Chris Bové:

Avid knows that this has been a difficult journey for many customers.

You will begin to see a great deal of improvement over the next number of releases. That will begin with this forthcoming release of 2022.4.

Good to hear Chris, but for me, and I assume others, the time for more words on what is going to happen in future version... is running out. Time that Avid comes up with that long desired performance whitepaper you also advocated for and made such a great start with in 2017.

http://www.avidblogs.com/how-avid-media-composer-uses-a-computer/

But let's be positive and see if both the Media Composer and the Mediacentral Cloud UX development teams can get it going in the right direction!

Jeroen van Eekeres:

Good to hear Chris, but for me, and I assume others, the time for more words on what is going to happen in future version... is running out. Time that Avid comes up with that long desired performance whitepaper you also advocated for and made such a great start with in 2017.

http://www.avidblogs.com/how-avid-media-composer-uses-a-computer/

But let's be positive and see if both the Media Composer and the Mediacentral Cloud UX development teams can get it going in the right direction!

+100% Jeroen.

Currently my auto-renewal perpetual is switched off and I personally will have to see a major improvement on the roll out of Avid versions, with real and dramatic improvements before September for me to switch it on again.

Jeroen, you're in the Beta program, right?  I thought you were... maybe I'm wrong. 

The folks who have been beta testing this next version coming out soon (MC 2022.4) have all been quite happy with the progress made.  I know that software development doesn't move at the pace that everyone wants, but we're only a couple of weeks away from everyone seeing the first major round of results, implemented by the new team that was assigned to Titler+.

It won't have everything in it... but you absolutely will see performance improvements, a big leap forward in interface, and a much better way that the Effect Editor handles things.

The version after that will have more, and so on.

As you download, install, and test each release (starting with MC 2022.4), please keep the feedback coming.  this team is incredibly receptive to your input. 

Chris Bové:

please keep the feedback coming.  this team is incredibly receptive to your input. 

By the way I’m very happy to hear this!

Philip Kapadia:

By the way I’m very happy to hear this!

RE: Feedback... It's kind of like getting network notes in the edit bay. Many editors get those notes, and know that they need to take a serious look at implementing them... but also know that they have existing schedules and deadlines to adhere to, in getting rough cuts out to the executive producers.

So, I truly hope, given this analogy, that everyone understands... giving the team some feedback doesn't necessarily mean they'll be able to implement that feedback in the very next version. That's an unreasonable assumption. Give them time to evaluate, make changes internally, test, beta test, etc, etc.

Cool?

Hi Chris,

Chris Bové:

Jeroen, you're in the Beta program, right?  I thought you were... maybe I'm wrong.

Yes I am, but I haven't used it for a very long time. The reason for that: I'm not an editor but a reseller tech setting up and supporting Avid customers in our region. And installing beta versions on customer production sites is not an option unless requested by support which almost never happens.

Now, I will gladly test beta versions in our lab if it mutually benefits Avid, us and our cstomers, but only if this can be combined with our setup/support obligations and the rest of the Avid Mediacentral products, Nexis, Ingest, Playout, Newsroom, 3rd party, etc... but that requires Avid hardware and licences. (and beta programs for those products?) Over the years we have been investing in servers, storage, vm setup and licenses for our education, training and testing purposes, but since Avid is not giving away hardware, we end up having to pay Avid to be able to test their non-beta software to 'protect' our customers from installing versions not ready for production. Not a good story and adding beta versions to that is not on our radar at the moment.

In my opinion, and in relation to the topic of this thread, titler+ should in its current shape have never been able to made it out of a beta testing program and into a final release. But as it, and several other features of the 2019/2020/2021 Media composer products, did, the resellers and customer base became part of what i call an unvoluntary beta testing program. What that means for the actual beta testing program and its future, product QC, product management decisions and the role of resellers and customers I will happely discuss outside of this forum in PM.

Jeroen van Eekeres:

In my opinion, and in relation to the topic of this thread, titler+ should in its current shape have never been able to made it out of a beta testing program and into a final release. But as it, and several other features of the 2019/2020/2021 Media composer products, did, the resellers and customer base became part of what i call an unvoluntary beta testing program. What that means for the actual beta testing program and its future, product QC, product management decisions and the role of resellers and customers I will happely discuss outside of this forum in PM.

Yes I have been a beta tester too before and it really makes you wonder if there has been a serious communication problem or, I'm very sorry to say and mean no offence, the right people are beta testing. How can it take 3/4 years for Titler+ to get essentially nowhere? Chris's comments are very welcome but it seems that mainly 'performance' improvements may come in 2 weeks or so, which is not the same as most everyone has urged - junk it and come out with a 64bit legacy Title tool equivalent. It maybe also time going forward to re-think the beta programme to target key industry Film and TV people, in the way camera manufacturers do.

