[Avid-L2] Re: Mac Smoke Official

Thank you for this rather interesting 'marketing' view of the situation. Can't say I agree with everthing because I do not believe that Avid sees its future in just selling apps. As someone rightly wrote, Avid is now a server company. For Avid to continue to impose itself on the market and be to the reference, it must be at the core of the industry. That core is servers that are broadcast reliable. For the moment, they are doing rather well. There has long been talk that MC will become a web app that will allow TV stations to have editors anywhere, off avid servers, making the app free when connected. What is certain is that it is the company that controls the TV servers of the world, controls what gets on them. Avid is already well implanted in this domain and as edit suites become ever more virtual, they will continue to impose influence. Yes, FCP has a server system. I have installed 2 and I am too old to install a third. Avid servers work day in day out with just about anything. So when you think like this, you wonder why Avid does not ditch Symphony and DS altogether. I would hazard a guess that if they could, they would but they can't because the customer assumes that for Avid to be serious, they have to offer a full workflow. As for who should be worried by mac smoke, not avid and not AE either. I can't say that I have seen floods of young people rushing to use the Combustion 2008 crack over AE. I always considered Combustion and Smoke as entry level machines for novices to later have access to very well paid Flame jobs. But all this is a 'high-profile' micro market in comparison with the donkey work of editing the enormous amount 'fantastic' TV that is churned out daily across the globe. Like it or not, that is the business that Avid is in.

--- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, chris magid <chris_rtvf@...> wrote:
>
> Reality does not matter as much you as think here. It is another example of how your reputation and years of malaise can bite you in your ass. No matter how Avid pulls their act together when it comes to finishing it would be an uphill climb.
> Prime example. BUZZ. My god, the amount of Smoke on Mac traffic on the internet is amazing. The hope, false or otherwise, that folks are expressing is indicative of needs not met. It is also a billboard for Discreet's sterling reputation for finishing, effects and quality. The response to Smoke on Mac is damn near pavlovian. That is drool a company can take to the bank if they can even deliver half of what is expected.
> Could you imagine such buzz regarding an Avid product being posted on multiple FCP or generic DV blogs and forums. Last time Avid could be considered the source of anything truly warm and fuzzy was the turn of the century. That is a almost a decade of descending opinion. A hard trend to turn. 
> And they continue to botch it. Not only with products that refuse to respond to customer requests for a modern "finishing" feature set...but with truly punitive or confusing marketing and sales methods. This is probably an effort to squeeze ever dime from the perceived value of some of their products and to protect products which really aren't all that special.
> Symphony and DS are prime examples. 
> Have you seen the bullshit double talk  Avid rolls out as a response as to questions regarding DS pricing now that is on the AJA card? The whole FAQ seems like it was written by the Olympic Asshole Team or graduates of the Institute of Empty Defensive Political Rhetoric.
> Mind you, that when DS ran on Nitris rather than another company's product Avid set the value of DS software at around 10K. That is when you could buy it separately for a brief moment in time. They could of picked any price...they chose 10K. Certainly its performance on Nitris was impressive and deserving of a big premium on top of that. 
> HOWEVER. Two things are no longer the case. No Nitris and no software only version FOR SALE. And everyone knows what the AJA card costs. OOPS. Nice work Avid. Folks know that is not 55K worth of video card and CPU. Avid surely is entitled to connect value to their investment in development and worth of their intellectual property. They are also allowed to charge premiums for varying functionality...like with the old Symphony Universal or with DS outfitted with full I/O or whatever DS Editor was. But a "do-over" sort of blows their cover. DS software with no input and a little output for monitoring was worth 10K last year by Avid's measure. Oh and why has that gone away?
> The issue here is not the money, it is reliability, trustworthiness, reputation and confidence. They play shell games with their products. Here today, gone tomorrow. They cripple low end products to product their high end instead of just pushing the high end further. They take advantage of their closed architecture to support underperforming overpriced items like MOJO.  Makes it tough to consider Avid a long time partner for the future of a multi-seat networked shop. We are talking capital investment here. 
> They absolutely hung folks out to dry with the lack of any 10bit or HD finishing capability within the Composer/Symphony family for so long. They hung original Symphony owners out to dry with stalled developed past 2.0 for years. Remember that box was trying to compete with Smoke and DS. Those making plans around seats of DS software which are no longer sold are hosed. Those who bought into the original DNA/Adrenaline slate of lies got slammed. Anyone remember all that supposed processing power in the breakout box or the faster than firewire connection over firewire? Still waiting for the uncompressed option card? What the heck happened to external monitor preview from After Effects and etc? We used that! Why are features disappearing? 
> In the words of Plato...SHIT HAPPENS. Okay. So one or two of those over a few years may be okay. Anyone in the Avid fold for a while has seen more than that. Customers remember "bad" a hell of a lot longer than "good". This band has struck up the choruses of "This Time We Mean It"  or "Sorry We Got Busted Fibbing" one time to many. 
> It would take years of good behavior and steady advancement to make a believer out of me and make those violins play as they did for Avid in 1997 and as they are playing now for nothing but promises from Discreet. A name that obviously their users and their user's clients trust.
> Hey. Avid products are still useful. However our main reason for staying with them or buying new upgrades is simply because we are deep rooted in a history of doing so. We have an institutional workflow. That has ZERO impact on new customers. It has nearly ZERO impact on what we may choose as an option to solve the technical shortcomings they refuse to address in Symphony and the crisis of confidence they seem to have in DS. I simply do not trust them to do the right thing in either case. 
> So Smoke for online...WHY THE HECK NOT? Bet more of us end of taking Composer sequences to Smoke on Mac than will take FCP projects to DS. 
> There has always been measurable forward momentum from Discreet. Smoke, Smoke HD, Smoke on Linux, Smoke on Mac. AND THATS JUST SMOKE...THEIR LOW END PRODUCT. 
> I like that. Think once they are on a mass market platform that you can manage without an IT degree it may just evolve and be adopted quickly.
> Avid has an interesting base in the 4.X offerings as it relates to multiple frame rates. They will have limited time to take advantage of the meek attention this is producing to solve some customer issues and maybe keep us dancing to their band a little longer.
> Chris MagidRTVF
>
>
>
> --- On Thu, 11/19/09, Dave Spraker <avid@...> wrote:
>
> From: Dave Spraker <avid@...>
> Subject: RE: [Avid-L2] Re: Mac Smoke Official
> To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Thursday, November 19, 2009, 7:27 PM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> There's a lot of folks hacking on FCP that need a "finish." Getting into
>
> Symphony or DS is not seamless so I think there's a market for a product
>
> like that.
>
>
>
> Dave Spraker
>
> Account Executive & Avid Specialist
>
> Professional Video and Tape
>
> 503.810.3642 - cell
>
> AIM: dAVID at PVT
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups .com [mailto:Avid-L2@yahoogroups .com] On Behalf Of
>
> Dylan
>
> Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 3:34 AM
>
> To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups .com
>
> Subject: [Avid-L2] Re: Mac Smoke Official
>
>
>
> That's a pretty significant cost compared to other desktop systems - in fact
>
> is there anything that compares? But then it's pretty reasonable compared to
>
> the turn-key systems currently in that segment.
>
>
>
> What market is it going to attract most? Existing FCP/Nuke/etc users looking
>
> to kick it up a notch, or high-end users looking for a cheap Smoke or two?
>
>
>
> Personally I'm still a man of simple needs - Media Composer does most of
>
> what I want, and I'm slowly learning DS for the rest. I can get by with FCP
>
> too. But is it worth the money just so you can put 'Smoke' on the door to
>
> one of your suites?
>
>
>
> --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups <mailto:Avid- L2%40yahoogroups .com> .com, "Terence
>
> Curren" <tcurren@ > wrote:
>
> >
>
> > 15K for the system. 2K a year for support.
>
> >
>
> > There is a comprehensive podcast on it here:
>
> >
>
> > http://www.fxguide. <http://www.fxguide. com/fxguidetv. html>
>
> com/fxguidetv. html
>
> >
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

------------------------------------

Search the offical complete Avid-L archives at: http://archives.bengrosser.com/avid/

Everything you MUST know about Color Correction in one book: http://tinyurl.com/ColorCorectionforvideo Get your copy todayYahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Avid-L2/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Avid-L2/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
Avid-L2-digest@yahoogroups.com
Avid-L2-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
Avid-L2-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/