Hi everyone,

It’s hard to believe that it has been nearly 3 months since we last posted our responses to your questions.  This quarter it looks like we have fewer questions and I suspect some of that has to do with the format of this forum, but more on that later.  

Just as I did last quarter, I have enlisted the help of several experts from Avid’s product groups to provide information on some of the more technical topics.  Responses to your questions are posted on a separate thread on this forum.

As I looked at your questions and posts there was lots of great feedback but some common themes jumped out at me.  Number one, we need to do a better job of not only telling you and the market about interoperability between our audio and video solutions but we also need to help educate you on how to optimize these workflows and give you a better sense of “what is in it for you”.  The second thing I picked up on is that while many of you agree that we are starting to make some progress in the area of openness, we need to accelerate our efforts in this area and expand our support for third parties and provide more timely updates.

I want to thank you for your thoughtful comments and suggestions. Your feedback, whether in this forum, in an email or in a casual conversation is always valuable to me but even more so now.  In case you may not have heard, I have recently taken on an expanded role at Avid and now have the newly consolidated video and audio product organization as part of my operations group.  In the months ahead, I look forward to taking your feedback and working with my team and others to act on that feedback.

I also wanted to take a minute to let you know that last month I had the chance to personally meet with a group of members from this forum at an impromptu meeting in LA.  Thanks to community members like BobbyMurcerFan who made the original suggestion and TCurren at Alpha Dogs for allowing us to use his studio. I was able to take a few product folks along with me to the meeting.  We had a great time and had a chance to hear some honest and direct feedback straight from folks in their own environment.  I am also looking forward to meeting with other customers who are part of the Boston Avid User Group at their meeting this week on the east coast. Please let me know if there is a place where a few of you might be gathering – I or other leaders who are in the area - would be happy to set up an informal chat with you. It is a great opportunity for us!

As I mentioned last quarter, we are exploring new ways to reach our customers and next quarter I promise we will do something different.  I can’t promise that I can attend every user or community group meeting but I can promise we will do something a little bit more personal and interactive. 

Stay tuned and keep your feedback coming!

Kirk

EDITORS NOTE: There are eight questions and answer pairs in this month's response titled

“Q2 Chat with Avid Forum - Questions & Responses”  

Dear Kirk et al.,

 

First off, I'm an audio loving editor, mostly working features and some documentaries. Being able to work with sound has become increasingly important for my job, as the release schedules grow ever tighter, and more often than not, cutting copies from my Avid will be used to screen versions of the movie to not just executives but also test audiences.

 

You write that you "need to do a better job of explaining our Pro Tools and Media Composer interoperability story". Please realize that you have some 15 years of introduction to that story to overcome. The perception of Avid and audio has been and will be influenced by that. To summarize:

 

In 1994 Avid buys Digidesign. The two major players in the editing and sound solutions are under the same brand now. To get a sequence from MC to PT however, still requires the infamous OMF Tool, alledgedly written in overtime by some dedicated employees, that mostly works, but not always.

It also means that AudioVision, Avid's own DAW, is killed off. This system had FULL Avid compatibility, and even had features that could have easily made their way into Media Composer and/or ProTools, but that did not happen.

Much later DigiTranslator was introduced. A paid add-on, for something that is intrinsically essential if you're doing sound-for-picture. Then Avid MC started using PT break-out boxes for sound, which was nice. Except that when Meridien was introduced, it came with the same old sound box as the ABVB Avids did, the 16-bit 888-box. At a time when it would have been dead easy to take any of the newer PT boxes that would have done 24-bit audio.

In the meantime, for quite some years, next to nothing had changed about the audio part of Avid. Even the integration of AudioSuite seemed pointless, since that was in fact old, non-realtime technology, and it was never followed up by a move to RTAS. Vendors like Waves specifically stated that they did not test or recommend the use of their plugin with MC, only with PT.

With the advent of Adrenaline, the amount of physical I/O was limited compared to the boxes used with MC before that. No option to use a PT box for sound in MC.

All this time, next to no development on the audio side, and anyone asking for audio features encounters the "go to ProTools for that" attitude. Which is not always a feasible solution.

Then the Xpress Studio Bundle came, and there was an integrated low-end package. That was the most interesting step, except that it did not help anyone using MC or Symphony. After a short while, the Xpress Studio bundle was gone.

In 2009, more than 14 years after the purchase of DigiDesign, the co-install of PT8LE and MC3.5 is presented as the first new step. However, it still won't work with Symphony, it will not work with Vista 64-bit (which is the recommended OS for longform), you cannot use certain Avid and Digi hardware (anything FireWire) simultaneously, and PT is not able to use any of the Avid hardware, not even the audio part, and you cannot run the apps simultaneously. Also, MC (only partially) supports Command 8 (discontinued) and not Digi003. That to me seems like we're sort of back to the Xpress Studio bundle, but now it's more expensive and slightly less integrated.

In the meantime, 3rd parties have managed to develop the more interesting workflow tools, like Virtual Katy, Conformalizer, Titan3. The PT answer to some of those challenges, like multitrack conforming, are nowhere near adequate.

