Randall L Rike:

I provide production & post production systems for s church in Zambia.  We're all Avid.  Also, I subscribe to "Church Production Magazine" and "Worship Facilities Magazine".  It's amazing how houses of worship have embraced the technology.

Hi Randall:

                                              Yes. Christian Churches in Africa are producing many, many hundreds of hours of TV and video on DVD and web streaming. This market is actually growing at a steady rate as well.

MJ

Job ter Burg:

At least one of the lead designers used to be exactly such a boutique post house.

Hi Job: That's good ! I maintain that if you measure the productivity of these smaller markets versus their size, then you should be able to arrive at a per capata output ratio. It is precisely this calculation which accurately portrays the market potential (Size) of the mid to tiny boutique and one man band editor shops. 

*Also worth pointing out: Many larger broadcast TV Networks *sub contract a great deal*of their production out to us smaller shops. We actually do have some measure of influence on the larger enterprises in this sense.

Mark J. On cup 9 of caffeine ! Ye Haww and rendering away !

Mark Job:

Mark J. On cup 9 of caffeine ! Ye Haww and rendering away !

Hey Mark - any more coffee and we're going to have to peel you off of the ceiling and stuff your eyeballs back into your head!

Larry Rubin:

Mark Job:

Mark J. On cup 9 of caffeine ! Ye Haww and rendering away !

 

Hey Mark - any more coffee and we're going to have to peel you off of the ceiling and stuff your eyeballs back into your head!

Hi Larry: Yeah, I think you're right ! I have a killer lifestyle with this editing business. I sip coffee and Coca-Cla all day long while maintaining a sedentary position for up to 16 hours per day - sometimes 7 days a week ! I recognize this is not good for my health. I have been getting out more for long walks and fresh air, but still I need more physical activity. I believe this may also account for at least some of my more bombastic posts ! - Or strange wording in posts as well. Although 10 coffees and 3 Cokes does energize my editing style. Weeeee ! I luv funny Icons !

 

beauty of slowness

gerbow:

This is not the days of tape where you had to wait for footage to be copied - in those days AVID was KING. With the advent of tapeless media, people want (need?) immediate access to the footage. Nothing frustrates people more than having to wait, knowing it is costing them money. 

This is an interesting point: Do I really need/want instant access? Tape media had/has its own kind of "instant access":

From time to time I got hired from a TV News Network, they here still shoot with old beta SX Cameras and I am so happy they do that. Because I am forced to see the whole thing while capturing. One Day the Old Camera got broken, thank god they could fix it, but i had to edit P2 Material. You can imagine, I was asked to edit of the cards, nowing nothing... 

Now my point: the fact transcoding costs even more time and therefore money than to load a tape of the same length is because I loose like double time because i can see NOTHING. I want to see the clips while transcoding in a simple way!

Concentrate on editing - I don't want to utilize some extra software and manage the double access to play the media while transcoding. So I even could do some kind of logging within avid while transcoding? This what is editing is about! To look at stuff, use my brain, discuss what we see, comment something, not to look at some stupid progress bar!

So this turns into a very simple feature request no other Software has (that I know of): Please "Play the Footage while transcoding it" (but let me switch it of if i need the few extra CPU Power!). Please get some beauty of the App back by let me do "Editing" or at least Thinking while transcoding/moving material.

On the other hand: Shure, no transcoding at all would be best for all, but for some reasons... I think reliability and speed (of the editing in AVID in the past) once where deeply rooted in Avid beeing optimized for its own codecs. Maybe that situation changes now with CPU/GPU evolution, but not instantly. Maybe i should get a faster PC, but till then I still do transcode EVERYTHING.

best,

hauke

sorry for my english and sorry for the Offtopic since here where interface settings to be discussed. You can pull it to the feature Request if necessary.

haukez:

This is an interesting point: Do I really need/want instant access? Tape media had/has its own kind of "instant access":

