tom0341:

That is shocking. But you can't solve that by making an already complex system even more complicated. Then you also lose your regular customers. Because it takes a lot of effort for the cutter to adjust to the changes. Since Avid has been messing around with the interface in the last few years, a smooth workflow is no longer guaranteed. Customers can also switch to another system right away.

The UI changed *once* in 2019, after being the same for 25 years. Finally bringing a tool that has been declining in popularity into the 21st century is not "messing around".

If you can't adopt to the small changes in the New UI (which has optional Classic behaviours), you are not going to "switch to another system right away". You sound like those old farts who clung to their flatbed in fear of "the Avid".

The real problem is that Avid always boiled in its own juice.
With the arrogance of the market leader, they never sought contact with users, they should just pay.
At times you couldn't find a hotline phone number anywhere.
Bugs were only very tenaciously fixed or not at all.
Change requests? Nobody wanted to hear them!
Then came the competition with Final Cut and Premiere.
Instead of looking to join forces with users, Avid began to copy.
They bend until they break.

I really like the new interface and I hope the changes continue. Because if they don't, Avid won't survive. New people are needed to take-up the software.

A friend of mine who was using Adobe, saw the MC5.5 interface and started to laugh. To him, it looked like something out of the Stone Age. My son started on MC5.5 before moving onto Adobe.

Where Avid have failed is in the lack of integration with other tools. That's one of the reasons people, like my son, stick with Adobe.

I had a couple of Premiere editors visiting me, they thought I was running Premiere too until I told them it was Avid. If You think that merely resembling a competitor's product is innovation and bringing Avid into the 21st century I strongly disagree. But I do not want to fuel a flame here. Things change, and so does Avid, the point is that the new interface has to be better than the old one, while it's not: less customizability, heavier, less flexible, not really ready for prime time, not fully compliant with the old one, with plenty of "minor" changes that make the software work in a very different way, and this does not seem to be by design, rather by the new developers not having deep knowledge of the product they took over. Too many very annoying little behaviour changes, that needlessly break muscle memory. Avid, You won't get new customers by imitating the look of the competition, but surely You'll loose old customers if they have to relearn the software: they will learn whatever they like better instead, as for workflow, functionality, and last but not least pricing. Not gaining new customers while losing the old ones at the same time is not such an achievement IMHO.

luca.mg:

I had a couple of Premiere editors visiting me, they thought I was running Premiere too until I told them it was Avid. If You think that merely resembling a competitor's product is innovation and bringing Avid into the 21st century I strongly disagree. But I do not want to fuel a flame here. Things change, and so does Avid, the point is that the new interface has to be better than the old one, while it's not: less customizability, heavier, less flexible, not really ready for prime time, not fully compliant with the old one, with plenty of "minor" changes that make the software work in a very different way, and this does not seem to be by design, rather by the new developers not having deep knowledge of the product they took over. Too many very annoying little behaviour changes, that needlessly break muscle memory. Avid, You won't get new customers by imitating the look of the competition, but surely You'll loose old customers if they have to relearn the software: they will learn whatever they like better instead, as for workflow, functionality, and last but not least pricing. Not gaining new customers while losing the old ones at the same time is not such an achievement IMHO.

It works 100% fine for me. Not laggy, not heavy etc. I can still work my customizable keyboard and mouse just the same. The way I edit hasn't changed muched. If a old editor is going to go out and learn a completely new program then I don't know why they would have a problem learning the new changes in MC. Only thing making me what to swtich to Resolve is I can get a all in one package. I really just need avid to improve its color correction functions and export. It makes no sense to have to export to resolve to do these functions. I might as well just do everything in Resolve. 

Perhaps by learning a new software the old editor will gain better playback with linked files, better effects management, better colour correction, resolution indipendence, subframe audio editing, a usable titler. For a start.

luca.mg:

Perhaps by learning a new software the old editor will gain better playback with linked files, better effects management, better colour correction, resolution indipendence, subframe audio editing, a usable titler. For a start.

Given Avid's failure to address so many issues, it's looking more and more like that new software will be Premier or something other than MC.

I keep thinking I'm going to move to Resolve (I never did get into Premiere - it was never stable for me for long form video). Then I start to work with it for a while and found myself missing Media Composer. Resolve has some really great features and if you have powerful hardware it can be quite useful but I find editing to be slower. I haven't given up yet but I also find that Media Composer is getting better all the time. I actually like the direction of the new interface - it's stil not quite there yet but it's coming along. I also use Fusion Studio as a plugin to Media Composer and while it has its hiccups it does allow for a nicely integrated and very powerful compositing solution... Add BCC, Sapphire and Mocha for effects, Baselight for grading and iZotope for audio and Media Composer is pretty powerful (expensive, yes, but powerful).

Sorry for rambling - must be the gin and tonic...

I've been learning Premiere due to client pressures and every day I miss MC more and more. It just seems "tighter" and I never thought I'd admit this --- I like how MC forces footage to conform to the timelne on the input side and not dealing with it later. I can't get my head around how Premiere handles codecs as a timeline change, its problematic. I won't beat a dead horse, but MC is a much stronger editor than Resolve. I'm getting used to the new 2020 MC interface and I dont get why folks are so upset. None of us like change esp when on a deadline, but in a lot of ways, it's like the old MC, if you play with settings-I loaded up an old job started on 6.5 and 2018.10 and loaded that into 2020.6 and saved as 2020 as my workspaces default and it looks pretty much the same, except for improvements like the settings bar on left on windows. And I don't get the comments about MC being expensive. With all those plug-ins youre looking at $2K. I'm so used to Boris I bought BCC, Sapphire at a great multi-platform price so I can run on Avid and PP. I run a perpetual licence as I don't upgrde often or unless I'm forced like XAVC support. 

