The Adobe apps do not install on Windows 7 or 8 any more, it is Windows 10 only. Obviously they work on MACs too but they could always make ProRes on a MAC, of course.

Avid will just be making it work hard. It is much more likely it is just wearing out.

I am still wondering what this means practically for Avid users. It just says "all squeeze services will be stopped". Does this mean if you have a version that came with a premanent licence that you will not be able to activate it if you need to reinstall? Presumably systems that have Squeeze on and installed will carry on working. I don't

What does that actually mean for Avid users? I have a version of Squeeze that came with a premanent licence of Avid some time ago. I assume that will carry on working. What about the Squeeze that comes with subscription? Will that stop? On encoding, I use TMPEG a lot, which is very good, but also check out Handbreak which is a free H.264 encoder.

Blender is amazing for free but I found it hard to learn. The easier to learn of the ones I have tried is Cinema 4D. Costs a lot more than free but I found it easier to learn than Blender. I used to use LightWave a lot which I really liked but there is no developement going on with it so probably not worth putting effort into learning.

The Studio version of Resolve is supposed to accelerate playback of H.264 using the nVidia card on a PC and not on a MAC so it should be better on a PC. I have had issues myself with Resolve 14 anyway. It is buggy but it is still beta.

Its a long time since I organised a transfer for someone, and I remember the fee being $200. If it is $20 then it is not too bad anyway.

I thought you also had to pay Avid a fee to transfer a licence. Is that still the casse these days?

EDIUS 8.5 edits these files happily as well and can make Avid-friendly files, but rather like Resolve it is a lot to pay for a program to convert files.

I have used FFMPEG to rewrap files, but I did it using a command prompt. FFMPEG is a free program which does lots of stuff, and you have to type the commands in with various different options to get the kind of file you want. Many people write a "front end" for it which gives you a GUI and boxes to tick. Some are free and some cost money.