# Adobe LiveMotion: DECEASED.



## uoba (Nov 24, 2003)

Just read that Adobe have axed LiveMotion, no longer developing and distributing it (for all platforms). Support will last until March 31 2004, and on-line info support indefinitely. 

Can't say I'm sad, except for the fact that MM can now relax, which is never a good thing (mind you, I don't think they where that worried anyway    )

Here's the MacWorld Uk article: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=7353

Funnily, can't find anything on Adobe about it! Trying to hide a failed product being cut?


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## Randman (Nov 24, 2003)

http://www.adobe.com/products/livemotion/main.html


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## uoba (Nov 24, 2003)

They must've just changed it. Ah well.


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## RacerX (Nov 24, 2003)

I remember starting out using a LiveMotion 1.0 demo, one that lasted 30 days. I was able in that time to produce Flash elements for a number of sites without any problems.

Then I heard from people that Flash was better than LiveMotion, so I got the full version of Flash 5. For the life of me I couldn't believe that anyone would think that Flash was better. Simple things like an element fading in while moving in from the corner and scaling up to full size by the end of the transition was a nightmare in Flash. In LiveMotion it just worked. I ended up getting LiveMotion 1.0.2 and later 2.0. I tried Flash again (not my 5.0 version but the MX trial version) a few months ago to see if anything had changed... no, still a nightmare.

All I can say is that Macromedia really needs someone to help them with Flash. I, for one, can tell you that I won't be using anything else but LiveMotion for the next few years. Just because it stopped shipping doesn't stop it from being a better product than Flash.

Like the Mac OS, LiveMotion was something that only a small portion of the market will ever really understand. I thought LiveMotion 2.0 had enough promise to take on Flash, but Adobe never put any effort behind it.

Who knows, maybe Flash will get some help from Adobe on their timeline editor now. Macromedia's is the most convoluted interface element I've ever seen.


			
				uoba said:
			
		

> Funnily, can't find anything on Adobe about it! Try hide a failed product being cut?



Try looking on the LiveMotion product page.


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## RacerX (Nov 24, 2003)

uoba said:
			
		

> They must've just changed it. Ah well.



It was that way about four days ago, when I first heard about it.


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## uoba (Nov 24, 2003)

Then I'm obviously blind


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## evildan (Nov 24, 2003)

I remember getting a call at midnight one night from a friend who had done an entire site in the alpha version of LiveMotion. It wasn't called LiveMotion, and I am blanking on what the Alpha name was... something "Fire" I think. 

Anyway, He had no idea what to do, I convinced him to convert it all back to Flash. At that point my sources at Adobe said they might not even release it. 

I was shocked, given my source's hesitation that they did. Adobe was smart to cancel development. They do have a tendency to keep projects alive well past their expiration date (like PageMaker).

But I can't say I blame them, they are just attempting to out-live the competition with those type of software packages where they are clearly #2 (or even #3).


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## uoba (Nov 24, 2003)

I'm afraid I'm still of the opinion that Adobe have yet to grasp the idea of web dev apps. They are stuck between print and web (due to InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop). MM have made themselves a screen-based app only developer. Adobe have been stuck in-between, wanting to emulate MM's success in screen-based apps, and keep it's roots in printland. A hard task trying to please everyone all the time.


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## monktus (Nov 24, 2003)

I've been learning Flash again. I'm a Director person and keep meaning to get into Flash but it frustrates me, especially MX. Had to do some for college and for a web job and it's really annoying me! I suppose I just need to spend more time with it. Though I might check out LiveMotion again. I remember back in the day going to an Adobe seminar about it and getting the demo. It was quite nice to use IIRC though didn't have the same functionality as Flash at the time, but I might go try out 2.0.


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## Urbansory (Nov 24, 2003)

I remember the first beta, didn't care too much for it, I liked the After Effectish UI, but that was about it.

The best way to learn Flash is do something difficult. By the time you trouble shoot, and everything else, you will learn a good number of the features and limitations and abilities. I hesitated to learn server side scripting to integrate into flash,. but I read a great deal of info online, few online books, and within 1 weekend, i not only figured it out, I'm writing my own custom server side scripts that make flash more functional. Being bored doesn't hurt either, because that was the only way at times to get me to code as much as I have, like my mixer for example, well over 1000 lines of code.


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## mindbend (Nov 25, 2003)

I had been holding out hope, but to no avail. LM is dead.

I also used Livemotion right from the get go. Having been familiar with After Effects, it was a piece of cake to learn. Flash, by comparison, is a complete nightmare. I have been compiling a fairly long list of reasons why I hate Flash since I had to give in and finally use it as my main SWF editor. I can honestly say with a straight face that Flash is my most hated program of all time. I cannot express in words how much I hate this application. The simplest things are frustratingly hard. I simple fade in.out slide show in Flash takes me ten times longer than using LM or AE or a number of shareware tools. There is still no built-in text effect handling to speak of. Unbelievable. I swear to god, it's like MM made a list of the top ten things people would want to use Flash for and then purposely made those ten things as hard as possible to accomplish.