Blackmagic, for example, do not have a beta programme for Resolve - they have a feature request forum, which they very much listen and respond quickly to, introducing major popularly requested changes, features and fixing bugs, quickly.

Please let us know when 2022.4 is released.  I am cursing in disbelief as I try to do the simplest things and clicking onto functions and selections does not work!  How is this possible? 

Mercer:

How can it take 3/4 years for Titler+ to get essentially nowhere? 

Chris Bové:

a series of unfortunate events that led to scheduling issues, staffing changes, and a realization that an entire refocusing needed to happen. Earlier in 2021, that refocusing did happen. It is in new hands, and the first round of performance and UI fixes are already in the hands of the beta testing team. We are evaluating some of the fixes for the next release.

Of course, software development isn't as fast as... let's say putting a hammer to a nail... and so things need to be deployed in chunks. So a percentage of fixes are being rolled-out with each new release coming in 2022.

Mercer:

junk it and come out with a 64bit legacy Title tool equivalent. It maybe also time going forward to re-think the beta programme to target key industry Film and TV people, in the way camera manufacturers do.

Chris Bové:

...and it's physically impossible to do so.

Recreating it was not ever on the table because there was software code within it that was going away from the Mac-based computing world.

The fixes are coming. I know patience is thin, but they are coming.

Let's hope the next release has more than some new colours for clips because Resolve 18 just dropped a LOT of features and it looks like they have their eyes on collaborative working and shared storage hardware which is the only thing no one has been able to touch Avid on.  Resolve is moving at light speed. 

Andi

This has nothing to do with patience.  I have a piece I'm creating for a client.  I need Titler + to work at the most basic level and it doesn't.  How is this possible?  This project is huge.  There is no way for me to start it again in premeire.

kokopelli:

This has nothing to do with patience.

I have to agree here. Customers are paying for Media composer licenses and/or support contracts. This is about delivering on already made payments for what can be expected from experience with previous versions.

Yes, I know, there are trials, you can check prior paying and updating. But combine this with the end of support policies and another picture emerges. It is not just the customers deserving the tools they paid for, it is also Avid meeting their own deadlines on new products being ready when you discontinue support for the older ones.

ripvanmarlowe:

Let's hope the next release has more than some new colours for clips because Resolve 18 just dropped a LOT of features and it looks like they have their eyes on collaborative working and shared storage hardware which is the only thing no one has been able to touch Avid on.  Resolve is moving at light speed. 

Andi

Totally agree Andi and it's well worth listening to what Grant Petty has to say about subcription, being investor focussed, universally loathed by customers and ultimately self defeating for a customer loyalty it seeks to force - Subscription may be the great catch all for Avid/Adobe but disruption is the big bang of forward thinking and BMD are and have always been the disrupter, destroying the expensive high costs of others. And because of this, in the last 3 years I have invested in BMD hardware/software worth 10 x more than I have in Avid products and it is all mine forever, without a penny of subscription. The cloud server hardware is a gamechanger. In the last 2/3 weeks BMD have introduced 2 major point releases and now a massive new version.

BMD is able to move at this speed precisely because it's CEO refuses to follow that industry model and customer loyalty is far stronger, of it's own volition. Avid is still a major core of my business, and I used to think it always would be but despite industry standards I can now now see a business case for moving closer and closer to a BMD eco system from production to post. Let's hope Avid truly is moving away from that investor related focus, detailed in their anual reports, back to a more customer focused one - I really do hope for that, because Avid has been a solid mainstay until recently, for me for nearly 30 years! 

Yeah, I also raised an eyebrow at his mention of subscriptions. He's talking my language to be honest. You'd be mad to not be boning up on your Resolve skills right now if you still have more than a few years left in the industry.

I've been using Avid since about 2004 probably so I'm not an old timer by any means but it's still been the bulk of my career and I've always felt it was at least keeping up but the recent speed of progress and the stubborn refusal to do any improvement of existing features is seeing it slip further and further behind.

Both Flame and Resolve are using AI to do things like depth mattes for grading, or selecting humans or skies for replacements, it looks like in the latest release BM have created something very similar to the mesh tracker from Mocha - except it's included in the price, a 30x speed increase for 8k footage, full M1 Ultra native support, even the 25-up display for multicam - the list just goes on and on. I honestly don't see how Avid can ever catch up to that.

If anyone didn't see it, it's worth checking out Grant Petty's demo of the new tech they are releasing here 

They are coming for Avid for sure.

Andi

Great News!

When will be available?

Can I have a beta version in order to test it? I (and all my team) am eagerly to be ride of the subcaps and try a decent Title Tool application.