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Disappointed and Concerned
Symphony Nitris is something I’ve been hearing about for several months. It’s an exciting product and one that I was told would be replacing the DS Nitris Editor system. That’s obviously not the case. Symphony Nitris looks like a great idea and it’s one that I embraced as good…until I found out there were at least 2 missing key features: no mulitcam and no Firewire capture/output support. For $90,000, you don’t get firewire support or multicam? I love it: when you read the FAQ for Symphony Nitris, it tells you that: “DV25 and DV50 sources can be captured via…another Avid product such as Avid Xpress Pro HD or Media Composer Adrenaline HD can be used to capture native DV25 or DV50 media over IEEE-1394 and then played and edited within Symphony Nitris.” This is laughable in that you can use your trusty old XPro/Mojo combo to capture plain-Jane, lowly DV25 and DV50 media and then send it to Symphony Nitris. No HDV support either? Lame.
Xpress Studio HD is something Avid told us was coming. They did a surprising thing and lowered the price $500 on Essentials and $1000 on Complete. I never saw that coming! Unfortunately, they didn’t do much else to improve Studio…I was expecting more improvements/enhancements to the applications in Studio, but it looks as though very little was improved upon or added. Unfortunate.
No Mojo 2 (aka “Mojo Pro”). Well, that doesn’t surprise me. Seems like a typical Avid move to leave the lower-end Xpress Pro HD users with an inferior piece of 8-bit hardware and consumer-grade connectors, all wrapped-up inside a “stylish” rugged, anodized aluminum case and called “Professional.” Guess that means that Media Composer is safe for at least another year… 🙁
Xpress Pro HD PowerPack is a nostalgic trip down memory lane. Once upon a time, there was the Xpress DV PowerPack, which included XDV, plus a bunch of 3rd-party applications and plugins, for $3000. This new PowerPack is $500 less and bundles Avid FX, Avid 3D and Avid DVD. It allows users to access most of the software applications from Xpress Studio, minus hardware, for substantially less than buying Studio Essentials. It also allows us to work in HD in those apps. The only problem? Nowhere on Avid’s website/press releases do I see anything about allowing existing XPro HD users to upgrade to the “PowerPack” Studio Tools HD apps. This must mean that if I want to buy the “PowerPack” apps, I must repurchase the whole bundle, including a second copy of XPro HD, right? Sad.
STILL no ProTools/Digi 002 support for Adrenaline! Nor tighter integration between Mojo and Digidesign Mbox! This was something Avid said they were working on a year ago!
Not a WORD about the upcoming summer HDV updates for XPro and Adrenaline. Not a PEEP!! What’s up with that? The HDV update is supposedly in beta-testing, according to a reliable source at Avid, but they don’t say anything about it? To me, that says that they’re much farther behind on HDV than I once believed. Also, no word on the “new product” that Avid suppoedly created in tandem with Sorenson. This likely means that the program isn’t real? Strange, since it was an Avid official that first mentioned it in early Dec. on the Avid Forums…
As much as I hate to say it, Avid really seems as though they dropped the ball this year. I was hoping for bigger and better things, but have not seen any signs of them so far. In Avid’s defense, Apple FCP 5 is a much smaller upgrade than I figured it’d be. While Apple gave its editors multi-cam (and an intense setup at that), but they STILL haven’t added any sort of 3D effects to the software. Lame!
With tomorrow being the “official” first day of NAB, perhaps Avid, Apple, Adobe and others have new products up their sleeves that they’ll announce tomorrow. If so, I’ll immediately place my foot in my mouth and happily so. If not, then NAB 2005 looks to be much less exciting than what I (and many other editors) had anticipated…at least in the NLE/software front. For shame!
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7 Replies
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Unless Avid does something, I am moving over to Apple. I have Studio, and think it is inferior to Apple’s new Suite. The integration between the Apple’s apps is tight and the whole suite works as one unit. Avid’s Studio is a mixture of different companies that rely on Avid to create communication with each other. Avid has ZERO control over Sonic ( which stinks next to DVDSP) and Boris. Heck, you can get Boris with FCP. So, that leaves Pro Tools and 3D.
Pro Tools is a great app. No complaints. 3D is a joke. Who has used 3D in their work? Not, Softimage, but 3D in Studio? I haven’t seen any exmaples showcased by Avid. 3D titling can be done in Boris and AE.
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Correction: Symphony Nitris does have multicam, I just missed it in the features of the PDF brochure. You’d think that they’d tout it as a major feature, but it appears as though they didn’t.
I actually like Avid 3D and use it regularly. It’s NOT designed to be a 3D animation program like Softimage, 3DS Max, Maya or Lightwave, but rather as a program that allows editor’s to include 3D objects in their video, without having to endure the ferocious learning curve of a true 3D animation program. It does what it was designed to do very well. I was just hoping for more advancement and new features in the software, not just the ability to work in HD.
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The Avid 3D program doesn’t boast to be anything more than what it is. Most editors don’t need a robust 3D app but at times would like to bring a bit of 3D to their work. At least this is how the Avid rep tried to explain it to me.
Nevertheless, Avid is looking pretty weak next to the suite presented by Apple. I am an XPro user on the Mac. No support or R&D. With all the Studio rumor mongering, I was hoping for Avid to come out with a Studio product for the Mac. What I really wanted was a carbon AXP and good integration with Pro Tools. No dice…
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The Avid 3D program doesn’t boast to be anything more than what it is. Most editors don’t need a robust 3D app but at times would like to bring a bit of 3D to their work. At least this is how the Avid rep tried to explain it to me.
Nevertheless, Avid is looking pretty weak next to the suite presented by Apple. I am an XPro user on the Mac. No support or R&D. With all the Studio rumor mongering, I was hoping for Avid to come out with a Studio product for the Mac. What I really wanted was a carbon AXP and good integration with Pro Tools. No dice…
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“What I really wanted was a carbon AXP and good integration with Pro Tools.”
If it’s running on OS X.x, it’s at least carbon. You mean Cocoa and XPro’s problems are not cocoa/carbon related – there’s little point rewriting buggy software in a new language.
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Sorry. I didn’t see this thread yesterday. My post really falls under the Disappointed & Concerned topic.
-dMR>>>>>>>> You know…I was really hoping that Avid would say that since FCP continues to steal customers & that they realize a fully configured Adrenaline is $20K over priced & to remain the top dog they are taking the Symphony features and adding them to Adrenaline (to justify the 40K price tag). But they would never do that because DS would have to be lowered to 90K.
Oh well.
The lovers, the dreamers & me,
-dMR -
Avid is making a critical business mistake – IMHO.
I saw the same coming for Media 100 and dumped my system in time. Now, by no means will Avid follow the same road, but they can and may suffer the same ailments.
Jobs is brilliant in his strategy in chipping away at Avid’s base – he has made FCP an industry standard. It comes down to a simple approach of economics. Why would I pay $90,000 for a Nitris, when I can get 8 FCP edit bays? What producers, especially in a cost- cutting environment, would not take that option especially if FCP is used by so many in the same industry?
Jobs is also recruiting the newbies into FCP -he has made FCP affordable from the beginner to expert.
Avid doesn’t have a clue, and will continue to be clueless. Before, I hated Apple since I was forced to buy their hardware with their software. But now, the prospect of buying the Apple Suite with a G5 dual 64 bit chip is more attractive than ever.
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