Avid announce MC7

[Chris Harlan]

[Erik Lindahl] “…and maybe a GUI from the 21st century? MC7 might be better in that regard compared to MC6 and I know I got the comment “would you seriously choose your editor based on it’s GUI?!” and my answer is to a degree yes.
“

The GUI’s just fine. And its much more flexible than X in terms of being able to arrange it. Of course its not as entertaining, no animation to enjoy, but in terms of an editing tool it’s far more serviceable and useful.

[Erik Lindahl]

MC6 felt like jumping back into OS9. Uggly and mildly depressing.

I never said FCPX was great. It has huge flaws on the flexibility side for sure.

[Andrew Kimery]

The GUI is nothing to write home about atheistically but it doesn’t bother me. Of course I really didn’t mind Color’s GUI either so I guess as long as function is sufficiently present I’m not picky about the form.

[David Lawrence]

[Chris Harlan] “The GUI’s just fine. And its much more flexible than X in terms of being able to arrange it. Of course its not as entertaining, no animation to enjoy, but in terms of an editing tool it’s far more serviceable and useful.”

If you wanna see a GUI that’s really stuck in the last century, take a look at Sony Vegas. The Avid GUI is perfectly fine. I honestly don’t understand people who think it’s backwards. It’s visually clean, flexible, and works well if you know what you’re doing.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[Andrew Kimery]

[David Lawrence] “If you wanna see a GUI that’s really stuck in the last century, take a look at Sony Vegas. The Avid GUI is perfectly fine. I honestly don’t understand people who think it’s backwards. It’s visually clean, flexible, and works well if you know what you’re doing.
“

It apparently lacks sufficient pizzaz. The funny thing is that if the flat, minimalist GUI direction that Jonathan Ive has started with iOS bleeds into OS X and other Apple apps then MC’s GUI could come full circle and be ‘in’ again w/o ever changing. ha!

[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Kimery] “The funny thing is that if the flat, minimalist GUI direction that Jonathan Ive has started with iOS bleeds into OS X and other Apple apps then MC’s GUI could come full circle and be ‘in’ again w/o ever changing. ha!”

So true! I’m hoping Ive’s design influence will make Apple software look good and work better.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[Erik Lindahl]

Not quite. You can do minimalistic good looking and minimalistic bad looking. At least MC6 falled in to the later. How they managed to not even have anti-alised text and use the same icons our AVID had 1997 is quite impressive. I’d be very surprised if Ive was remotely close.

To some this is just “nonsense” but I reckon GUI design is really important. Part of these issues might be cross-platform related as i’ve seen similar issues in Adobes software. Text-rendering is still really poor on Windows compared to OSX and applications like Preview render PDF’s better looking than Adobe’s Illustrator or Acrobat Reader (Quartz vs cross-plattform engine I would think).

It’s similar to another thread where someone didn’t quite understand me questioning the scopes in PrPro CS6. They look terrible – doesn’t fit into the app at all in 2013.

That said – sometimes you have no options.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Erik Lindahl] “How they managed to not even have anti-alised text and use the same icons our AVID had 1997 is quite impressive. I’d be very surprised if Ive was remotely close.”

My Ive’s comment was meant to be a bit tongue in cheek.

I think you are the second person recently to comment about the text in Avid’s GUI and to be honest w/o someone bringing those types of things up they never would’ve crossed my mind. I’m pretty utilitarian though (I love Honda’s Element and my favorite plane is the A-10) and Avid’s GUI aesthetics don’t get in my way so I’m pretty okay with them. I’d rather Avid concentrate on fixing workflow problems first (like it seems they did w/the AMA improvements) and save the big GUI improvements for a cherry on top down the road.

[David Lawrence]

[Erik Lindahl] “To some this is just “nonsense” but I reckon GUI design is really important. Part of these issues might be cross-platform related as i’ve seen similar issues in Adobes software. Text-rendering is still really poor on Windows compared to OSX and applications like Preview render PDF’s better looking than Adobe’s Illustrator or Acrobat Reader (Quartz vs cross-plattform engine I would think).”

It sounds like you must be using Windows because on Mac OS 10.8, the fonts on MC look just fine. They seem to be anti-aliased and are clean, clear and easy to read.

You realize that Avid’s fonts are *completely* user-customizable?

If you don’t like the way the default fonts look on your system, try changing them to something that works better on your system. There are many Mac and PC fonts specifically optimized for non-antialiased, bit-mapped displays that look fantastic.

Seriously, have you looked at Vegas? It *really* looks like Windows ’95.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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facebook.com/dlawrence
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