones is horrible...).

Bottom line - when I stop qualifying for the first 12 months reduced monthly rental fee (as a legacy Adobe Production Premium CS6 license holder) then I'm still undecided if I'll continue with CC...meanwhile I'm trying to find time to learn FCPX (which I also have on the new Mac Pro). Main reason is this Adobe "rental model" - I just don't like it!

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Les Nagy

I am still using CS6 and so I am starting to see some issues with not keeping up too. This is why I ask. MY other NLE of choice is Vegas. It does what I want for most things but for some more "advanced" things I think need to get more onto Premier/AE. But if the consensus here is not great on CC then I might move to something else completely.

I'm also on CS6 as I'm not into renting.

Thing to look at is the newly released DaVinci Resolve 12. Looks like it does most of the standard stuff that CS6 does, with color correction capabilities well beyond CS6. It actually looks like it does multi-cam editing nearly the same way.

No doubt there are a bunch of little differences in capabilities. No doubt the workflows will be different, and thus there are learning curves to climb. But if you don't like to rent, this new version of Resolve certainly looks like a viable answer to Adobe. And if color correction / grading is a big thing for you, it's probably an easy choice to make. When I get to the end of the line for CS6 (for example, buy a camera with a CODEC that CS6 can't read), Resolve is probably my next NLE.

[Marc Salvatore]

I don't care for the "creative chains" either so I'm also looking at DaVinci Resolve as a viable program change once CS6 no longer meets my needs. Resolve seems to need higher end computers but hopefully in a year or two that will not be as big of a deal. I'm very impressed with the speed that Blackmagic Design is developing the program.

[Gabe Strong]

Last year, I was hoping to try Resolve 11 out as they had added edit functionality to it.
I decided I would edit a whole project in it. But I quickly changed my mind as it could not
play video and audio in realtime. I really liked the look of it, it was like FCP X but
with tracks (yeah I'm one of those people who likes tracks, but I hate the monthly
payment more than I hate not having tracks, so I'm stuck with FCP X for now).
So for Resolve 12 to be a big step up over Resolve 11, they have to have improved
the speed. It's edit engine was just dirt slow and really you couldn't do much of
anything as far as editing in it. I'm guessing they did it, as they have put in
features such as multicamera, and to edit multicamera, you kind of need to be playing
several streams of video at once, while you choose which camera to 'take' in realtime.
I'm looking forward to the Resolve release in July!!

[Paul R Johnson]

I was very vocal about how I would never do a subscription based service, but for two years now I'm very happy!