Final goodbye to Final Cut Studio and Flash

Not a surprise to anyone, but Adobe is pulling the plug on Flash, the animation turned practically independent OS application originally developed by Macromedia. I have along history with Flash, and loved using it under Macromedia. When Adobe bought Macromedia, it was almost exclusively for obtaining Flash which it saw as the future standard of the internet and aggressively pushed it way beyond it's limits and original functions into a space no one asked for. They also pretty much abandoned all the other great Macromedia products, including Dreamweaver which had become the best WYSIWYG html editor around.

At first, mostly because of the advantages for flash video, the newer version caught on but quickly the hack-ability and lack of stability became apparent to anyone opening a Flash file. Steve Jobs notoriously banned the format from Apple's mobile devices and the long, slow death knell began to sound. HTML 5 and other new internet advances soon took over most of the functions only Flash could offer and to be frank, I haven't opened the program in about 5 years.

Sadder for me is the knowledge that the next Mac OS update will kill Final Cut Studio for once for all. I actually used it just last week to export a video in a format for Amazon Video Direct that Final Cut X can not do... for reasons I'll never understand and Amazon refuses to explain. The Final Cut debacle is well known and hate for the Final Cut Studio replacement isn't unfounded, or wasn't unfounded at the time. The application has changed a lot, bringing back old functionality and new better workflow over a slow development period but without demanding an upgrade fee in all that time. I still use some of the suite as well. While programs like the DVD creator and Colour have been obsolete for a long time now, Sound track Pro still has been very useful to me time to time. I have the new Motion X and it's a slight improvement over the studio version (why won't Apple give that software some real love?) but I haven't bought the new Compressor which exports to different formats... and I might have now that the old Final Cut will be no more. Adobe's premier Pro has become what Final Cut likely would have been in some respects but it's also stuck in older ideas about editing and part of the heinous Adobe Creative Cloud ripoff, so I won't be using that and keeping Final Cut X at the top of my video editing list for now.

HYPE html5 app

The html 5 creation software HYPE has appeared on the MAC app store and has gotten a lot of attention. Not undeserved attention either. It is a great way to get basic animations, html 5 video, rounded corners and many other things normally relegated to Flash onto your site without worrying about mobile device compatibility.

Designed by a couple of ex apple employees, the interface is pretty easy to understand and use. The functionality is pretty basic at the moment but i have no doubt it will grow quickly, adding new features and functions as we all decide what exactly we want from html 5 anyway.

Strong points already present in the software are the key framing options for position, transparency, you name it. Also, the ability to have multiple scenes and then transitions from one to another is very reminiscent of early Flash versions... before it became an operating system on its own and stuck to animations and some interactivity. You can make custom slide shows, web page based presentations in practically less time ti takes to open other software. Adding buttons and functionality is a breeze and integrating into existing sites and templates is a simple copy/paste of 3 lines of code that references files saved in a dossier all nice and neat. Videos and animations can have overlays etc. All and all very well done. My only quibble is that it can't take illustrator or eps files.. might be too much to ask as it would have to rasterize them on export... but I can see a time that would be included.

I really look forward to seeing how this advances and 30$ is a very fair price. Once of the best versions 1.0 pieces of software I've seen in a long time.

To Flash or not to Flash your clients

It was THE thing online for many years... every client had to have a Flash site, even if they no idea what it was. I worked with a print designer who kept saying he wanted «the flash» in his site. Turns out «the flash», to him, was a simple html rollover, but because it changed something on the page, it was Flash to him.

It was and is still an amazing technology. It came on the scene when a fast connection was 56k by your telephone line, yet I was able to design pretty complex and interesting interactivity with it... all under 800k per animation to keep loading under a couple minutes. (Yes, people actually use to wait minutes to load sites back then). It still is the only good way to get decent animation in light files online.

