Can we hope that Symphony will finally start to resemble the solutions of the 21st century?
zb. 

ZFigas:

Can we hope that Symphony will finally start to resemble the solutions of the 21st century?
zb. 

Ha! 

It's a quick and simple correction tool that I sometimes use. Sub par as a colour grading tool. Avid is mostly used in offline so probably not on the priority list. 

HI,

If Avid is predestined to be # 1 then it should do something about it, not rely on the antediluvian version.

Zb.

The symphony colour correction tools are still reasonably useful (in terms of relationship rippling of grades and source based grades plus programme based grades) but the tools set is limited.

That said its rare I can't grade a programme to broadcast standard inside Symphony. For a film or something more stylised then it needs something more like resolve.

But for simple TV work. Media Composer is enough for offline and Symphony for online.

Would I like Avid to improve the grading tools set? I'd like to have a grading tools et rather than a simple colour ciorrection tools set!

Maybe in simple applications it will be enough, but it does not change the fact that Symphony is archaic.
Zb. 

Well very old fashioned isn't bad as long as it does whats needed.

Actual editing is archaic as its pretty much the same as it was 20 years ago.

The actual function of grading isn't that different to what it was 20 years ago.

Its just the tools have evolved and the power of those tools has improved.

There have been countless requests for improvement from small tweaks and additions to more major suggestions and apart form the addition of shapes nothing has changed.

I know exactly the specifics of the IT market and I suppose where the problem lies.
Recently, there is a trend on the market for frequent changes of the workplace, there is no one in Avid who developed Symphony.

Zb.

This whole argument that Symphony is useful for basic things and you can get most things done in it etc.etc just does not cut it for me. Yes, you can do basic things in Symph, yes, I could round trip to Resolve or use the Baselight plugin but people seem so willing to just fall back on "Avid is mainly an offline tool, Avid has the best editing tools". Yes, that is arguably true, but is this all we should be expecting from MC? Can't we hope for better? For cutting edge features, or even just keeping pace with what others are doing in this space? It's not enough now to just be an offline cutting tool.

Just compare Resolve's latest release new features to Avid's last What's New. They couldn't even get the column width thing out in time and the last release was in September.

Have you seen the new integrations with Frame IO and Premiere? Camera to Cloud? Proxies streamed direct from camera to your edit? What's Avid doing about accelerating set to post workflows for REGULAR users - not just enterprise class users with tens of thousands to spend?

Boris is now fully supporting M1, so is everyone else, meanwhile we've got a 3 year old thread about how unuseable a basic title tool is.

The slow speed of development and the sparsity of new features and improvements is my main concern with Avid, they are just falling further and further behind. They may be safe for a while due to the huge install base of broadcast users and Nexis etc and yes, the best shared-user experience, but how long until a competitor really agressively starts going after that? Resolve is already doing some pretty interesting stuff with shared users. 

The argument that post houses are still on 2018 versions is because large install bases don't want to be on the most recent version is not true, it is because the newer versions are not liked. I was working at a lot of post houses in 2018 and most of them were pretty much current with the most recent release. However those post houses are still on that 2018 version. No one stays 3 years behind on a product because it's stable. 6 months yes but not 3 years. I believe we should be holding Avid to a higher standard and expecting more from them, not trotting out the same old excuses, they are not innovating and Symphony is the poster boy for this problem.

Andi

Very good post.

Avid lost its competitive edge and suddenly an avalanche could start.
I'm afraid, that the situation described by ripvanmarliwe worries Avid users.

Zb.

ZFigas:

Maybe in simple applications it will be enough, but it does not change the fact that Symphony is archaic.
Zb. 

True, Symphony CC is archaic, although extremely stable , and I still can adjust and correct just about anything with it. Not knowing where Avid is at developmentally, "newer" might not be a better answer - witness Titler+, now more than three years old. 

It needs a major overhaul. It needs to add full HDR workflow (i.e. Dolby Vision).

... and a completely redesigned interface.

Zb.

Philip Kapadia:

Ha! 

It's a quick and simple correction tool that I sometimes use. Sub par as a colour grading tool. Avid is mostly used in offline so probably not on the priority list. 

This is simply not true Philip. I grade and online national UK broadcast TV shows day in day out in Symphony. Whilst I would prefer to do so in Resolve it is still far from 'sub-par'. It woefully needs updating I agree though, particularly with tracking shapes and 'master clip' metadata but I can still do 95% of most anything in it with regards to professional grading. It is quick and simpler to do many things in Symphony that would be more complex in Resolve.

Mercer:

it is still far from 'sub-par'.

Look at the pic in my signature; I use it too!

Let's start with the fact that Symphony is not compatible with virtually any colour grading control surface on earth. I don't know any colourist that works in film and uses Symphony as a fully-fledged grading system. 

Symphony is fine for quick corrections (or quick grades for low budget TV) - and actually, it performs quite well at that, providing a simple to use, easy interface for primary correction. 3 program monitors so you can see what you're doing and almost all of the scopes you need (although I find the Avid scopes not as detailed as resolves, baselights, or any external rasterizer). The secondary vector colour tool is a bit complicated when you first use it, but you kind of get the hang of it after a while.

My point is - we need more than that for the long-form theatrical film, or creative music video, which are the kinds of projects I work on. 

Any UK based TV post house I've ever worked at uses a full Baselight system to grade their shows. Only the low budget, fast turnaround shows are graded in symphony by the online editor.

I choose to grade in the Baselight for Avid plugin as that does everything that resolve can do, without the need to AAF anywhere :)  

My problem with Symph is that there are a lot of small things that could be done to improve it without having to tear it up and start again that just never seem to be addressed.

Things like a better system for storing grades (i.e namable colour buckets or a dropdown list with thumbnails), a better system of comparing two grades against one another (i.e. a split screen that allows you to compare a second shot against the first), better scopes that could be broken out of the main 3x display, more options for how to apply relational corrections (i.e. any metadata column available), shapes that are independent of one another so adjusting one of them doesn't adjust all of them so I don't have to build up stacks of grades and the ability to zoom the correction window to apply those shapes with more precision, etc etc etc. I don't think these sort of things are so radical and they are mostly tweaks to things that already exist in some form albeit a crippled form.

But rather than being an ongoing process of slowly adding useful features it seems more like Avid waits for the pressure to build to the point where something absolutely has to be done, then they do the bare minimum, pat themselves on the back and then we don't see anything for another 5 years. 

Frustrating to see so little attention awarded to this very important feature, especially if they are still using it as a toolset to differentiate versions. 

Andi