Haven't heard or seen anything. Watched a few of the NAB floor interviews etc and didn't see anything really. Lots of talk of AI which I have to say, sounds like so much hot air. Loads of buzzwords but very little substance. There is not a world in which I ask an AI assistant to find me the funny parts in my rushes. Can anyone point to anything they saw or heard? Native Apple? The new Symphony features that were promised on these forums in 2022? The new new title tool that was supposed to be demo'd? Bueller... Bueller...

Andi

It's sad. I'm sad.

I've been editing almost exclusively in Resolve for about three years now -- after being a DIE HARD Avid loyalist for about 30. I had a job come up a few months ago that I thought was perfect for Avid, so I cut in Avid and I felt such joy, and flow and inspiration and nostalgia... I truly missed it. But the truth is -- for what I do day-to-day -- there are more modern tools with more powerful features that allow for more efficient turnarounds. And given that I'm doing color now, too, I find myself sadly on the shore, watching a loyal and treasured friend drift off to sea.

I actually told my producer, that for the first time in all my years, I may actually not renew the support on my perpetual license this time around. He looked at me in complete disbelief.

But why?? What are they going to offer this coming year? What amazing new developments were announced at NAB? What could justify feeding my old friend for another year when for less money I have a far more advanced tool that is only getting better -- and was a one-time buy?

Avid, if you're even listening (or care) you have two months to change my mind.

j

I am in the same situation. I have been a user for 25 years, I have resisted change even though I have a purchased Resolve

license and paid for Adobe Creative Cloud, but among so many new features that Davinci and Premiere,

I think I won't be able to resist much longer. To achieve All-in-One performance I have licensed Baselight, RX Advance,

Neat Video, Fusion, and of course Adobe After Effects.

What does Avid think? Live off your old glories? Live off the big Hollywood production companies and nothing else?

I am in the same situation. I have been a user for 25 years, I have resisted change even though I have a purchased Resolve

license and paid for Adobe Creative Cloud, but among so many new features that Davinci and Premiere,

I think I won't be able to resist much longer. To achieve All-in-One performance I have licensed Baselight, RX Advance,

Neat Video, Fusion, and of course Adobe After Effects.

What does Avid think? Live off your old glories? Live off the big Hollywood production companies and nothing else?

shared media and projects.......it made all the difference for years....and the editor was fine....not much you can't do with it, especially given the low cost and all the plugins for AVID.

Is this still true?  Can Resolve or Premiere share projects and media as well as AVID?

When we built our 15 client operation, Premiere wasn't even close (notice no one talks final cut anymore...)...but that was years ago...Resolve was only on the horizon and no one had heard of AI.....

Agree Robert, Avid since its inception has been a very robust program, which has given us many tools that today, both Resolve and Premiere show as innovations, but the fight between Blackmagic and Adobe to provide new tools, which everyone now calls AI is leaving Media Composer behind.

There are 25 years of relationship with Avid, on some occasions that I have tried Premiere I realize why I love Avid, however I would not want to have to do such basic things as giving titles to a video, since the MC title is horrible , or that the MP4s that are exported can be viewed without problems on any device, or that a graphic that has been modified is updated in your sequence easily.

You talk about project sharing, but it's just a very powerful feature but one that everyone offers (if I'm not wrong). But in my case, I work in a small television production company, which cannot afford to buy all the infrastructure of large companies, I feel that Avid forgot about us, or rather, Avid never thought about us, it dedicated itself to create a huge ecosystem when as an editor you need, above all, software tools. As I said in my previous post, to have an All-in-One like Premiere and Davinci do, I have to spend an additional amount of money, although that is not the most relevant thing for me.

For example, there are plugin companies that are stopping releasing their products for Avid. And keep in mind the proportions, Adobe and Blackmagic give you powerful audio tools, and meanwhile Avid forces you to buy, if you need to post-produce audio, to have Protools, or if you need a color correction, an alternative like Baselight because Symphony was powerful, and also to have the latter you must pay for the Ultimate version.

I don't think Avid is going to go bankrupt because a user like me stops using its software, but in the future, Avid editors will be scarcer and since there are no users, small and medium-sized companies will opt for more commercial solutions. In other words, we could be facing the fall of a great one.

