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Avid slyly opening up at NAB for those that noticed
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And I would add that old time, film editors would have no issue with a well designed, high performing UI design and interaction provided it did not interrupt the creative process. Storytelling is across many layers, versions, and screens. If you’ve ever seen a timeline from The Hobbit, or the project/bin management of a single project having over 5000 bins, that is the bar for performance expectation. They would welcome new approaches and version management of editorial.
For example, SmartTools got a lot of kickback because it did interrupt that process and with a bit more clever design could have pleased both old cranky editors as well as all those “FCP” style editors who like to work differently. There were a lot of “design choices” in v6 that changed things not for the better but in some cases worse and many were just a wash adding no additional value other than a different look.
Michael
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[Michael Phillips] “I would add that old time, film editors would have no issue with a well designed, high performing UI design and interaction provided it did not interrupt the creative process”
[Michael Phillips] “SmartTools got a lot of kickback because it did interrupt that process and with a bit more clever design could have pleased both old cranky editors as well as all those “FCP” style editors who like to work differently.”
I’m gonna call BS on that one. The smart tool has absolutely no impact on the editing experience whatsoever unless you activate it so the traditional Avid editor could just ignore it. But they didn’t ignore it; they raised holy hell over it. They didn’t like what it signified even though there were lots of editors who wanted a more FCP approach to clip handling. If they’d truly implemented FCP grab and drag, you might have had a point because that really would have been a disruption of typical Avid editing, but instead, they timidly chose a tool design that was trying to please everyone and ended up pleasing few.
Andy
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos
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Then you have a short memory. The complaining was for versions 6.0 through the next two dot releases that fixed SmartTool to not turn itself on when unexpected. When it first came out, turning it off did not keep it off and activated itself again after coming out of a trim mode causing havoc on the next click in the timeline. The “loud feedback” got SmartTool to be what it is now. But all of that could have been avoided with an implementation that:
1. Was defaulted active for new users.
2. Allow users who did not want it to not only turn it off and keep it off, but not have it in the UI.This would have allowed the cranky editors to discover new trimming interactions on their own time and not in the heat of the moment when it may or may not work for their needs. Make it a user setting. And having it on for first time users would let them have expectations closer in line with other editing paradigms.
Michael
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But I agree with you that overall it was a copy of other editors and not a fully implemented direct interaction trim tool. The basic fact that Media Composer does not have a notion of “selection” makes a lot of the interaction design difficult and unpleasing from a user perspective.
Michael
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Avid nees to wake-up and move their booth back down to South Lower next year. We had a number of people ask us at the AJA booth – in the middle of NLE/post heaven – ask where the Avid booth was. Yeah it’s upstairs surrounded by completely unrelated booths – strange.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
I would bet that after what Avid did to us with their support of the MediaStream servers, we will never buy another Avid product.
Also, around 15 years ago, they gave the worst product demo to the company I work for. Higher-ups ended up buying Accom. Accom!!!
But it’s a new day right? They have a lot of rebuilding of trust I think; and I hope they do, as I was once a big supporter.
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“1. Was defaulted active for new users.
2. Allow users who did not want it to not only turn it off and keep it off, but not have it in the UI.This would have allowed the cranky editors to discover new trimming interactions on their own time and not in the heat of the moment when it may or may not work for their needs. Make it a user setting. And having it on for first time users would let them have expectations closer in line with other editing paradigms. ”
Michael you are so right. The solution above would quieted the famously cranky avid editor and allowed a new, more modern feature to be implemented. I was a beta tester on that one…wow. Why was that solution not implemented?
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Once you lose your spot, it’s very hard to get back. Grass Valley is not going to give it up unless they feel they have a better spot elsewhere.
Michael
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>Higher-ups ended up buying Accom. Accom!!!
By Accom, you mean the NLE made originally by Immix and bought by Accom? That would have been the DigiShpere, successor to the Video Cube.
Love, love LOVED the Video Cube! Best short form NLE I ever worked with (for that era, at least). (go ahead, flame away)
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Maybe, but there was a lot of booth shuffling this year – we (AJA) had our biggest booth ever in a new prime spot as did RED, right across the aisle in a huge booth that included a mini 6K IMAX theater! I think you just have to be willing and able to pony up. Avid has a nice booth in a great location – it just happens to be in a hall with mostly unrelated products – newbies heading NAB to check out post products in South Lower would probably assume Avid didn’t even show up.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
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