…Hi Haukez: This is a very, very interesting point. In regard to future MC interface settings, I have to point out that we also do not often need "instant access" to our footage at all times. MC also does a little known, or shall we say, much forgotten feature called *Batch Capture & Batch Recapture* This is a wonderful old time feature, which has been much forgotten. To have tape decks controlled by MC via RS-422 serial cable, or via FireWire 1394a, thus allowing us to capture long form projects, or projects with several hours of footage, and monitor the video as we're doing it is an enormous plus to our workflow. It is also the source of one of our nightmare's with Avid ! (Try Batch Capturing HDV tapes which have been shot @ Canon's 24 F !!) Avid saw fit to disable the capturing of HDV tapes via source TC at 24 F !! This is a horrible, horrible nightmare for us and destroys our workflow !

Here's why: If we are cutting a digital underground feature, then we can capture at low resolution, thus conserving storage space. Once the editing has been performed, then one can Batch Recapture via the source tape's TC already on our edited sequence at full resolution ! This is how you do a two hour film on only 2 TB of storage.

You can even bring up waveform and vector scopes and even make adjustments on the fly while Batch capturing for the first time. You can also make adjustments on the audio as you go, thus saving one several hours of unnecessary sound EQ' ing later. It sure works for us ! To me, the less you have to adjust in post, the quicker you can get a project out.

Also, tape capture allows one to capture source tape footage in the video codec of one's choice, so there is no need for transcoding later to get footage back out of MC - (Which can also be a nightmare !). If we could afford a Nitris DX box, then we would also have the option to playout in realtime from our Solid State Digital CF Card Recorder, which records in MPEG - 2 I Frame or XDCAM HD 4:2:2, and capture TC, up to 8 Channels of 48KHz 24 bit PCM audio in the codec of our choice. For example, DNxHD 220 X. Alas, Avid likes to make expensive I/O hardware that no one in mid to small size shops can afford. Thanks again Avid

MJ

 

Job ter Burg:

jveekeres:

"will there ever be a 99,99% bug-free fully functional version of MC5 before MC 5.5 is released???"

I don't think any version has ever gotten to 99.99%, and that was when there were less features, and when the purchase price was more than 10 times as much as it is today. However, patches have never been as quick as the past two years, I think.

Very true. Version 3 never fixed the VideoMirror problem. It still exists, and from time to time MC 3 users will have multiple processes of MC running, severely draining resources. The only solution is to go into the Windows Task Manager and end the process or reboot. To fix this behavior you'd have to buy a paid upgrade.

And while the past two years have seen a lot of patches, the past two years have also seen a lot of changes and additions to MC. The more you add the more there is to tweak/fix.

Randall L Rike:

"... the thought of losing that account may throw the fear of god into them! ..."

You'd be surprised.  For many of us in broadcast, we use not only the Avid editing products, but also their storage, and maybe more importantly, Interplay products, e.g.,  Interplay Indexer, Interplay Transfer, and also broacast specific products, e.g., AirSpeed, and other direct-to-air systems.  The Avid editing apps feed directly into these.  "Dumping" Avid isn't as easy as you'd think.

What should scare Avid is that you've clearly thought about doing this.

BobbyMurcerFan:

And while the past two years have seen a lot of patches, the past two years have also seen a lot of changes and additions as well to MC.

Hmmm,

That makes me realize that there is not just a priority issue for the design and programming team between creative functional expansion and functional efficiency/speed improvement (the discussion between Scott Witthaus and Larry Rubin a few posts ago) but also between innovation or functional expansion for new version releases and bug/functional fixing of current versions.

Now this is not a revelation of course but why is it that when Avid releases a new version of Media composer it automatically immediately stops the bug fixing process of the previous version(s)? Why is there no overlap time for lets say 6 months to a year? For Unity for example Avid continued to supply updates to keep system compatibility with new MC releases for years. 

While I'm sure that the same model is used by other software manufacturers we all know that the software giants Microsoft and Apple don't follow this model. At least on the PC (XP32) and my Mac (G4 with 10.4.11 I still receive updates. 

Hi Jeroen,

jveekeres:

Now this is not a revelation of course but why is it that when Avid releases a new version of Media composer it automatically immediately stops the bug fixing process of the previous version(s)?

