NAB according to Grinner

[Oliver Peters]

[grinner] “They did release a new Symphony product. To confuse things, they called it Symphony Nitris. To make things even more confusing, it basically an Adrenaline. While it houses Nitris hardware the nasty old aliased DVD lives and HDV is not supported natively. It?s price tag makes me think someone at Avid is smokin? crack. 80-90 grand? WTF? I?d just get a real Nitris for that. (uh? that?s DS Nitris not the new BS Nitris). “

Grin,

Although I agree with your assessment on the price, I think you have the details wrong. The Nitris hardware is a boardset and BOB originally designed to replace Meridien. It is nothing like Adrenaline DNA, which is mainly I/O and hardware codecs. Nitris gear is the same on DS or Symphony, so it is Avid DS Nitris or Avid Symphony Nitris. This includes the same hardware DVE. Since it is a different structure than Meridien, there are three types of effects: software-only, hardware-only, combo hardware/software. Right now Avid is in the mode of just getting all the same Symphony effects to work as we know them. This isn’t necessarily going to be an exact 1-1 match, since it isn’t exactly the same hardware. For instance, you have SprectaMatte instead of the hardware Ultimatte chips. You have the Nitris DVE instead of the Pinnacle card.

I went through a demo where Greg Staten went through a fair amount of hard questions and things like the aliasing came up. This is a result of not yet being optimized for the system. This IS the new DVE and it is VERY clean. I think you’ll see a version 1.0 that is basically similar to the current Symphony’s feature set and then later a version 2.0 that has new and improved features. There are true hardware effects which basically means 2 streams of video each with CC and DVE plus transitions and titles. This is HD. You get more streams in SD.

Remember the $90K is a turnkey system – computer, boards, software, monitors and storage (maybe 800GB-TBD). Autodesk Discreet Smoke on Linux (now SD/HD) is $80K without storage and Quantel eQ is more.

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Grinner Hester]

Oh, I know it wasn’t ready to be shown at NAB but that’s a good reason to not have shown it.
Kinda like releasing Adrenaline before it was ready, Avid seems to like to have people pay to beta test for em these daze. Pretty reckless, imo.
It was explained to me that later on HDV support will be added and the DVE aliasing will be fixed. Fine. So the price right now should be 40k turnkey as it’s an Adrenaline.
You can understand the frustration, I’m sure. I already own a Symphony with an aliased DVE and no native HDV support. It has realtime ultimatte too. Paying 80 grand for Symphony Nitris wouldn’t help my situation and it’d be pretty crazy to ask consumers to pay this with the promise of it getting better later on.
Even all tight and rockin’, this price point just isn’t realistic. Anyone that would cheat themselves out of a real Nitris for only 10 grand more would have to have their head checked.
I see Symphony Nitris as worth 50k (providing these issues are fixed… we’ll see) and have never seen DS Nitris as worth more than 70k. But then, I see Adreanaline worth 20k turn key so either my price structure or Avid’s price structure is off 20 grand and has been for quite some time.
I’ll end up getting a DS Nitris. It’s simply the best match for my workflow. I’ll pay 70k for it though. I stated that long ago. I may have to wait a while for that. I’m fine with that.

[Chris Magid]

Oliver…

With ALL DUE RESPECT…and you deserve a lot of it…I have seen and heard the same lingo about future improvements many times from Avid. And in most occasions it has turned out to be empty rhetoric. I was an early MC 9000 ABVB buyer, owned Symphony #7, and ponied up for Adrenaline.

Specifically where the DVE is concerned…Symphony has been the victim of two such past promises…once with Mercedes and then with the Z6. These were billed in writing as next generation and advanced. Adrenaline also launched to similar hype of an advanced super clean DVE. Even in the manditory HQ render mode, Adrenaline results are no where near as clean or smooth as just about any other hardware or software based DVE. Plus it is dog slow when used as such.

Check out the DVE on a Velocity HD, then when you are done wetting your pants revistd the Symphony Nitris…no so impressive huh.

The openGL and software based nature of Adrenaline was the reason for Avid speculating that future versions of the platform would be even more fantastic than the empty hype of NAB 2003. And those changes would be coming QUICK. Well…nothing significant has happened to date.

The dirty little secret is the software…that was the case with the Genie card and Mercedes card which produced much better and more flexible results in other applications, most notably as stand alone products from the original manufacturer, Pinancle.

The current state of the Symphony Nitris DVE speaks to this. That the software ADMITTEDLY is not mature enough or properly coded to get the performance out of the Nitris hardware demonstrates the role of aging Composer code in Symphony Nitris. This is not the fault of hardware…as DS harnesses it to provide stunning results. I do not think Avid has it in them to write exceptional software, especially when compounded by the problem of legacy code.

Anyone who tells anyone that compatibility with other Composer based products forces compromises in the DVE does not know beans about coding, can’t creatively problem solve or is handing out a plain excuse.

A promise to fix it later is empty rhetoric until I see it. Launching another 1.0 product with such problems will be a disaster for Avid. The goal of simply getting something out the door that works and at that is facsimile of 3 year old system is embarassing to the company and scary to users.

