Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Posted by: DonaldT

Date:1/4/2012 10:38:21 AM

I used to be a Pinnacle Home user and I have used Avid products professionally (Adrenaline, Media Composer and Symphony).

I never liked the Avid interface and the Pinnacle products were extremely unstable in their later releases. I am downloading the trial though out of curiosity.

I don't like reviews where they actually advertise the product and I got the feeling that this was a bit of an advertisement.

Will wait and see how it goes though. Might be worth adding to the arsenal.

Dave T2

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: amendegw

Date:1/4/2012 10:47:23 AM

The Library feature is intriguing. However, It's a little disconcerting when a review "Done entirely in Avid Studio" displays a blocky low quality playback:


...Jerry

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: DonaldT

Date:1/4/2012 10:53:15 AM

I had a very high quality playback.

Dave T2

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Jay Gladwell

Date:1/4/2012 11:07:57 AM

Jerry was just teasing.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: JJKizak

Date:1/4/2012 11:17:30 AM

I don't get any playback at all.
JJK

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Tech Diver

Date:1/4/2012 11:39:30 AM

With regard to Avid Studio (or any other Avid product for that matter), I am not impressed. In particular, I find the interface not nearly as intuitive as Vegas. Years ago, before I had Vegas version 5, I used Pinnacle Studio (it was free), which was nowhere as feature-rich as I require for my work (marine biology videos). It was also a nighmare when it came to stability. I also hated how you had to pay to unlock various FX. I absolutely abhore any company that "nickel and dimes" its customers.

For me, Vegas has always been rock solid with virtually no crashes. Though I purchased the version 11 upgrade I will not install it until it has gone through several releases of bug fixes. As such, I am currently using version 10e which is working great! If you are not willing to tollerate bugs, always stay one release behind.

Peter

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: amendegw

Date:1/4/2012 11:43:09 AM

Tom G. said: "your internet must be very slow at streaming video then"



Need I say more?

Jay Gladwell said: "Jerry was just teasing"

Well, It was a rather sarcastic remark. The image above was an actual SnagIt capture of the playback. I suspect the crumb-bum playback was not a result of the video editor, but rather some glich in the way the video was converted for web service or something similar, and I just was directed to the wrong server. I think someone posted a similar problem with the Video they posted to YouTube within the last week or so. A re-upload fixed the problem.

...Jerry

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Jay Gladwell

Date:1/4/2012 11:46:17 AM

Playback was very pristine on my monitor at full screen.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: TomG

Date:1/4/2012 11:49:11 AM

Son of a gun, another Tom G.

I'm sure you will get a lot of good advice here.

TomG

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: amendegw

Date:1/4/2012 11:52:42 AM

I did a some more poking around and it appears that the video was hosted by an outfit named "Bitgravity" I would guess (but can't be sure) that they have multiple versions for load balancing - and I just loaded the wrong version.

...Jerry

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: amendegw

Date:1/4/2012 11:54:50 AM

I'm not getting into a flame war. My last post to this thread.

...Jerry

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: JJKizak

Date:1/4/2012 12:22:17 PM

I finally got the video. Played back just fine. The Library concept does unclutter things. Nice to see people thinking outside the box to put things into the box.
JJK

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: atom12

Date:1/4/2012 1:08:13 PM

The comparisons to Vegas in the video made me go to their site and check it out. Also went to the Avid Studio user forum. The first thread I opened looked very familiar at first glance. ;-)
http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/thread/496958.aspx

"How long do we have to put up with this buggy software?" "I'm not paying for the update!" etc.,etc.

I'm planning on sticking with Vegas. I think Sony will get it right, hopefully sooner than later.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Jay Gladwell

Date:1/4/2012 1:17:12 PM

As of right now, Tom, you've only got 27 posts. If you were a more frequent participant in this forum you would see that many folks here are rather overly protective of their favorite NLE. Kind'a like the old Ford versus Chevrolet argument. Which one is best depends on which one you drive.

Total objectivity is a rare commodity in forums such as this one. All of us, myself included, have any number of items we will rise up and defend whether the threat is real or imagined. It's a shame, actually. How might our lives/work be better off if we were more open-minded to other possibilities?

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: vkmast

Date:1/4/2012 1:25:54 PM

Coincidence that this thread and the Avid one were probably started by the same OP?

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: farss

Date:1/4/2012 4:20:07 PM

Avid have put serious effort into giving the user a great experience with this product. For the target market it has everything a user would desire in an easy to use manner. Everything looks like it was designed to hang together and work together. The library feature is excellent. SCS had a half baked try at something like this and went nowhere with it. A user could also probably migrate from that NLE to a full blown Avid MC system and not feel lost. No client is going to look down their noses at you when you use something with Avid's name on it.
The reviewer is good, he does mention that it isn't a perfect product as yet.

SCS really do have a serious problem on their hands and not just with what Avid are doing. I bought the CS5.5 Production Premium bundle before Christmas for around the same price as Vegas Pro. No brainer which way a lot of people have jumped, Vegas Pro is simply too expensive, it looks and feels too clobbered together rather than an integrated solution. Even worse, one of Vegas's best features, it didn't crash, is now but a distant memory.