Here's a Vodka and OJ to the good folks at AVID!

Every time I do something out of muscle memory and it does not work like it used to work for the past 30 years I get mad at MC 2020. It's plenty of little minor changes, and the feeling is that we're facing a total rewrite of the code rather than further development of the old code, and whoever is writing the new code did not took the time to deeply study the legacy MC. Try to use the Audio mixer with the arrow keys like You did for the last 30 years, or add a dissolve to multiple tracks where there's already one in place, or try to use the arrow keys to adjust some effects parameters. Every time I open the Effects editor for the first time in the editing session and the window it's not the size and in the position where I left it in the previous session I get mad. And what's the use of multiple bin panes eating screen space in multiple bin containers? And talking of wasted screen space, how about the giant workspaces buttons on the side of the monitor? And the double ruler in the timeline? And why resizing the composer window without leaving black on the edges of the frame seems so difficult to achieve? And why it's so difficult to rearrange tabbed bins? And why once opened bins from a different project the "Other bins" dropdown always closes itself instead of remaining open like it used to for the last 30 years? And why on a dual monitor setup the close/minimize/maximize buttons are at the top right corner of the left monitor instead of the top right corner of the right monitor, where they are located in every other Windows compliant piece of software? And here I quit, but I could go on and on. It's pretty clear that whoever is coding MC has no knowledge at all of too many details about the way the software worked from day zero up to MC 2019.x, and it's pretty clear that they do not care at all, so now back to the question: if one has to relearn the software, and/or rebuild muscle memory, why not learning a new one? Titler+ alone is a good reason to switch. Not to mention long time ignored feature requests and dot one features that never made it to dot two and beyond.

Sorry for the lengthy post, it's chilled sparkling white wine here, with anchovies and fresh burrata cheese on top of toasted bread, and a salad of black rice with avocado and smoked salmon, olive oil and lime. Gin or vodka to follow.

luca.mg:

add a dissolve to multiple tracks where there's already one in place

luca.mg:

giant workspaces buttons on the side of the monitor?

luca.mg:

double ruler in the timeline

luca.mg:

why on a dual monitor setup the close/minimize/maximize buttons are at the top right corner of the left monitor instead of the top right corner of the right monitor

Not trying to counter your arguments, as I feel they are valid.  It doesn't bother me as much as it does you, but I'm all in support for tweaks to restore missing functionality and fixing what's broken.

Job ter Burg:

luca.mg:

add a dissolve to multiple tracks where there's already one in place

That seems to work for me, though.

In past releases adding a dissolve to multiple tracks where there was one in place already (say on a couple of tracks out of many) defaulted to the same parameters of the existing dissolve being applied to the new one, it doesn't work like that anymore. 

Job ter Burg:

luca.mg:

giant workspaces buttons on the side of the monitor?

Those can be turned off.

Indeed (thanks heaven!) but why in the world wasting resources programming such a useless screen eater instead of using them better?

Job ter Burg:

luca.mg:

double ruler in the timeline

Not sure which you are referring to.

There's a ruler at the top of the timeline, and the usual TC bar, now moved between the audio and the video tracks. What's the use of this uncostumizable top ruler, other than wasting timeline room?

Job ter Burg:

luca.mg:

why on a dual monitor setup the close/minimize/maximize buttons are at the top right corner of the left monitor instead of the top right corner of the right monitor

Doesn't that depend on how you arrange your containers?

It seems to depend on how You arrange the monitors at OS level. The buttons stick to monitor 1, usually the left one. 

Job ter Burg:

Not trying to counter your arguments, as I feel they are valid.  It doesn't bother me as much as it does you, but I'm all in support for tweaks to restore missing functionality and fixing what's broken.

I don't think there are broken functionalities, it just seems that the new GUI has been written to resemble the old one, but despite the familiar feeling the devil hides in the details, and knobs and controls do not work like the old ones did. Careless or lazy programming, where the look had priority over replicating the existing features, perhaps further developing them. To go back to the dissolve example: the command adds in fact a dissolve, it doesn't work like it used to, but indeed it works, it only shows lack of attention in taking over development, and lack of respect for long time users of the software, the loyal Avid die hard users base. Sure I can still cut with MC, but most of my muscle memory has been erased, I now have to concentrate more on operating the software instead of actually cut the product. Thumbs down Avid.

Terry Snyder:

luca.mg:

Perhaps by learning a new software the old editor will gain better playback with linked files, better effects management, better colour correction, resolution indipendence, subframe audio editing, a usable titler. For a start.

Given Avid's failure to address so many issues, it's looking more and more like that new software will be Premier or something other than MC.

Premiere is gaining market, still not ready for prime time IMHO. Resolve requires too many HPs (as in borse power!), and it's made for colour correction, it has a long way to go before being a mature NLE. I find the Lightworks very sexy though.

When I add a dissolve to many tracks at once, and one of the tracks already has a dissolve on it, as long as the first track I select is the one that already has the dissolve, the duration and placement of the existing dissolve is appended to the other cuts. I've been doing it that way since as long as I can remember and it still works for me in 20.6.

Avid is making a huge mistake by not having a legacy view. They's rather appeal to Premier users who won't ever make the full leap to avid than respect their user base of nearly 30 years. Stop alienating us with an inferior, childish interface that's like trying to run through 6 feet of mud.