Why all the hate now, then? There are some very good reasons for this. Early excesses was one thing. Sites with flash became so damn complicarted they took forever to download and usually for no other purpose than to satisfy the needs of some bored or badly trained web designer to show off. Spinning logos were everywhere... elaborate web intros with no «skip this intro» buttons were a plague on early internet browsers. It became more and more associated with bad design, excess and annoying download times.

Another big problem was the over reaching of the format. It’s practically it’s own operating system now. It’s animation tools have become secondary to it’s developement tools and though there has been recent improvement in the user interface, it’s still an incomprehensible mess to non programmers. It’s really lost it’s way as it has tried to be an animation program and a developement platform at the same time.

Personally I love what flash brings to the table animation-wise for the web... limited interactivity is great... small fun games, interesting presentations for your site, it all works for me. Under Adobe, however, it has gone far beyond what many designers and certainly what animators need or even want. Instead of enhancing the experience, it’s become something to avoid. I still use it, for small animations, but I don’t even tell the client it’s Flash sometimes. That’s how bad the reputation has become.

I say drop the pretense that it’s an everything platform and go back to the basics... an internet format for interactive animations that loads quickly. Make it something to be desired, not avoided once again.

Adobe CS4 Premium Design Suite

The good:

Much better integration between the softwares, some really useful features. All the Macromedia products (Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireowrks) have had long overdue overhauls. Flash is finally back in the hands of animators and not developers again. There are very interesting layout plans, pretty much consistent throught the suite now. Making it much easier to go from one to another without too much learning curve. The roundtrip editing in Dreamweaver from Photoshop is a long desired feature, saving lots of time. Installing the suite also seems to have solved many of the problems encounterd from the disastrous CS3 suite update which had a terrible bug in the install program, causing a really annoying crashing of Indesign.

The bad:

Some new features are a bit overplayed in the publicity as to thier usefullness in real life.The intelligent scaling for example, is great, but only works as advertised on projects that are very simular to the photos used to advertise it. If you really want to get the most of this feature you need to take the photos with the idea of using it in mind for the best results. For some reason Fireworks still uses the old Macromedia keyboard shortcuts (importing, for example). How hard it is to change that to the same shortcuts, Indesign and Photoshop use? It seems a no brainer.

The ugly:

As a company that uses many printers for many different clients, Behemoth like everyone else must deal with the extreme reluctance of print houses to update to the latest (or even the 3rd latest) versions of software. Adobe must also be well aware of this and still since Indesign CS2 have limited backwards compatibility. There is nothing more annoying than trying to remember what client's printer uses what version and having to keep several incarnations of the same software on your hard drive.. I must use 3 versions of Indesign now.. simply because there is no « save for : Indesign CS,CS2, CS3 ». This is simply mean spirited to users and makes print houses even less likely to update. Pagemaker and even earlier version of Indesign had a reasonable depth to the backwards compatibility. Not having this feature makes the nicely done but not so improved Indesign CS4 practically useless unless designing in house projects for your in house printers. I aslo managed to crash Fireworks by simply importing a really not all that complex Illustrator file. It's clear not that much attention is given to Fireworks developement beyond a nicer interface even though it complements Dreamweaver really well... I don't know why these features haven't been folded into Photoshop (even in an « extended » version like the 3D stuff is) if they really don't want to give Fireworks it's due.

Overall:

A decent update, though the price is foolishly high. I had wanted to get the Mastersuite collection, but there was no upgrade path for long time users who bought many things long before the suites came into being. We are left to buy each piece apart from the others at a much higher price... or buy a suite from scratch at a much higher price. I was looking forward to using Premiere with my copy of After Effects for all in house video work, but not at the ridiculous prices offered. Adobe is not alone in this, though Apple made a huge effort to make sure I had what I needed when they went the "suite" route. They even sent me a full version of the First Final Cut Pro Suite and not an upgrade version so I would not have more updating issues. Adobe needs to be willing to do the same if they want us all come on board. I won't be rushing to update any other Adobe products anytime soon. Not with this uncertain job market!