So you had a 3 hour sequence in your project? Cool.

If it can handle that it should certainly be able to deal with anything I throw at it.

By the way, kinda OT, but does CS6 have the concept of a render farm yet, or is it still the paradigm of firing up AME on the box where you have Premiere installed?

Was poking around looking at upgrade pricing and just discovered that there is no upgrade path whatsoever for CS4. I wouldn't expect the same discount as CS5, but nothing? Wow.

$1800 just for PP and AE. Plus, CS4 people also have to upgrade hardware and OS to move to a 64 bit world, at which point you're spending a fair chunk of change.

Avid is still more expensive, but when you're dropping several grand, another grand or two isn't a showstopper. I'm surprised that they have no interest in courting CS4 customers. For this type of upgrade scenario I don't know why they assume they can take the business for granted.

I'm actually quite familiar with the subscription model and am a big fan of it when done in the standard manner. I've participated in Microsoft's MSDN and other such resources for decades as a way to keep up to date on my developer tools, latest versions of operating systems, etc. My strenuous objection to Adobe's creative cloud approach is their deviation from the norm.

With MSDN and pretty much every other subscription based service that's been around, I own all the versions of the software I get through my participation. If I decide not to renew after a few years, all the software I have up to that point is fully licensed and mine to use forever, just as if I had purchased it, shrink wrapped, at a store.

Not so with the creative cloud plan. If I pay for a couple of years and then decide not to renew, I'm completely stripped of all software and left with absolutetly nothing. In my case, if I stayed with the cloud through, say, CS8 and then stopped my subscription, I'd be bounced back to CS4,and would only have that because I bought it outright and not through the cloud. Of course, I also probably wouldn't be able to open any of the projects I created with 6 through 8.

As Steve mentioned, this isn't a subscription service. It's a lease, and I personally think it's an extremely bad approach as it's effectively a way of blackmailing customers into paying a fee to Adobe forever. While I'd stop short of calling it unethical, it certainly goes against the grain of standard licensing practices and is not at all in the long term interest of customers. If Adobe ever transitions completely away from the ability to buy software and has the cloud as its only option, I'll immediately either buy either Avid or a Mac. I'm hoping that day never comes.

I do stay up to date on my MS dev tools, but I also skip or defer upgrades from time to time. Just because a new version comes out doesn't mean I actually need it (Vista was a mess - I kept it on one box because I'm a developer, everything else on the network stayed XP). In the case of CS4, I have a network full of 32 bit boxes. To upgrade to CS5 / 6, I first have to shell out a chunk of change for a video worthy 64 bit box, and then add the cost of the software. Because my money has been spent in other areas (cameras, lighting, etc.) I've had to defer the software upgrade. With a purchased copy of CS4, I can keep working even though I don't upgrade for a couple of years. With the cloud, I'd be screwed and unable to work.

It's really a shame. Were this an actual, legitimate subscription service, I'd pony up in a heartbeat.