Is Adobe SpeedGrade Doomed?

[johnt53984649]

I'm not a professional user of SpeedGrade or anything, but I've noticed that Adobe seems really keen on improving the color grading options in Premiere Pro.  It seems like they mention it with every update.  Considering that Premiere Pro got an update for CC 2017 and SpeedGrade did not, I just have to wonder; is Adobe eventually planning on discontinuing SpeedGrade and incorporating all of its features directly into Premiere Pro?  Or will it continue to exist and my observations have been nothing but a coincidence?  What do you think?

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

Been a LOT of discussions about this. I'll just pass on what I know.

Down at Adobe MAX in San Diego first few days of November, one of the Adobe video apps upper staffer said there has been NO decision as to what will happen with SpeedGrade, and there isn't even a scheduled time to discuss what will happen. He explained that currently it is on "hiatus" as a status, just like Audition was through three full cycles. At the end of that time, it was decided to re-cast Audition a bit and then a ton of effort was put into turning it into a nearly new program.

So, he said ... SpeedGrade could as easily come back vastly improved in another cycle or two. Or ... it might be determined at some point that it isn't part of their "future" and be allowed to go EOL ... "end of life". As someone who works with their applications and the movie industry, he added that it doesn't seem to him like Adobe wouldn't have any real grading program, but then ... such decisions are entirely possible. And it partly depends on how well Lumetri within PrPro "works" for the client base.

In other words, a lot of ... maybe ...

There's a colorist I know well, who was a teacher at MAX, and says that no matter that they've not made an announcement, he thinks it's already in the coffin. They just haven't announced a burial date & put it in the ground.

The Staffer said oh no, that's not true. Colorist rolled his eyes.

Take your pick.

I'm hoping they do an Audition with it and bring it back new & improved. A grading app is a very different beast than a grading tool in an NLE. And I've tested the total "holey snap" out of Lumetri, and I've got blog posts published & coming on how to best use it. There's some things it's really quite good at, especially if you use a control surface like the Tangent Ripple or spend the bigger bucks for the full Elements panel.

Neil

[johnt53984649]

Thanks for sharing the information.  Very helpful and informative.

[R Neil Haugen]

A fellow SpeedGrade user from Austria has written up a dandy little program ... not free-ware, but still very inexpensive. Install it on your machine ... open it's small user interface, and from it "open" a PrPro project file. It does a save-as to the file, auto-converts one character in the file header, and voila ... you can now open that PrPro project file within SpeedGrade 2015.1 in Direct Link mode.

When finished with color corrections, save the file from Sg, re-open in Patrick's nifty little app, and voila! It's back to being a 2017 project file. I've bought & used the program, quick & slick.

The one caveat I know of, is that often AfterEffects "comps" don't work with this process. So, if you've any comps on your sequence, you'd need to go into Ae and export the comp as a complete digital-intermediate exported file (Say DNxHD/R or Cineform), and replace the comp with that full "clip" out of Ae.

It's discussed in this thread. Officially, Adobe does not support this ... but like many 3rd party apps, it works pretty nice.

Neil

Update: My little Speedgrade/Premiere Project Converter still works with 2017