And don't even get me started on the frame-based timeline. Oh, what's that, you want to adjust the timing of the entire project a bit? No problem in Flash. Simply put a gun in your mouth, pull the trigger and problem is solved.

The only reason I use that piece of junk application is because the end results can be amazing and are only doable by using Flash. For the record, I know what I'm doing in Flash (www.mindbend.biz) and I still hate it. I only point that out so it doesn't sound like I'm ranting with no perspective.

For a site done completely in LiveMotion, see www.timrichard.com. Don't beat me up too much, we had a small budget. (crap, it's down right now, nevermind for now).


In summary. I hate Flash and you should too.

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Ad for Adobe and web development. I agree with uoba completely. Adobe should give up on web ASAP. They lost SVG. They lost whatever their 3D technology was. Livemotion is dead. GoLive sucks compared to Dreamweaver (and I used GL for years). Adobe print apps are superior, they should really focus on that and quit wasting our time on the web stuff. I give them credit for putting up a good fight. You don't just want to give it away to MM, but it's over. Adobe lost.

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However, MM might be crapping their pants about now with Microsoft's announcements of Avalon/Sparkle vector-based development. (google: microsoft avalon sparkle) I don't know much about it, and I hope somebody starts another thread on it, because it is potentially very scary. In short, imagine a few years down the line when M$ bullies out MM and forces non-Longhorn OSes to basically be unusable for web evelopment or even web viewing. I'm not kidding (worst case scenario).


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## serpicolugnut (Nov 25, 2003)

LiveMotion was an app that showed promise. Adobe had a good chance to capture the video "switcher" market. Basically, LiveMotion was aimed at After Effects users who wanted to get in to Flash development, but didn't want to take the time to learn the interface of Flash.

The problem is LiveMotion 1.0 couldn't compare feature wise to Flash 5, which was it's competitor at the time. When LiveMotion 2.0 was released, Adobe improved the main weaknesses of the app, namely, it's lack of serious scripting. However, under OS X, it is a snail. Trying to preview your animation within the application is a joke. On Windows, it runs much better. There were several projects that I wanted to produce in LM2, but ended up going forward in Flash because of LM2's horribly bad performance.

Say what you want, but Flash is a great application. it has a quirky interface, but it works quite well once learned. If you are coming from an After Effects background, you will have a harder time with Flash (I know I did) than if it's your first exposure to timeline based animation.

Still, it's sad to see an application that held so much promise get killed off. Look at the list of applications Adobe has killed over the last couple of years. Some deservedly so, others not.

LiveMotion
Adobe Type Manager Deluxe
PhotoDeluxe
PageMaker (it's been declared dead several times, but Adobe keeps wringing updates out of it)
FrameMaker
Premiere (Mac version only)
Streamline
PageMill (sad, considering we could really use a sub $100 WYSIWYG HTML editor on OS X)
Dimensions

The sad part is, these apps all showed great promise. Some had reached a pinnacle (ATM Deluxe), others were close (PageMill, LiveMotion), others were basic but filled a need (Streamline). 

I wish Adobe would have sold these off instead of killing them. Another smaller company could easily turn any of these apps in to a success....


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## Urbansory (Nov 25, 2003)

...searching for info on avalon/sparkle

Yea, GoLive is bad, but i still use it, I can do everything and some, plus make crazy interactive Quicktime movies with it and LiveStage. Flash was a bit different to learn at first, but like I said, once you learn all the ins and outs, well a majority, its simple from there. I'm having a hard time getting back into Director. just got a new project requiring Director work, and to my surprise, I actually still remember quite a bit of scripting for Lingo, no pre-made behaviors for me.


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## RacerX (Nov 25, 2003)

mindbend said:
			
		

> And don't even get me started on the frame-based timeline. Oh, what's that, you want to adjust the timing of the entire project a bit? No problem in Flash. Simply put a gun in your mouth, pull the trigger and problem is solved.



LOL

That has to be the funniest thing I've read in weeks!

<RacerX wipes tears from his eyes>

Thank you for that!


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## jhawk28 (Nov 25, 2003)

Softpress has a sub $100 webpage app (Freeway Express). You can't actually edit the HTML, but it does do a good job of making webpages easily (and fast). You can check it out at <http://www.softimage.com>

Joshua


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## uoba (Nov 26, 2003)

I want my ATM Deluxe back


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## Arden (Nov 26, 2003)

RacerX said:
			
		

> Mindbend said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Definitely... I'd say that's on par with "Now I have no more grandma.  Thank you, Linux."  Hehe.

