Thank you Avid. Thank you very much for the new and improved menu layout.   Seriously from the bottom of my heart on so many levels, thank you.  Thank you for moving around and hiding commands that PROFESSIONAL EDITORS have been using for decades.  Thank you very much for REMOVING "Set Clip Color" from the edit menu.  Thank you very much for removing "Default Color" from the edit menu.  These items were never needed and why would a professional editor who has been using your software since the "Pizza Box" days, need commands like this.  It's ok; we can waste time searching other menus, right clicking, holding down alt, etc...  Its ok, I wasted some time here posting this rant on your beautiful fancy new menu layout. 

Or, you could have just left the menu items where they were.

Its ok, we now have to add a color column to bins, highlight our clips, right click in the color column and pick a color.  Or, we can highlight all the clips in a bin, hold down alt, right click and pick a custom color.  Or we can highlight clips in a bin, right click in the color column, and pick none.  Its ok, we can do all these steps from now on.  I know this was added in v 5.x, but the "edit" menu items were still there till this fancy new release. 

What makes sense?  How about engineering stops wasting time playing with menu items, works on issues that are real world and are holding you back.  How about making you GUI display correctly on a 4K computer monitor?  How about that?  Just my two cents, but that would have been time well spent, rather than hiding menu items.  Oh, that's right, there not hidden, they just "disappeared".

Plus ONE

Actually changing a program to display properly on a 4K screen is hard.  I was told it involves taking the interface and chaging it from being bitmapped based to vector based, so everything in the interface needs to be redone. So not a small job at all.

hmm not so sure on this.

Yes things have moved maybe there's a couple of kinks to iron out with the re-organised menus but to be honest so many of those menus ddin't make logical sense. Only to the muscle memory of seasoned professionals.

Interfaces across many software change over time, i would suggest that you feedback constructively and there's a chance it could be taken on board.

I know for many users (myself included) there are a number of under the hood improvements and various other things we would like to see which in our eyes supercede the menu re-organisation.

Having said that this may have been within Avid's roadmap for quite sometime.

Sofware and operating systems change and evolve including the UI its a fact that you just have to get on board with.

Dan_B:

Sofware and operating systems change and evolve including the UI its a fact that you just have to get on board with.

Not to mention the fact that people have been screaming for the UI to be updated for years.

I like the new menu layout, overall. You'll get used to it in short order. If you're in the middle of a job and you don't have time to retrain your muscle memory then I would suggest holding off on the upgrade. If you didn't read the 'what's new' in 8.5 and blindly upgraded and are now left with an unwanted learning curve then shame on you.

My 2 cents

BarkinMadd:

I like the new menu layout, overall. You'll get used to it in short order. If you're in the middle of a job and you don't have time to retrain your muscle memory then I would suggest holding off on the upgrade. If you didn't read the 'what's new' in 8.5 and blindly upgraded and are now left with an unwanted learning curve then shame on you.

My 2 cents

 

Does the "what's new 8.5" doc state every single change and every single removal/replacement? Shame on me for not reading the doc and knowing the answer to that, but if not: Wouldn't it be super easy to simply make & post a sticky VIDEO of each and every change, so no one has to have any surprises, (good or bad)? 

As far as Color goes, I like having MORE control and MORE color coding options and plenty of ways to do it. I'm on v7.0.4 Recently, I needed to make & map a Workspace that used a Composer Setting showing ONLY one particular color marker.I could do that as a custom workspace, but I could not map to keyboard, as I can the customizable default workspaces. Did this get offered in any release thru 8.5? I hope so.

Telegram!:

Does the "what's new 8.5" doc state every single change and every single removal/replacement?

It doesn't. It lists about 4 pages of menu item changes, but a lot of the changes aren't listed. The clip color ones in this post, and the movement of many of the monitor drop-down menu items to monitor right-click menus isn't mentioned. It's almost like they decided to list only menu items from the main menus across the top of the UI, and leave all the other ones off the list.

Thanks, Cam.

What I would give for mappable Right-Click context menus....

I did notice that the help file appears to be updated so if you need to find something it should say in there.

I found the clip colour info in there and the previous method has been removed from the help file too to tally.

BarkinMadd:

I like the new menu layout, overall. You'll get used to it in short order.  

In these forums where I read numerous complaints about how using a modifier with a keystroke wastes so much time when you do this many times a day I find it disturbing that that adding a significant amount of mouse work for many of the menu access commands is presented as a UI improvement.  FM maybe it is a cosmetic improvement but, forget muscle memory, it will always slow productivity.   

If Avid felt the NEED to reorganise these menus then surely a faster workflow could have been achieved by changing:
File > Import to     File >" Input -Import"              rather than    File > Input > Import
File > Export to     File>"Output - Export to File"     rather than    File > Output >Export to File.  etc etc etc

Obviously this would have created longer dropdown lists but they would still have achieved a logical and alphabetically organised groups.

 

BarkinMadd:

If you didn't read the 'what's new' in 8.5 and blindly upgraded and are now left with an unwanted learning curve then shame on you.

And if you read the "What's new" very carefully a dozen times before updating and are still left with an unwanted learning curve????

FWIW I may have been more inclined to be charitable toward the numerous cosmetic changes in 8.5 had just ONE of the top 20 most requested items list for the last decade had made it into 8.5.

AndrewAction:

FWIW I may have been more inclined to be charitable toward the numerous cosmetic changes in 8.5 had just ONE of the top 20 most requested items list for the last decade had made it into 8.5.

Actually - FX search and audio waveform sync were both on the top twenty.

I hope that keyboard shortcuts can be created for most menu items that one would access frequently. If not, then Avid has some more work to do to streamline this change.

Hi all, i was away yesterday so don't take my not replying as just lying low.  The new version has come a long way and we are starting to see things become available that other main stream NLE's have had for years.  But that being said, keeping things like Legacy commands / menu items available for long time Pro Avid Editors is something that needs to be taken into consideration with version updates. I'm liking the new features, but making the editor feel so "simple" for a very few non-professionals out there isn't something that should drive its development.  Keep the pros who have been using your software for decades in mind.

 

"Dan B"

Interfaces across many software change over time, i would suggest that you feedback constructively and there's a chance it could be taken on board.

Dan, like i said in the post it was a rant about a change to a platform that i work in 10+ hours a day.  Take a look at my profile / past posts dating back to 2005, you will see how constructively i have been on here in regards to the editor.  Many posts / threads helping people, and Avid in terms of furthering their software or workflows. 

 

Just another dissolve kids, have fun out there today. 

 

Jay