 

So from this user's point of view, any future steps in the audio department are going to be seen with this history in mind. And that history has caused some cynicism. For 15 years there has been a tremendous amount of potential, and it never lead to anything great.

 

And one more thought: PT has traditionally worked well with 3rd party controllers, like those from JL Cooper, Mackie, Euphonix. The Avid has not. There have been some rather expensive and therefore impopular controllers that Avid made in the 90's. There are a very few specific 3rd party controllers that are or have been supported. The Command 8 worked, but not for more than a percentage of its features and buttons. The Avid application does not seem "open", it doesn't seem to adhere to Mackie protocol or Eucon. I think that when looking at a tighter integration between PT and MC, something like this should be taken into account. I think there are opportunities in there.

 

And finally, just as important: please don't assume that a tighter integration of MC/Symph with PT will compensate the lacking audio features in MC/Symph. We need development on all territories. MC/Symph will need stuff like bussing/routing, the ability to add more than one effect to a clip, more tracks than just 24, etc., etc., regardless of the improved integration with PT.

 

Thanks for listening.

Job ter Burg:

And finally, just as important: please don't assume that a tighter integration of MC/Symph with PT will compensate the lacking audio features in MC/Symph.

 

And please! more responsive audio waveforms in the timeline. I hate having to use them as it brings the entire project to a standstill while I wait for them to draw on the screen. And then if I have to move a little bit in the timeline..... wait again.

Getting audio and video to work together better is an ironic statement. No offense, but from a competitive perspective, they don't work at all.

Unless things have recently improved, I don't believe you can safely have both Media Composer and Pro Tools (of any flavor) OPEN at the same time on the same machine. Compare this to the Final Cut Studio package or the Adobe Production Premium bundle, where it's not only easy to have both audio and video apps open simulataneously, but part of the recommended workflow to go back and forth between them.

Both Apple and Adobe offer routines for noise reduction and processing aimed precisely at the level of audio done by a video editor. So, there is indeed a lot of work that needs to be done.

- Oliver

Oliver, Terry and Job,

 

Thanks for these posts. You covered a lot of history on this topic, especially in Job’s post. Kirk asked me to connect with you because I’ve lived through a lot of the ups and downs of this story – first on the user side, then working at Digidesign and then at Avid. The first thing I’ll say is you’re absolutely correct that interoperability between Pro Tools and Media Composer has had a long and (at times) frustrating history. On the other hand, thousands of customers make it work every day and there have been some bright spots along the way.

 

Regardless of how we got here, I want to reinforce that we fully agree with your perspective and are working on making things better. I understand that you will (and should) expect to see tangible proof because a statement like that has little value on its own, but you should know that you are not alone in this message and that we are investing now to improve this in ways I’ve never seen before at Avid. One thing you may not know is that the audio and video product teams are now unified within Avid for the first time – as of last month. And while organizational structure doesn’t guaranty anything in and of itself, the Media Composer and Pro Tools teams will now be working together in ways they never have before.

 

Your posts touched on a few areas – audio tools inside Media Composer, single-user workflows and interchange between PT and MC. Here are a few comments on each topic.

 

We agree that there is a lot of room for improvement in the audio tool set within Media Composer. While I can’t go into details about our product plans in a public forum, I can say that you will see tangible improvements in this area going forward. What I can say is that, philosophically, we believe it is better to provide essential capabilities inside the app rather than building lots of specialized companion apps that require you to switch apps and move data around. For more specialized work, moving a project to Pro Tools makes sense, but we agree you should have all the tools you need inside Media Composer to do great sound design and mixing – and you shouldn’t need a companion app.

 

I will also say that Pro Tools is not designed to be a companion application for Media Composer. Pro Tools is designed to be a purpose-built tool for audio specialists who need all the depth and breadth of control we can give them. That said, we are going to continue to invest in single-user workflows for customers who want to work with MC and Pro Tools on the same machine. The capabilities we delivered in MC 3.5 and PT8 so both apps can be co-installed are good proof points that we’re investing in single-user workflows, although there is a lot more work to be done as you point out.

 

Most of our Media Composer and Pro Tools customers are professional specialists, so most of our effort has focused on optimizing the workflow for multiple users who want to work in parallel on the same project. When you look at it from this perspective, there are several things that set the MC/PT workflow apart, including:

• -- Direct synchronization between MC and PT over Ethernet via Video Satellite. This is great for co-located teams because it eliminates the video export step entirely, so the audio team is always working on the latest picture cut.
• -- MXF media file compatibility and direct real-time sharing of media files on shared storage like Unity MediaNetwork and ISIS. This eliminates the need to copy or move large media files.
• -- Full “round trip” file-based workflow between MC and PT using Interplay.
• -- Template-based export from MC to PT that can be customized for a broad variety of usage scenarios, including co-installation, shared storage, LAN-based workflow and WAN 

In my travels I find that a lot of customers are still using the same workflow they settled on several years ago. Over the last few years we have added a few helpful export features that are not well known or used, including:

• -- Export an audio mixdown from MC for reference in PT (e.g. for checking sync or referring back to the temp mix)
• -- Export a video mixdown that can be played in Pro Tools, including the option to transcode
• -- Copy or consolidate media to any directory or network share, and then copy only the incremental media if the sequence is modified
• -- Export only a portion of a sequence (e.g. between marks only, selected tracks only) 

With your level of expertise, you probably already know all of these things. But as Kirk mentioned, we need to make sure that we clearly communicate best practices because there are a lot of options. Doing a better job of explaining what we have today doesn’t change the fact that there’s still a lot more to do, but it could help to make the most of what we’ve already got.