I agree, Adobe should stop killing these projects and simply sell them to the highest bidder.  There are plenty of talented software developers out there not working for a big production firm, and if they could get their hands on some of that code they could work wonders to behold.


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## toast (Nov 26, 2003)

I want ATM Deluxe back too ! With ATR !


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## Urbansory (Nov 26, 2003)

I remember the standard ATm, and i did have ATM deluxe, but I can't remember what it did. I know the free one was for font smoothing, and the other, font management? I couldn't have bee away from 9 that long... I know i never reinstalled ATM Deluxe after i lost my 9 partition last December, I figured i'd be working in X anyway.


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## uoba (Nov 26, 2003)

Yep, ATM Deluxe was the best Font Management software IMO. With Suitcase now a few years developed after ATM Deluxe, it still hasn't got near its functionality.


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## serpicolugnut (Nov 26, 2003)

ATM Deluxe was the best font management package out there. Why Adobe decided to kill it off completely is beyond me. I can understand not porting it to OS X (well, not really, but I could see their reasoning), but the Windows version was still head and shoulders above anything else available for that platform.

Macromedia has killed off quite a few good Mac progams over the last couple of years themselves. Fontgrapher and SoundEdit 16 both are still in use by lots of Mac users, because there still is no better replacement for them.


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## uoba (Nov 26, 2003)

MM are still selling Fontographer! So it's not dead (well, officially, and actually, based on it's vast user-base)... SoundEdit was great wasn't it? I loved that app as well.

Hey, maybe us macosx.com regulars should pool some dinheiro together and buy the rights to all these apps?


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## fryke (Nov 26, 2003)

afaik, LiveMotion never had the wide scripting support that Flash had/has. For a 'Flasher', LiveMotion was never a real competition.

However, for basic animation stuff, it was quite okay and had an interface one could actually grasp (contrary to Flash). ;-)

Well: I'm still waiting for the ONE good graphical web development application. Until then, I'm staying with BBEdit & Photoshop. ;-)


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## Urbansory (Nov 26, 2003)

I still use SoundEdit regularly through Classic, still works great.


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## serpicolugnut (Nov 26, 2003)

fryke said:
			
		

> afaik, LiveMotion never had the wide scripting support that Flash had/has. For a 'Flasher', LiveMotion was never a real competition.
> 
> However, for basic animation stuff, it was quite okay and had an interface one could actually grasp (contrary to Flash). ;-)
> 
> Well: I'm still waiting for the ONE good graphical web development application. Until then, I'm staying with BBEdit & Photoshop. ;-)



LM 1.0 never did. LM 2.0 had a decent scripting engine that was based on Javascript. It was much simpler to learn than ActionScript. 

While Fontgrapher may still be sold, it is a dead product. Macromedia has informed people that development has ceased on it. The only difference is Macromedia hasn't pulled the product off the shelves like Adobe has with LiveMotion.

SoundEdit was a great little sound editor. However, under OS X, there are several that do everything I needed SE16 to do. Amadeus is pretty good for the price, as is Spark ME, which is a great freeware app.

As for ATM Deluxe, there still is no equivelent. Suitcase X1 under OS X is a big improvement over Suitcase X, but it's auto activation still isn't nearly as good as ATMDeluxe's was 6 years ago. 

I really had high hopes for FontBook, but Apple clearly wants something that does the bare minimum and does not compete with the tools out there now. This stinks because the tools out there now stink....


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## Arden (Nov 26, 2003)

uoba said:
			
		

> Hey, maybe us macosx.com regulars should pool some dinheiro together and buy the rights to all these apps?


And how much of this is coming out of your pocket?


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## Ripcord (Nov 27, 2003)

Hey, I'd dole out $100 to "own" some of my apps.  I wonder how much some of these companies would sell some of these dead products for?


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## uoba (Nov 27, 2003)

arden said:
			
		

> And how much of this is coming out of your pocket?



Er... maybe not a good idea then... you lot could buy the stock, and I could personally oversee things    and when things pickup, we can talk about my share options   

As for Fontographer being dead, as you say Serpicolugnut, MM have all but killed it, but I know the userbase is huge (there is one Fontographer book which is like gold-dust out there, out of print). It's the only app that's stopping my friend from leaving OS9 (doesn't seem to work in Classic).

We purchased TypeTool (cut down Fontlab), and I personally think it's as good as (if not better), just haven't had time to look at it.

Back on topic   isn't there something called Swift or Swish which is a cut down Flash type of app?


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## serpicolugnut (Nov 27, 2003)

Swish started life as a Flash "addon" app. It basically did text effects. But it quickly expanded in to a full featured authoring app. It can do much of what you can do in Flash, at a fraction of the price. 

it's only real caveat - it's Windows only with almost no hope of ever being ported to the Mac...


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