Is it possible to buy the yearly subscription now and use it later? My subs runs out near xmas, but if I can "save" some cash now, I'd rather do it. Eventhough I don't use it that much as most of my gigs are not on my equipment.

ripvanmarlowe:

In Nov 2019 I paid $284 ($299 with a $15 discount from Videoguys) for a support plan renewal for my perpetual license, then in Nov 2020 I paid $365 ($385 with a 5% discount from Videoguys).

Assuming a 25% increase that would make it roughly $480 which is roughly a 60% cost increase in 2 years.

A one year subscription to MC Utimate (non perpetual) is currently $499.99 on videoguys.

You want to charge me 60% more, you better have a title tool that works.

Andi

However Andi, Ultimate includes Phrasefind and ScriptSync, just one of which costs £169/year as an add on to a perpetual licence, (just paid it.)

I stopped updating one of my two perpetuals a few years ago, and kept one up to date in the vain hope some useful feature, usual stuff; new colour corrector, audio bussing, automation of RTAS plug-ins, might appear.

Both systems are still now on MC 18, as is everyone I know in working offline on TV and film the UK; some dozen editors and AE's.

True David, but those are definitely quite niche features so it makes sense that they're add-ons.

I'm in the same position as you, both machines on 2018 versions and was desperately hoping for upgrades to Symphony, effects and audio (proper sample level audio editing IN the timeline, not the botched source settings mess they currently have). It's been nearly 3 years of hoping and paying and I've seen nothing and like you, because of the post houses I've not upgraded. Right before my support runs out I will upgrade one of them to the most recent release and then leave it at that until something genuinely compelling appears. I can get by on 2018 for a while, no point throwing good money after bad.

Andi

pierreh:

Is it possible to buy the yearly subscription now and use it later? My subs runs out near xmas, but if I can "save" some cash now, I'd rather do it. Eventhough I don't use it that much as most of my gigs are not on my equipment.

Subscriptions or renewals? You can purchase renewals anytime and add more than one year of support after the end date of your current contract. 

Thanks Job, my bad... indeed I meant licence renewal for my dongle.

pierreh:

Thanks Job, my bad... indeed I meant licence renewal for my dongle.

I believe you can. With a dongle you have a perpetual license and each year you pay for a renewal of your support contract. That allows you to update and use the versions until the end of that support period. If you renew support early (at the pre increase price) you get that year added to the end of your current contract.

So its a way to pay in advance at the lower price and still gain the years contract.

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/FAQ/Media-Composer-Price-Adjustment-2021

Scroll down for a table explaining the price increases. 

Andi 

Pat Horridge:

I'm surprised Avid has continued perpetual licensing this long. Very few (if any?) other professional software works that way or has done for years.

The lead-in from "Head to Head: Adobe Lightroom Classic vs Capture One 21":

"Ever since that dark day when Adobe made the shift from the perpetual licensing model of the Creative Suite to the subscription-based Creative Cloud, many photographers have been searching for a viable alternative to Adobe Lightroom. Fortunately, there's no shortage of contenders..."

And Lightroom, at the time, enjoyed a much larger "digital darkroom" market share than Avid does of A/V post-production and content delivery market.  The fact that Adobe alienated, lost and continues to lose digital  photography users while strengthening and creating competitors should say something to Avid management (if they are compentent): Users matter and what they want matters when you do not have monopolistic power over them.

Avid, you are shooting yourself, hopefully just in the foot but possibly with a more slowly fatal final shot.

Avid, you are shooting yourself, hopefully just in the foot but possibly with a more slowly fatal final shot.

wmcole you nailed it.

As a long time Avid user since Avid express old days I have been noticing sharp declines in demands for any kind of post-production’s needs. As far as I can see unfortunately TV’s and Cinemas days are over.

Since the Social media revolutionized with the live streaming across the platforms, there is a huge increase among the content creators. Obviously Pandemic didn’t help our industry even. As a one man band I have cut only 3 projects during 2020. Mid 2020 I have my business model changed to accommodate live streaming by purchasing 2 vMix pro production / switcher systems one for the studio the other for outside locations, so far I have been booked for the next 4 months with the huge demand. The reason for bringing this up is for Avid to wakeup from this beauty sleep. During the past 20 years being a honest customer by paying for every upgrade and support plans even with the sharp declines in revenue just to help Avid and stay loyal even despite the last time discrimination against loyal long time clients with perpetual licensing and pricing for support plan.