MC Ultimate, yearly subscription: £439
Boris Continuum & Mocha Pro bundle, yearly subscription: £571
iZotope RX10 £400, permanent license
Neat Video 5: £115 approx, permanent license
Baselight Editions for Avid: £900, permanent license

Resolve Studio: £250, permanent licence. 

So the real cost of Media Composer if you are to make it useful in anyway other than just basic editing, is £1010 per year recurring. Plus £1415 one off cost to add decent grading, audio processing and noise reduction. This is not a good value proposition for me compared to the other software that's available. Yes, shared work environments are where it really shines, but I don't believe we will have to wait too long for someone to catch up. Both Resolve and Adobe already have workflows in place that allow for multi-user editing. They may not be pretty right now but just look at the speed that Blackmagic is pumping out updates, it won't be long before some post house takes the leap and makes it work. (Assuming there are any post houses left in the future)

For me, it's not that Avid's not releasing new features enough, this Avid ADA thing sounds like a load of nonsense for example, it's that it's not revisiting old ones that need updating. I'd rather be able to rotate the contents of my clone stamp tool than have an AI assistant. There's so much to be improved in Media Composer and most of it is blindingly obvious.

And Jailer is right, some companies are not releasing new plugins for Avid because they can't work with whatever the janky old code is, so they just release for Premiere or Resolve (ColourLAB AI comes to mind - I'd absolutely love that for MC). Imagine if Boris decides it's not worth it to continue making plugins for Avid? I'd be totally boned. They already decided not to release Silhouette for Avid but there are both Resolve and Premiere plugins.

The fact that there were seemingly ZERO updates about MC from NAB is disappointing but not unexpected.

Andi

I personally have never had a good experience with Adobe's sharing (teams) workflow, but Resolve? It's very good.

We work multiple editors in shared projects accessing shared media via Terrablock pretty much daily and it's been nothing but spectacular. Add to that, you can have a colorist working real-time and since it's a different 'module,' he/she can color on a sequence you are actively editing. Same goes with mixing in Fusion, but sadly, our main sound guy hasn't adopted it yet, so we still bounce to ProTools. It's "bin" locking functions, dare I say... work as good or even better than Avid's. We also use BM's Project Server software (free) to a network host for our project databases, so that all projects are centralized, secure, and shareable at any moment.

Then there's BlackMagic Cloud. Working this way, the project database lives in the cloud, and THAT means you can have the same set of collaborators, but literally in completely different locales. They can all share low-weight cloud-based media, or each can have a set of high-res media locally, but still work collaboratively, and remotely. I once had a colorist at his home coloring whilst I worked on the same project and the same timeline making editorial changes whilst I WAS AT HOME so we could get the job done late at night and on time.

When I work from home, I typically use Jump Desktop to remote into my work machine, and sometimes I turn on "BlackMagic Remote Monitoring" which essentially streams my I/O output to my at-home Decklink card, so I can view my work on an actual video monitor, not a a computer monitor, yet use the computer monitor to control Resolve remotely.

J

....Jailer....dude....did we really both join this forum on the exact same day in 2005???

...Nineteen years ago....

...in those days....an AVID ACSR still had to know how to fix Meridien based systems....

....and we were amazed at SD real time playback.....

Robert Martindale:

....Jailer....dude....did we really both join this forum on the exact same day in 2005???

That was the day Avid took over the forum. If you look closely, many people have the same join date.

ripvanmarlowe:

There is not a world in which I ask an AI assistant to find me the funny parts in my rushes.

I was of the same opinion, until very recently, Andi. Dare I say, Resolve has utilised AI in a very real and useful way for quite a few things; but a case in point is subtitles. Being a bit unfamiliar with the editing side; although I do grade and use Fusion/Fairlight a lot, I took another look. I have an Italian project, long interviews, where I'm on my own and I need to understand what the hell they're on about before obviously I can cut the soundbites. Slap a pull sequence together; right click; generate subtitles in Italian first; export SRT. The after a tip on YT; ChatGPT, "Please could you translate this SRT file in English..."; "Yes certainly! Please paste the file...". Bingo; perfectly formatted SRT in English with TC; import bang! I can see what the hell they are saying. THere are some amazing AI additions in DR 19; that are very real and pratical; and I'm no Fanboy of some this new jazz tech, neither.