As for greater performance…it doesn’t matter how many channels of real time you can pump out, if they are not worth looking at.

Passing out quotes like “we’ll flick that on in v 2.0” makes it sound like it is no big deal. Well, if it was so damn easy why not just flick it on now?

How the F can a product be so underdeveloped…especially one that carries a Cadillac price point and which was supposedly brewing for so long.

The whole architecture reeks of hack.

Symphony Nitris will be nothing more than Adrenaline Plus…just more of what it does and quicker…but nothing new, improved or different.

Give me a call when I scale or move a title or matte key in real time without it turning to crap.

Chris Magid
RTVF

chris magid
Renaissance Television & Film
http://www.gortvf.com

[Oliver Peters]

Chris,

I totally know where you are coming from and I was there too expessing my concerns about the newest development. I was merely trying to point out that there is a substantial difference in the Nitris hardware than the Adrenaline hardware and this was a hopeful sign. I can only go by what I know of the hardware and from what I’ve been told by people inside and now outside of Avid about the capabilities. Yes, Avid has a very bad track record of blowing smoke and delivering features but not fixes in future releases, so I understand your mistrust. Quite frankly what I saw at NAB was at best pre-alpha, assembled for the show, so I would hope that version 1.0 (or whatever the number is) will be better. We will have to see.

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Chris Bové]

It all kinda reminds me of that Michael Keaton flick, “Gung-Ho” – the scene when Hassan Motor’s CEO lifts the hood to find the mechanic crouched inside the engine compartment, waving at him…

RE: hardware:
Ya know what I really, really miss? Copying an oddly shaped image from a Photoshop layer and pasting it into Avid’s title tool without it placing a white rectangle around it. That was nice… aah well. (*#!% meridian boards)

RE: Avid’s sales BS:
(Lol: Paying to be a beta tester – good one, Grin.) I think Avid pre-promises just like any other company does. I mean it’s not like the folks that write the code also write price quotes. They’re just trying desperately to keep up with all the CEO sales promises. In the end, salespeople exist because there are users that buy into the glitz of the pitch. As my used car salesman uncle always says, “there’s an a$$ for every seat”. You just gotta decide for yourself if the five-digit pricetag is worth being a First-User. When Tiger comes out on Friday, a lot of First-Users will buy & install it, and find out later that their external firewire drives don’t work. No big deal, just not my thang. I’d rather be working than tweeking.

Really, the ideal system will never exist – one that has all the best features from all the best interfaces. Too many patents. Plus, even if it could exist, Gates and Jobs’ll render it incompatable in 11 month’s time anyway. ITM, if it works, use it.

______
/-o-o-\
\`(=)`/…Pixel Monkey
`(___)

[Oliver Peters]

PM,

So I would surmise from your post that smoke or eQ would be the correct purchase?

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Kevin Downer]

AVID should update their Symphony Nitris PDF product brochure on their website. The image used for the system looks like a terrible Photoshop hack job. Shoot the PR person who let that one get out the door.

FCP’s multi-cam looks really robust and the package Studio is really quite something. AVID should be worried as the former lack of it in FCP was one of the big reasons to use an AVID system, Now that reason is gone.

I never want to see another AVID Pizza Box again. The totally outdated PInnacle hardware they kept packaging with their Symphony and its crappy soft key problems cost me a very lucrative job on a series a while back. The “great editing platform, bad graphics potential” mantra is getting really tiresome. Hopefully, this will drastically improve.

I thought the Velocity looked like a winning combination. Was it the interface that did not sell you Grinner? I was kind of hoping it would be good enough to buy into for a PC start to finishing platform.

S!

[Oliver Peters]

[Kevin D] “AVID should update their Symphony Nitris PDF product brochure on their website. The image used for the system looks like a terrible Photoshop hack job. Shoot the PR person who let that one get out the door.
….I never want to see another AVID Pizza Box again. The totally outdated PInnacle hardware they kept packaging with their Symphony and its crappy soft key problems cost me a very lucrative job on a series a while back. The “great editing platform, bad graphics potential” mantra is getting really tiresome. Hopefully, this will drastically improve. “

Kevin,

What Photoshop hack are you talking about? What are you talking about Pizza Box? Hasn’t been part of an Avid system since ABVB. That’s the BOB in the photo. Same chassis as MCA. Nitris uses boards inside the computer plus the BOB. In order to offer “Total Conform” you have to start with a software feature set for the effects palette that is identical to current versions. That is outdated for now, but you DO have to start there. I’m not a fan of the Symphony DVE either, but as bad as it is/was, it’s still far better than the non-HQ OpenGL effects in MCA, Xpress Pro or especially FCP. I have yet to see an NLE DVE that tops the best standalone hardware DVEs (at least for SD work). The exception would be Media 100’s 844/X, which has one of the claenest, bar none. If you want good looking software DVE effects, like at Quantel, Autodesk, After Effects or Boris Red or Blue.

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com