GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users

[Carlo Macchiavello]

@christopher
A friend of mine have your same problem with after cs3 and Photoshop cs3, he call Adobe and after some annoying talking they give him an address of ftp where there are version of cs3 without activation, only serial code.

@gopro
If product die, you can ripoff protection scheme and send to all user with a simple serial.
If you kill professional product, it will be dead and without value.
If you are feared about piracy, from many years exist trial reset that allow to use without pay it.
We legal user, who support develop, hope to see a way to use it in future, if we want cineform is because it's an excellent product, not replaceable with anything in its unique property like active metadata, Raw support, multiresolution driving performance, stereoscopic tool.
Please keep it alive

[John Cline]

Analog videotape restoration is a large part of my business and I use HDLink daily to capture direct to Cineform from a Blackmagic card, FirstLight is also an integral part of my workflow. I guess as long as my current installation of Cineform Studio Premium and the computer on which it operates continues to work, I'll be OK for the time being. I'm mainly concerned about FirstLight, there isn't anything else available that can do what it does. We'll see...

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

I am a relic still shooting on a SI2K using DVR2. The SI2K records natively to cineform. With Adobe's move to a rental model, I am waiting for DaVinci Resolve to mature as an editor.

A number of people are using Cineform in Lightworks, you also have the option of purchasing a license rather than the subscription. You can test the free version, although the exports are limited to Youtube 720p.

[James Park]

Dang... this sucks. Yeah I second some of the sentiments here. I don't care about further support but seriously, can we not have a permanent unlocked version of Cineform Pro as it stands now? I mean I would like to keep using HDLink

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Christopher Lefchik

Frankly, this is an issue with software activation. It really does harm the legitimate, licensed user when a company doesn't address the issue adequately when a program reaches EOL and the activation server(s) get shut down.

The software may be old, even considered legacy, but if it installs and functions and is still useful to those who purchased a license, why effectively leave it useless and crippled for existing owners?

The single word answer to this question is MONEY. They want you to finally spit out that well chewed piece of gum and grab a new piece.

-gb-

[Jake Segraves]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

Free GoPro as I know it will open and play back 2K as a plug-in but will not export 2K.

On Windows systems, the current free version of GoPro Studio can encode at 4K and beyond.

[Jake Segraves]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

The single word answer to this question is MONEY. They want you to finally spit out that well chewed piece of gum and grab a new piece.

-gb-

The new piece of gum is the free version of GoPro Studio and you're welcome to continue chewing the old piece as well. The activation server is still up and running and i'm still here to help if you have activation problems.

[Bob Hart]

Originally Posted by Jake Segraves

On Windows systems, the current free version of GoPro Studio can encode at 4K and beyond.

Thanks for that info Jake. I will give it a shot and see what happens.

[Charles W. Hull]

Originally Posted by Jake Segraves

On Windows systems, the current free version of GoPro Studio can encode at 4K and beyond.

Yep. And with Mac I use After Effects to encode CF.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Jake Segraves

The new piece of gum is the free version of GoPro Studio and you're welcome to continue chewing the old piece as well. The activation server is still up and running and i'm still here to help if you have activation problems.

Good to know, Jake. I was merely making an observation. Haven't had any problems myself.

-gb-

[Carlo Macchiavello]

ehm...
i don't know why GoPro head decide to stop Premium and Pro version developing, but about some comments on money before mine, if is only because it not catch enought money why not do a new payed upgrade?

from what i saw cineform for users is free upgrade around the years, every other software i bought (with exception of zbrush where user installed licences grow at exponentially speed) every year or two go out with a payed upgrade, that pay developing team and developing cost.
I not understand why many people think that software update is not a work, and want not pay a work of developers per years.
every years i spent a bit of my budget to update software, like mocha, adobe suite, lightwave3d, cinema4d, plugin update like i update when i can my hardware camera, lens, filter and more..

i will be happy to see a new Uber GoPro Studio with new feature, or only actual features with a better integration of some tool for ingesting video, frame sequence etc. And i will be happy to pay the work of developing of new tool. better if is it with an hardware key that allow me to move from a computer to a computer without this annoying internet activation, be cause i often change hardware of my computer, and i hate everything lock me to some hd or a cpu, be cuase cause me too much time to spent to activate tool instead to use it.

[Mark Pavy]

Originally Posted by Jake Segraves

The new piece of gum is the free version of GoPro Studio and you're welcome to continue chewing the old piece as well. The activation server is still up and running and i'm still here to help if you have activation problems.

That's great to know Jake. My motherboard just crapped itself and have updated to a X99, fortunately all the hdds plugged straight in and everything booted ok. I was anticipating having to go through all the activation stuff but it all seems ok. I'll let you know if I have any probs.

[Henry Olonga]

Good news for some of us


Well I got an e-mail from RAW4Pro and they have just released a version that does not require a paid Cineform license but can still export to Cineform RAW and video. Good news for all you Blackmagic design camera users and also any camera that outputs Cinema DNGs.

I must say this is a step in the right direction and excellent news and I assume this was done in collaboration with GoPro. If so, I hope it is a sign of things to come that will truly free us from being tied down with activation required versions. Nice one Gopro - made my day......that's how you win friends........

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Carlo Macchiavello

@christopher
A friend of mine have your same problem with after cs3 and Photoshop cs3, he call Adobe and after some annoying talking they give him an address of ftp where there are version of cs3 without activation, only serial code.

Thanks Carlo, I appreciate the tip.

[Henry Olonga]

Last request to the Gopro Cineform guys,

Would it be possible to have Firstlight as a standalone program? I am not sure whether it has to have an activated version of Cineform to function but it certainly 'checks license' at boot up. If not and we can use it with an un-activated Premium product, then ignore this. If so then can you unhook it? I think I have had to accept that I can live without HD-link as I can use Vegasaur in Vegas to do pretty much all my transcoding for me.

But Gopro studio is too buggy on my system for grading.

So I have come to realise that actually the most brilliant part of the products I used was actually Firstlight. Everything else is sort of covered but it always just worked on my system with few issues.

Best
Henry