Symphony Nitris TRUE!

[Donato M. rondinelli]

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

[Grinner Hester]

Seems like just dropping the price of Nitris would have saved em alot of time and effort.
I know of no place for Symphony Nitris.
The real Nitris was lookin pretty dang sweet at NAB though. Best in show for my workflow, hands down.

[Donato M. rondinelli]

>>>>Seems like just dropping the price of Nitris would have saved em alot of time and effort.

Amen.
Instead of a trend setter, Avid is just holding on for the ride. There may be a few high-end houses that would pick up a Symphony Nitris only for the name & user base. Although FCP’s user base is growing! Alot of the classifieds now ask for FCP knowledge, guess it’s time to learn it.

-dMR

[Oakmozart]

What’s even more wild is that you can pick up a DS Nitris Editor for around $75K. It has more features than Symphony Nitris (even though it’s missing the Effects Tree, 3D compositing, and a few other features), yet costs less. With a computer and storage, you’re coming in at just under $100K or so, which I suppose makes it a HAIR more spendy than a Symphony Nitris. This might be your answer for now, Grinner, if you don’t want/can’t afford a $150K DS Nitris system.

You’re right though, when you say DS Nitris is a wild product. It is. And it just keeps getting better. I’m a little surprised that we didn’t see an 8.0 version this year…what they added in the .6 update is pretty impressive for a “dot-release.”

[Grinner Hester]

7.6 is impressive but there are two things that should set avid Avid fans thinking:
A: lets not forget Avid didn’t make their best product. They just bought it and have built upon it.
B: Upgrades use to be new goodies… not bug fixes. They still are for most other companies.

Now, Avid isn’t buying great products. They are swooping up consumer stuff and focusing more on consumer/prosumer sales. This tells me not only are the higher-end products being neglected more than they should be, but we are over-paying for them because of these lower-end purchases we care nothing about.
Doesn’t taiste good that way, does it?

[Oakmozart]

Good point, bro. I agree heartily with you that Avid needs to make faster advancements in the upper-end products to not only advance the Avid product line, but to also allow for more development in the lower-end products (XPro, mainly). XPro NEEDS secondary color-correction, for example, yet not even Adrenaline has it. I’m not asking for something unrealistic here, because all of XPro’s competitors have it (even Premiere Pro, for Pete’s sake!!!)…all for under $1000.

The other problem with XPro–which is a problem in one way and a benefit in another–is that large amounts of the upgrades in XPro are “trickle-downs” from the higher-end products (almost ALWAYS scaled-down versions at that…think XPro’s laughable “timewarp” effects). Rarely does one see NEW innovations being included. What do I mean by “new innovations?” Avid’s FluidFilm, DNxHD and SpectraMatte Keyer are recent examples. XPro and the entire Avid NLE product line could use some SERIOUS refinements to the user interface, such as the ability to loop sections of the timeline continuously while being able to tweak an effect/color correction, etc. Also, I’d love to see them abandon their modal interface, allowing all tasks to be done in one mode. The Effect Editor is frustrating, as is the associated “Step-In/Step-Out” methodology one must use when applying more than one effect to a clip. Pretty much all other applications I’ve used allow you to simply drag-and-drop a new effect to “stack” them one right on top of another. Look at After Effects: one can drag and drop as many effects onto a clip as desired, and then tweak all the parameters in the Effects Tab…all the effects “stack” on top of each other in the Effects Tab, so you can tweak all your parameters quickly, with a minimal amount of keystrokes and no having to “step-in/out” of a clip/effect to access others that are underneath. How much longer must we wait until Avid wakes up and gives us the Transfer Modes that we need? Yes, I know there’s a plugin that will allow me to do this, but why must I use a plugin, when it should be BUILT RIGHT IN TO THE TIMELINE!? How about background rendering and better multi-processor support, particularly in RENDERING!? Hell, about inclusion of scroll-wheel support so we can use our handy-dandy little scroll wheel to scroll through the timeline, bins, Effect Editor, etc. That’d at least get Avid’s interface back into the early ’90’s, where its competitors have been for years!!

Can you tell I’m frustrated? I love Avid, but I’m getting SO sick and tired of hearing their BS with no results whatsoever. When I do get them they fall flat of what Avid said they would be. I always thought I could expect more of the industry leader whom I’ve given so much money to (though not nearly as much as Mr. Magid or others). Then again, maybe Avid will wake up and smell the coffee when their “inferior” competition surpasses them and Avid finds themselves no longer the industry leader. Heck, come to think of it, they lost the industry lead a few years ago. Now they’re just hanging in there with the crowd and seem to have lost their desire to push the innovation envelope.