NOT THIS TIME I have to pull the plug on Avid and let them feel the pain. VmIX IS THE WAY TO GO, Power, performance with many cutting edge latest technology. Avid good luck with your freefall.

Call me a Kool-Aid drinker but SaaS is here to stay through out the software industry and AVIDs at least is still offering a perpetual option that's still resonable. I never need support nor upgrades, hence my post looking for the latest stable release. I'll buy that upgrade and it'll serve me well until there's a very compelling reason to upgrade. But the rate of $499 is very resonable. Boris makes a decent titler. AVID never has managed to pull that off going back to 1997 when I first checked them out for $110K, and then bought discreet edit* seats @ $56K to get their Inscriber titler and a PC based editor. 

Fazz Powell:

SaaS is here to stay

Absolutely. But SaaS itself is not the problem if you ask me.

The problems comes from a 'increase profit by cost reduction model' resulting in a one (or 2 license wise) size fits all model. Media composer has to be the tool for the single edit suite shop to the multi million dollar broadcaster and all in between including compatibility with other Avid products like Mediacentral, iNews, Nexis, etc... and 3rd party integrators.

For the broadcasters this price increase can be considered trivial. As all the other Avid server products are perpetual licenses, the media composer licenses will remain as well, and on the total support cost it makes little to no difference especially if package deals are made.

The motivation for subscription is obvious: Cash flow! But there is a second motivation: Being able to restrict users to the versions they can use in the subscription model including automated updates. But this discussion goes much much wider than just Avid.

For me the problem is the way Avid presents and markets this in combination the way the underlying technology and the devopment are evolving. ALL of our customers who ever decided to use monthly subscription have faced system downtime due to architecture problems of Avid link and activation servers. A problem that simply makes it unuseable for a 24/7 broadcaster with a news department.

Combine that with cutting corners in testing, resulting in new versions of products that break existing functionality, and the subscription model can put us between a rock and a hard place. 

For me the price point of perpetual is not so relevant, a price increase to push people into a subscription model that doesn't provide the same functionality, backwards compatibility, and relaibility is though.

Simply said: Avid, if you want us to start using/selling subscriptions, start by making it and the poducts it activates work as relaible as perpetual if not a dongle. 

Its worth noting there are solutions to make subscription licensing more robust. Larger organiations run their own licensing server that is relatively easy to download from Avid and set up. You then control your own licensing.

Or you can use offline activation to produce a bin file to license the machine (for non internet connected systems mainly)

That reduces the need to access the Avid licensing server.

But yes we had hoped some time ago the licensing server setup would become more user friendly and robust but if you end up with a locked out machine you still end up having to contact Avid support to resolve it.

My renewal is due in November so its no big deal to purchase it now at the old price and have that added to the end of my current contract. So it won't be an issue for me till november 2022. I can then look at the cost. But most likely the additional cost will be worth the ability to have a dongle for sure.

I use a dongle, and like it but I suppose it may be time to finally understand more about Subscription licensing. Specifically interested in learning about any "uncertainties" vs dongle use- how one might get locked out of launching MC, even briefly. 

For instance, if I wake up one morning to find my ISP is having an outage, will MC still launch/open from a power-up? 

if not, how would an offline-activation bin file work to successfully start MC, despite temporarily having no-internet? Please explain any steps that would have needed to have been taken in advance, and/or the steps that one would need to take while internet access is down, but with access to a cel phone. Thanks for any notes, geared to a single-user working solo.

My renewal was up this September so I just renewed at the old price. Probably my last renewal. Without any fixes since June, I've used support twice over the years for licensing issues because of something on Avid's end. MC is software that I have complimented with Boris Fx and a few other plugins to make a complete system. It is becoming expensive for a software that is now mature. There's only so many more features that they can add. It's the bugs that should be fixed. As consumers we shouldn't have to pay for something that was broke when you first bought it. Fixes should be free....

What I don't understand is why the perpetual license costs more than the subscription license (or am I missing something?). With the perpetual license you still need to update each year or else you lose the ability to update (so we are still locked-in and become an almost guaranteed revenue stream for Avid - maybe even more so than a subscriber because the penalty for lapsing on our annual update is more costly for us).

I happen to have the Symphony option so one could argue that my $399/yr update is cheaper than the annual Composer Ultimate option however, I don't have access to the phrase find and script sync options so really it still seems as if my renewal to keep my dongle active is more expensive than a subscription (although with the Symphany option it's hard to compare apples to apples as there is no MC + Symphany-only subscription).

What is Avid thinking? I'd really like an honest answer from Avid as to why a perpetual annual update should cost more than a subscription annual update.