Avis Upgrades

[Michael Hancock]

They’ve offered two paid upgrades last year – 3.0 came out early last year, then 3.5, and 4 is out now. Between paid upgrades they offer point releases for free, which typically fix some bugs and occasionally add new features.

Avid skipped NAB last year and doesn’t seem to be holding themselves to that schedule, but I’m hoping they have some great announcements at this one. I’d like to see an affordable monitoring solution for HD – right now MojoDX is the cheapest, and it’s $5K on sale.

NAB is just a few weeks away – I guess we’ll see what they announce, if anything. Although if you’re needing an upgrade and they release 4.5 or version 5, they’ve historically had a grace period where you can upgrade to the newest release for free if you purchased the prior version within about a month. But that’s always subject to change.

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Michael Hancock
http://www.oswaldcommunications.com

[Grinner Hester]

About a decade ago, Avid stopped upgrading and started updating. That is to say, instead of releasing bigger better product to evolve the brand, they went to creative marketing that led them to having to just fix bugs… getting their client base a bit closer to what they thought they purchased (due to that “creative” marketing I mentioned).
Years ago, Avid could go from a MC version 4 to a v5 and their clintele could expect new goodies, in that case, the 3D DVE. Today, back on an MC v4.something something, the update is a bug fix. Why do so few update? Because with one bug fix comes an introduction to another… waiting to be discovered with a client in the room.
I’m still on MC v2.5.2. When I upgrade, it’ll be to FCP.

[Matt Mullen]

You don’t think Avid adds new features in their major releases?

Sure there are bugs and they have to come out with point releases but that is any software including FCP.

[Grinner Hester]

[Matthew Mullen] “You don’t think Avid adds new features in their major releases?”
I do not.
In the meridien days and before, a new release gathered editors around to ooo and ahhh. Now, well like I said, when I upgrade, it’ll be to FCP. They simply stopped trying. I assume they are gearing up to sell or merge. Should that happen, I’ll stoked for the next release. It’d be impossible for me to write another check to em as is.

[Matt Mullen]

Sounds like there’s some bad blood…

I don’t think they are gearing up to sell or merge they are just going in a direction the most “creatives” don’t agree with. Improvements with shared storage and broadcast workflow doesn’t appeal much to the little guys.

To each his own. If you move to FCP, best of luck to you.

[Job Ter burg]

3.0 brought along a severely improved response of the software, plus multilayer multiformat playback, among other things.
3.5 brought AMA and keyframeable color correction, among other things.
4.0 brought mix&match framerates, among other things.

O yeah, all of this at a fraction of the usual price of updates.

It’s OK if you’re fed up with a mfg or vendor, but it would be best to stick to the facts at the same time.

[Gary Hazen]

“Sounds like there’s some bad blood…” – M.M.

Or a giant chip on the shoulder.

Take Grinner with a grain of salt, all of his rants about Avid have very little to do with current techology. His grumblings are all about Adrenaline. And to be fair to Grinner, Adrenaline was one of the biggest mistakes Avid ever made. It’s unfortunate that Grin was stuck making payments on an ugly beast. Now he carries such a great deal of resentment over his purchase of a bad product that he can’t appreciate the advancements that Avid has made in the past few years. In Grinner’s mind FCP is good Avid is bad – it’s that simple. No matter what sort of advancements Avid makes they will still the bad guys in his narrow view. I’ve worked with Meridien, Adrenaline and the new DX line. I’ll admit that Adrenaline wasn’t very good. That said, the latest software/hardware(3.5 and up) works better than Meridien.

Also, I think we’re going on 3 years now with Grinner saying that he’s going to go to FCP and never look back. I’m ready to pass around the hat and buy him FCP just so he’ll stop the incessant whining about Avid. Or he can move his whining over to the FCP forum.

[Grinner Hester]

The fact is I love my vendor. They rock.
I loved Avid for two decades. It’s when they stopped competing and started lying to their clientele that I got turned off.
3.0 brought bug fixes and introduced new ones.
3.5 tried to fix more bugs and again, introduced new ones.
4.0 was pretty close to a version worthy of a version 1 release.

The fact that I was on MC v4 more than 15 years ago says a lot about their evolution. They bagan taking backward steps at a time everyone else began to run forward. I say sell soon before nobody wants it.

[Job Ter burg]

My experience has been very different. Most stable Avids I ever worked on were MC5 NuVista on an 8100 (fast) and MC7 ABVB on 9600’s.
But “new-numbered” MC v3, 3.5 and 4 have been very stable for me and nearly bug-free. Not more buggy than the Meridiens were. Much more responsive, much more poweful.

I’ll admit to having skipped Adrenaline. Went from MC9000XL Meridien v12 to Symphony Nitris v1.7 (and soon thereafter SN 3.0), because I did not like Adrenaline. Also own a Mojo SDI.

Ever since v3, these updates have been worth every cent for me.

[Richard Cardonna]

I just ordered mc4, Hope they add win7, 64bit, full gpu use and multi core. in release 5

RC