You have to upgrade to a Media Composer to get 2 rows of buttons???!!!

[Michael Phillips]

I agree, in the meantime:

https://www.24p.com/2_rows.htm

[Oakmozart]

Michael doesn’t advertise it, but he’s a product designer (or Senior Product Designer) at Avid.

Good things are coming. You may have to wait another release or two, but major improvements are forthcoming. Be patient.

And you’re 100% correct about not having 2 rows in XPro…or the whole Media Composer interface, for that matter!

[Mark Raudonis]

Paul,

If you want a consistent interface from low res all the way to HD, I suggest you look at FCP. This lack of full features across the board is just one of the reasons we switched to FCP.

It’s extremely annoying to have to pony up thousands of dollars just to get a second row of buttons … or a center duration… or any of the other “disabled features” that Avid thinks “off-lin” editors don’t need.

mark

[Dom Silverio]

OK… I guess it was deleted because of the rumour aspect….

So let me reframe the discussion.

“Disabling” a feature is no different with smoke and inferno. FCE and FCP. AE and AE Pro. QT and QT Pro. etc. etc.

How much does it cost for me to upgrade FCP to a working Media Manager version? How about a 24p workflow that is a bit more robust and does not require hours just to do a simple conform?

[Michael Hancock]

I’ve been wondering this for a while, so I’ll just go ahead and ask. Why in the world do you need a second row of buttons? I use an old Avid Xpress at work (having learned to edit on an Adrenaline), and there are only about 2 buttons I ever use. Everything else is custom mapped to the keyboard. The less I touch the mouse the happier I am and the faster the edit. Am I simply an exception to the rule? Then again, I’ve only been editing for about a year, so maybe there are lots of features I’m not utilizing. Why do you need a second row of buttons? Thanks.

Michael.

[Dom Silverio]

And also – compared to the older Media Composer, there is a second row of buttons possible – right above the timeline.

[Oakmozart]

Michael-

There are many who share your opinion, and it’s very valid. But there are those of us (like me) who LIKE that second row of buttons and want it there in case we need it. I find it very handy to have (and USE), even though I often use the keyboard for most of my editing.

My point is that it’s getting REALLY old that Avid keeps offering different interfaces for different products. XDV through Symphony Nitris all use the same Avid interface. Why not make them all the same? This goes WAY beyond the “2-rows” issue, it addresses other crucial features of the MCA interface missing in XDV/XPro, such as subframe audio editing (super-huge for me), reverse matchframe and others.

As a die-hard Avid lover/user, I think the time has come for Avid to start to up-the-ante on the high-end so they can start offering their “lower-end” customers the tools they not only need, but that are being offered by the competition. If Avid won’t offer these features, they need to step aside and focus exclusively on the higher-end…which I personally don’t think is really going to exist in 5-10 years. But hey, I’ve been wrong before and I could be wrong here.

My $0.02.

[Michael Hancock]

Thanks for the reply oakmozart. Being relatively new to Avid editing (as I said, only about 1 year under my belt), I figured I was missing something since I didn’t miss the second row. However, I do remember this time last year when I first sat down at the Xpress…I did miss the second row. I had learned on an Adrenaline and it was there. Through me through a loop for a while until I mapped my keyboard and memorized as many shortcuts as I could.

I agree with you on the interfaces. I understand that Avid can’t give everything to lower end users…for example, I would love to have the 3D warp effect, animatte and fluidmotion, but here are workarounds. However, sitting down at an MCA after using Xpress can be frustrating, and vice-versa. You learn how the workarounds, then suddenly you don’t to work around them anymore because the buttons are there.

Speaking of the competition, I just got my first introduction to FCP last weekend and I look forward to learning it. From what I’ve heard about Adobe Premiere 2.0, it may also start putting the heat on Avid. Could make for an interesting year.

Michael.

[Oliver Peters]

[mpe] “Disabling a feature is no different with smoke and inferno.”

MPE,

That’s a silly answer. Smoke is an editor and inferno a compositor. Smoke/smokeDI/fire are basically the same toolset/UI and flint/flame/inferno are the same. The differences within each group are based on film-related features enabled by the “upper end’s” use of SGI platforms versus the “lower-end” products on Linux.

FCP, Premiere Pro, Quantel, Autodesk and even Avid Liquid are all examples of UI’s that are essentially the same from low-end use to top-end use.

The problem isn’t that Avid wants to exclude features from the low-end products. That’s reasonable when you look at things like Fluidmotion and tracking and Animatte but not when you’re talking about basic UI tools. The real source of the problem is that Xpress DV/Pro grew out of a somewhat different product development path than Media Composer and Avid has never bothered to clean up the discrepancies. Why do you think the Go To Transition keys/commands work differently on the two types of systems? That’s really just sloppy and now you have large groups of users who like it each of the two different ways. So if you fix it now, you’ll also frustrate other users.

Sincerely,
Oliver

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

[Dom Silverio]

[Oliver Peters] “Smoke is an editor and inferno a compositor.”

It was hyperbole for effect Peters.
My point was there is always stratification in many levels with a lot of companies – be it software or hardware – UI or “features” – Apple or Avid. Picking on Avid doing it is rather silly, especially when the other company does the same thing.