 

Thanks again for taking the time to offer us your input. Please feel free to contact me to follow up – now or over the coming months as the next chapters in this story unfold!

Regards,

-- Tim

 

Tim Claman

tim.claman@avid.com

 

Thanks for the elaborate reply Tim, it's appreciated. And it's encoureaging to learn that someone with your background is on the now combined team. I'll closely be following the developments.

Kind regards,

Job.

 

P.S.: Yes, Avid->PT workflows in the traditional sense work, and have been working quite well for years now. Nonetheless, there's much room for improvement when it comes to editing mixed down production sound in Avid and conforming to multitrack originals (either in Avid or PT). I'm sincerely hoping for Avid to be able to once again take leadership in such areas.

P.S.: Don't forget that there's quite a bit of audio functionality in DS already. You might be able to bring that into the other Avid editors....

A welcome insight into the areas you are considering after a decade and a half of hope and frustration with using both products.

Job ter Burg:

Don't forget that there's quite a bit of audio functionality in DS already

Great thought tho probably does not take into consideration that DS was never saddled with vast amounts of legacy code designed to work on formats long forgotten. Nor, in programming terms, was it originally written in the era before Noah predicted rain.

Not sure that it matters. The motion tracker was broken out of DS and moved to Symphony, later MC. Secondary Color Correction was broken out of Symphony and implemented in DS. MetaFuze is basically a DS import module, broken out to a standalone application. AudioSuite was once moved (sort of) into MC (from PT).

But I'm no programmer.

claman:

Oliver, Terry and Job,

 

Thanks for these posts. You covered a lot of history on this topic, especially in Job’s post. Kirk asked me to connect with you because I’ve lived through a lot of the ups and downs of this story – first on the user side, then working at Digidesign and then at Avid. The first thing I’ll say is you’re absolutely correct that interoperability between Pro Tools and Media Composer has had a long and (at times) frustrating history. On the other hand, thousands of customers make it work every day and there have been some bright spots along the way.

 

Regardless of how we got here, I want to reinforce that we fully agree with your perspective and are working on making things better. I understand that you will (and should) expect to see tangible proof because a statement like that has little value on its own, but you should know that you are not alone in this message and that we are investing now to improve this in ways I’ve never seen before at Avid. One thing you may not know is that the audio and video product teams are now unified within Avid for the first time – as of last month. And while organizational structure doesn’t guaranty anything in and of itself, the Media Composer and Pro Tools teams will now be working together in ways they never have before.

 ...

 

 

Tim,

It's posts like these that keep us rooting for Avid. Thank you so much and please know that all the hard work being done is truly appreciated.

Avid has unparalleled expertise, reputation and industry knowledge. It's great to see these assets being put to use as you've described.

Thanks again!

 

 

Job ter Burg:

Not sure that it matters.

Nor me but your examples do not really address the huge core of legacy code in MC whose fundimentals were timebased on fields rather than samples and vice versa for Protools

Job ter Burg:

The motion tracker was broken out of DS and moved to Symphony, later MC

I recall going to a very ealy Avid demo (in NZ) where they showed (for the first time to the best of my knowledge) the tracker on DS 15 minutes later demoing a scaled back version in Symphony (or maybe MC 9000?) and later still a demo of a further scaled back version in MC. They did not include it in then current Mac based Express which I had at the time. So basically it was a new module that was fitted Avid style over the top of the legacy code rather than modifying existing behavior.

Job ter Burg:

Secondary Color Correction was broken out of Symphony and implemented in DS.

A relatively new module written for Symphony and stepped up to fit into DS's modern code.

Job ter Burg:

MetaFuze is basically a DS import module, broken out to a standalone application

Modern code ported to a new standalone program with no 15 year old legacy complications.

All that aside I think it is absolutely great that Avid and Protools are both now taking gaint steps (for them) towards implimenting what many of the users have been seeking for what seems like eternity.

One more suggestion:

When you take a sequence from Avid into ProTools, using OMF or AAF, you need to choose between bringing along clip levels OR automation gain. A lot of folks use both, for different purposes. Automation Gain has been in Avid since 1997...

You should be able to import back to Avid aswell with all plugins made available that have been used in PTools...Also while 'm at it in Avid instead of having Audiosuite you should have a protools tab much in the same way you have now but more like an app in it's own right like Avid FX...