It doesn't.  They released 5.0 on June 10, 2010, and on August 18, 2010 they released 4.0.5.10.  Seeing as they're up to 4.0.5.13, there have been a few more patch releases for 4.0.5.x since August, too.

I know you've got this idea in your head that as soon as they release a new version they completely abandon the old one, but it's not true.  They don't continue developing new features, but they do continue to fix bugs.

ciao,
Carl 

camoscato:

It doesn't.  They released 5.0 on June 10, 2010, and on August 18, 2010 they released 4.0.5.10.  Seeing as they're up to 4.0.5.13, there have been a few more patch releases for 4.0.5.x since August, too.

Thanks for correcting me there Carl, that makes me a bit more confident that MC5 might at some point in time perform as we desire.

camoscato:

I know you've got this idea in your head that as soon as they release a new version they completely abandon the old one, but it's not true.  They don't continue developing new features, but they do continue to fix bugs.

With version 3.5 and 4 in mind that practically means only patches... not full version releases. It still leaves me with the question why this is the case. For example in case of MC3.5 MC 3.5.10 or in case of MC4 MC 4.0.6. What is the underlying reason that Avid has decided to leave these versions in a patched state and move on to the next version?

I do understand that there is cost involved in building and testing a new version. But isn't that what we all pay Avid for, software that works and these tests being part of that? (Yes... I understand that "works" is not a black or white thing in these cases. What is fine for one user might not be for another.)  

Hi Jeroen,

jveekeres:

With version 3.5 and 4 in mind that practically means only patches... not full version releases. It still leaves me with the question why this is the case. For example in case of MC3.5 MC 3.5.10 or in case of MC4 MC 4.0.6. What is the underlying reason that Avid has decided to leave these versions in a patched state and move on to the next version?

I know you've explained before, but why is this important to you?  I'm not trying to give you static; I don't see a difference between 4.0.5.13 and 4.0.6, and I know you had a reason, but I can't remember what it was (or what thread/post it was on).

ciao,
Carl 

A VERY IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT TO REPORT:

Gannett Corporation (owner of WUSA TV9, CBS Affiliate in Washington, DC), has officially dumped Avid. Five stations including WXIA in Atlanta have now moved over to a BitCentral platform with ENPS. The edit platform is Edius. Another 5 this year I believe. This from the Senior Technology Manager at Gannett.

Avid, are you paying attention??????

Larry Rubin:

A VERY IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT TO REPORT:

Gannett Corporation (owner of WUSA TV9, CBS Affiliate in Washington, DC), has officially dumped Avid. Five stations including WXIA in Atlanta have now moved over to a BitCentral platform with ENPS. The edit platform is Edius. Another 5 this year I believe. This from the Senior Technology Manager at Gannett.

Avid, are you paying attention??????

Not sure about your assumption... perhaps it is possible that Edius earned this conversion... as apposed, to AVID loosing this customer..

And, I also believe this is a decision that was not made overnight... there are a lot of reasons customers change... and, perhaps this may be a personality driven change rather than a decission based on one editing platform being better than another.  IMO, Edius is a very capable application... but, so is AVID.  The fact that AVID has been loosing market share for the past few years is no secret... however, IMO... it might be a bit presumptious to think that this change may have been for the reason that AVID is a less capable editing application.. or.... that AVID's changes have missed the mark.

That beings said, if I was AVID... I would like to know the reasons... if they don't already know....and, chances are they do know the reasons.  Without know the "Why?" I don't think anyone should read anymore into this other than AVID lost an account.... perhaps you could ask the Senior Tech Mgr. at Gannet... that answer would definately take any assumptions out the equation.

 

This is not an assumption. The reasons given are primarily the comparative costs of hardware and network infrastructure. As I had stated earlier, personnel at Gannett and TV9 have been actively exploring alternatives to Avid. If the systems prove out to be stable and reliable over time, this could very well be a snowball that is starting a long, accelerating roll downhill, and Avid needs to be taking a very close look at what's going on.