Avid DS as alternative?

[Tom Daigon]

Ha…just came across my page 😉 DS was a wonderfully innovative tool when it came out in the early 90’s. I do miss the creativity that was possible in making custom effects and transitions with its nodal abilities.But from where Im sitting its heyday has came and gone. It suffered a lot from being all but ignored by Avid, in terms of development and promotion. I loved it at first, but over time its propitiatory system made integration with other necessary software either difficult or impossible. After my experience with Adobe CS 5.5 the last few weeks, its not even a consideration. Adobe cares about developing CS 5.5. Avid barely seems to tolerate DS. The need for motion graphics is streamlined in CS 5.5 In DS it was slow and clunky. I don’t need its limited range of tools now that I have things like Mocha, Cameratrakcer, After Effects, Magic Bullet and the Trapcode suite to augment my editing abilities. RIP DS. I would never consider going back.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com

[Bret Williams]

Early 90’s??? Wasn’t it around ’98?

[Tom Daigon]

I was at a beta test facility that had it a few years before release. Might have been 95 or 96. At this point in my life all time is relative 😉

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com

[Brad Bussé]

Softimage unveiled DS at Siggraph ’99.

Thanks for the replies. That’s too bad–DS was a super slick tool in its first revision. Smoke looks great, and I’d probably go that route if the new low price wasn’t still out of budget. I guess it’s between Premiere Pro which I already have as part of the Production Premium suite, or back to AVID proper. Well, unless Apple releases the TB 16-core Mac Pros along with Lion on Thursday … and then unlocks all of the missing features in the Lion build; “FCP X Extreme”, including 64-bit Soundtrack, 64-bit Compressor, and an integrated node-based Phenomenon compositor with a real 3D environment and useable motion graphics tools. Sigh … the kid in me will miss speculating about what will be released next by Apple, and when … the professional preditor in me will not.

[Bret Williams]

Wikipedia backs up my memory. It was released January 1998 according to the history.

[Brad Bussé]

Your memory is better than mine … (you didn’t just now edit the wiki before posting, did you?) 😉 I guess what I saw was XSI before it was unveiled, and probably beta 3 of DS. Anyway, DS was new to me at the time since I wasn’t doing video/finishing work back then. Man, lots has changed since then. That’s back when 3D apps were $17k per license which ran on a “cheap” $9k NT-based SGI alternative, and FCP didn’t exist). I wonder what we’ll be reminiscing about in a decade from now; “yeah, I remember when Autodesk bought out Avid, it was about 5 years before they were bought by Apple to get back into the Pro Apps market which they slowly let die over the next 5 years; so, 2011 I guess, give or take a couple of years”.

[Bret Williams]

I just remembered I had just gone freelance when it came out and I went freelance Jan 1, 1998.

[Bret Williams]

I remember back in 2000 I did a tutorial or two on someone’s DS and was quite impressed that it supported vector based images like AE.

[Declan Macerlane]

Hi,

I’ve been on DS since 2000.

The biggest shame for DS is the incredibley poor product management coming from Avid since they aquired it, and also the woeful marketing.
I found Smoke on a Mac to be no match for DS, but you compare the buzz around Smoke compared to DS and you immediately see Avid’s lack of ability or interest in marketing their own, should-be flag ship product.

All that may be changing (very slowly) now and there are some great people still involved with DS.

As an alternative to FCP I’d say it would be a better fit than MC in most areas. I strongly recommend it.

With the exception of multicam it is an excellent offline editor. I came to DS from Media Composer and quickly prefered and was faster with DS.

The 2d compositing, in particular with the Effects Tree (like Batch in Smoke) combined with layers, is excellent. Very fast and very intuitive.

The grading in DS is excellent. True it doesn’t have a tangent panel or similar (shameful) but I expect that this will change. DS does have realtime secondaries, as well as the ability to use an infinate amount of shapes (power windows?).

The graphics module is head and shoulders above the Autodesk products, with text, handwriting, cloning, shapes, alpha creation etc… It is perfectly suited to online. However DS does lack some of the presets which make motion graphics more suited to After Effects.

The 3dDVE is weak, and feels half finished. Like a lot of DS, it has been largely under developed since Avid bought it. It is shameful but true and they have squandered a terrific head start they had. DS lacks a comprehensive 3d Compositing environment; planar and 3d tracking; particles and some other niggley bits, although there are workarounds for most things.

There you go. That’s my honest and hopefuly balanced opinion. Over all DS is a very powerful and versatile tool. If I were moving from FCP it is definitely the direction I’d be going.

Cheers,
Dec

[Simon Ubsdell]

Great review of DS, Declan. I’d agree with all of that, especially the point about what AVID have done to the product, or rather not done.

The only thing I would say is that it’s hardly a direct alternative to FCP for anyone looking to move to another editing tool. The truth is it’s far, far more powerful than FCP ever was or could have been, and with that comes the fact that for a lot of people it would be a massive steep learning curve to get up to speed with DS. Like Smoke, it’s very much a product designed for the power-user – rather than a basic tool for cutting pictures.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com