Unfortunately, I totally agree; I am completely at a loss as to in which way Avid intend to usefully leverage AI. I only know about Phrasefind/Scriptsync which I have literally never used in all my years as a TV documentary editor.

That's very cool, I didn't know ChatGPT could work with an SRT file. It's very exciting to see what can be done and I'm all for it, I'm no luddite and I'm all for Avid introducing cool new tech if it works and is useful. But it's the foundations that are creaking. Basic FX, basic colour, frameflex and image quality, the bloody title tool, the whole blackmagic i/o debacle, still not native on macs, blend modes, so many small bugs. I just wish all that stuff would get sorted alongside the attention grabbing stuff. Oh well, that's enough Avid moaning for a Sunday, I'll have nothing left for next week at this rate!

Andi

Not having read everything in the thread I hope I don't repeat myself here. Did Titler + ever get fixed? I haven't had a chance to try it in a shared situation (or at all) for a while as I have been editing solo. It was crashing all the different Avids in my circle and my own. What is the non third party future for simple text items (e.g. "scene missing slug") simple titles etc, thats not using subcap or TC generator? Did this get fixed and I missed it?

As per using Resolve or Premiere to edit long form the one thing that still holds me back is trim mode. I haven't found it yet but the simple ability to lasso cut points and multiple cut points and tracks in trim mode and us JKL still doesn't seem to exist on PP or Resolve as I can see. Avid to me is still the leader in crafting long form projects just for this difference. Even Final Cut 7 had this capability.  Am i mising something here? Can PP or Resolve be set up to have trim mode features like AVID? 

Thanks All 

There has never been anything as quick and functional as Avid's track selector, to target what you're wanting to do.

That said, Resolve's trimming is on one hand less powerful than Avid's, and on the other more powerful. Yes, you can do JKL trimming (by activating the "Dynamic Trim Mode"). You can "lasso" select trim points... it just works a little differently than Avid. You can quick-jump to nearest edits to instantly trim (although it doesn't highlight the edits/tracks you'd expect. You DO have a "Trim" viewer, and you can change HOW it represents (heads/tails or current frame) through hotkeys. You CAN trim multiple points across multiple tracks, but again, it works a little differently. You can numerically trim (although, currently and like all other apps, it doesn't save that value for subsequent trims -- a feature I use A LOT in Avid). There's rumor of THAT being addressed in v19 DR. And, of course, you can "nudge" without beiing in trim mode at all -- just like Avid.

After 3-4 years editing in Resolve (after 30 in Avid), I can tell you I can still get hung up on trimming... maybe I just haven't mastered it yet. How you trim and what you trim is accomplished through a bit of a confusing array/combinations, so ultimately, it does just about all the same things, but it does do it a bit differently sometimes. It's can be one part pure trimming, another part element slipping/sliding -- you use BOTH techniques, unlike Avid where you use one or the other (pure trimming vs smart tool).

The one thing I'll say is the track targeting still pales in comparison to Avid. What tracks have "focus" for being affected can have enormous consequences on what you're doing. Similar to Avid track highlighting, but more powerful, yet more annoying at the same time. And currently, source-track targetting is a joke when you have a source element with multiple tracks... that just isn't there yet. Do I PREFER Avid trimming? Yes. The v19 of Resolve is bringing in a more dedicated "Trim" window, so we'll see how that helps. One thing I miss from Avid is the ability to full-screen one side of a trim, and change that side just by hovering your cursor. THAT I cannot find a way to do in DR.

Oh, and let's not forget... DR's ability to subrame trim audio is something I use almost every day.

But truly, the only feature I miss the most, is the ability to see "source timeline." I will fight any man that working from timelines is the absolute best way to edit, and in Avid, I bounce back and forth between source/record timeline views constantly. Yes, you can edit from a source timeline, yes you can have multiple windows of timelines open, yes you can copy/paste or drag from said multiple timelines (handy for broll reels), but the hot-key editing from one-to-the-other like in Avid just isn't there. There actually is a "source-timeline" feature in DR, but honestly, it just confuses the heck out of me.

j