Interesting take on why Adobe changed Dolby sound support

If you are using the latest version of Premiere on Windows 7 you will probably have noticed it does not load clips with Dolby Sound (like AVCHD) or export Dolby any more.  This is because of some brouhaha between Dolby and Adobe.  Adobe have not released details, presumably because it is subject to legal proceeding but information has popped up on various other sites.  If you have not been browsing around you may not have any idea what is going on.  Below is an excerpt from a thread on the Adobe forums, which may help to explain.  It is by a user so is not official and could well be wrong, although this guy does post a lot and always gives good advice:

“Totally agree it’s a mess. I’m one of the people who typically have kept back versions of the CC apps installed so I can always work an older process in its original version. As long as I’m on this build install of the Windows OS, I can probably keep that. Occasionally in the past I’ve had to re-install an OS … and at that point, things get dicey. One can copy everything from the Program/Package file area to another drive, and copy it back … and it might work. Sometimes does.

But … very well might not. At which point, my 2014 projects have to be upgraded whether I want to or not. Not going to be something I’ll be happy about. I’ve only had a few ac3 files that I had but due to my Win7 install disk getting to the point it wouldn’t allow another install, and MS wasn’t giving out any assistance, I had to upgrade to 10, which … has actually worked well. Thankfully that was before the mess with Dolby.

Having looked through the online references about the lawsuit, the hassle seems to be that Dolby wants raw access to all the data on users of Adobe CC programs in order to “ensure” compliance with licensing. The agreement had been on the legally published licenses numbers. So Dolby wanted a change … which would have given their financial people access to pretty much every financial data of Adobe. And they wanted that on a continuing basis from their own sites, full password access … meaning they wanted to be able to monitor the internal financial data of Adobe on a daily basis.

Adobe is a “publicly held” company … so for stock purposes, they are audited regularly by stock-exchange types and if their published numbers for things like licenses are not accurate, that’s fraud … stock fraud. Criminal law. Gets very nasty fast for companies that do that. So I’d gather the folks at Adobe corporate aren’t that intimidated about Dolby’s questioning the licensing stats. They’d better not be playing with those or someone/s at Adobe would have immediate legal liability. I would guess the public stats are pretty accurate.

From their reaction, such as it is … I would also guess that they’re not that happy about Dolby’s demands to have full and constant access to all Adobe’s financials from Dolby’s accounting department, which is part of the suit: complete password access to all Adobe financials. To use that data to determine the “true” licenses from the internal financials.

Especially with Dolby having such close corporate connection with a rival or two. And the same folks at Dolby watching Adobe’s financials would also be dealing with the rival companies.

Under that circumstance, I’d probably not be particularly happy with the demand either. But then, I also find (as an outsider but 40+ years of running a business now) Dolby’s sudden decision to question Adobe’s licensing numbers … as something rather questionable. If they’ve got proof, file it with the stock exchanges Adobe trades on. This suit looks more like a negotiating ploy of some kind to me. A fishing expedition or something.

But what do I know, anyway? Just being an old cynic …”

You can see the full thread here: https://forums.adobe.com/message/10370173?et=watches.email.outcome#10370173

Does it go anyway to helping you put up with the fact you can no longer load media you used to use whilst EDIUS, Avid and just about everyone else do not have a problem? Probably not.  But maybe it puts Adobe in a slightly better light 😉