Bob.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: atom12

Date:1/4/2012 6:31:42 PM

I haven't given Premiere a look for a few years, so it may have improved a lot. My point with the comment on the Avid Studio forum post was that I think (and have for a while) that the push to bring "pro video editing" to the masses is flawed in it's current implementation. Avid's pro products are exactly that - pro. And you're not going to run DS or Symphony on any old computer lying around the house.

Every stable system I've used from Jaleo, 844/x, Velocity and (several years back) Avid MC, had a very specific hardware configuration that you HAD to buy. And it worked. I just think the more "pro" features they try to cram into software that will run on "minimum system specs" is asking for exactly the kind of trouble we all are facing with Vegas. And that some Avid Studio users are seeing too.

If they're going to call it Pro, I just wish they'd give us a precise hardware config that it WILL work consistently on. I'll be happy with that.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: atom12

Date:1/4/2012 6:41:43 PM

Wow. Just saw the post above. I've been called stupid many times, but never insulting.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: farss

Date:1/5/2012 3:30:36 AM

"Avid's pro products are exactly that - pro. And you're not going to run DS or Symphony on any old computer lying around the house. "

That's not quite true from what I understand. If you don't run on supported hardware then you don't get support or some such. As you say though makes a lot of sense when you've got other companies providing the support all over the world.

Still it looks like the new Avid product is not the same as MC and is more targeted at the masses. I'm not at all up to speed on Avid's products so I could be wrong here but it looks like Studio has a few features that are not in MC or at least not natively.

Bob.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: PeterDuke

Date:1/5/2012 6:45:51 AM

I switched from Pinnacle Studio 9 to Premiere Elements 2 because of bugs and instability in Pinnacle Studio, although I never saw it as black as some people painted it. Then as Premiere Elements gained more features, its bugginess and instability increased. I therefore switched to Vegas Pro 7 because of its reputed stability, but as it progressed to 11, more and more problems once again emerged.

My point is that Avid Studio as a new product may be stable and relatively bug free now, but as it grows, problems are very likely to emerge. I recall one contributor to the Premiere Elements forum pleading not to add new features to Premiere Elements in its early days because of the risk of increasing its bugginess. How prophetic he was.

Maybe Avid will be an exception with Avid Studio, but when they took over Pinnacle and created Pinnacle Studio 10 and higher, they didn't do such a good job.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Jay Gladwell

Date:1/5/2012 8:08:06 AM

That's interesting, Peter. Just for kicks, I did a search and got all the way back to 2003. We were begging for more stability and fewer "improvements" that made Vegas less stable. After nine years nothing's changed--actually, it's gotten worse!

Someone, I think it was Bob (farss), talked about it being to early (at the time) to "jump ship" for another NLE. I did last March. I rarely use Vegas (9) any more. f they ever get it together, I'd happily return.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Laurence

Date:1/5/2012 9:41:52 AM

I just checked out the video. Wow that is cool looking. I like all the predone template effects. I do two types of work: documentaries and ads. I don't know if I would use template effects for my documentary work, but I absolutely LOVE templates for ad work. They give the customer exactly the sort of standardized bling that they want. It looks like Avid Studio, with it's library and template effects, would be absolutely wonderful for my ad work.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: PeterDuke

Date:1/5/2012 7:45:44 PM

Jay, so which ship did you land on? (You can whisper it if you like!)

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Jay Gladwell

Date:1/6/2012 6:13:05 AM

Peter, I using Premiere Pro CS5.5. Yes, there is a learning curve, as one would expect moving from one NLE to another, but I bought Classroom in a Book at the very beginning and it wasn't all that bad, really.

My personal opinion: If Sony wants Vegas to survive, it's going to have to follow the path Adobe and Apple took with their respective NLEs--scrap what they got and totally rebuild it from the ground up. However, the other two companies appear to be more committed to their NLEs than Sony does to Vegas.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: PeterDuke

Date:1/6/2012 6:33:27 AM

Thanks Jay.

Getting back to Avid Studio, I see that it requires Vista or 7, 32 bit or 64 bit. Troglodytes using XP miss out again!

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: PeterDuke

Date:1/6/2012 6:46:55 AM

Tom G or anyone, what activation hurdles are there with Avid Studio? Do you need to have internet access, or can you do it via another computer?

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: craftech

Date:1/6/2012 6:50:18 AM

First of all the very fact that Video University was comparing Avid Studio , a $70 prpgram instead of Vegas Movie Studio is puzzling enough.

That it compares favorably should give Vegas Pro 11 users pause rather than put some people in defense mode.

And what is the problem if someone want's to add a $70 program to their NLE arsenal? If it fills a void, it's a good thing in my opinion. I have read infancy complaints on this forum about Vegas releases since Vegas 3.0, but I have to say (objectively) that the complaints about Vegas Pro 11 are unusually high.

Some people had to spend money on a brand new computer just to run Vegas Pro 11 and they are still having problems so I feel for them.

John

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Jay Gladwell

Date:1/6/2012 7:13:10 AM

Is there a trial version of Avid Studio that one can download? If so, I've overlooked it.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: PeterDuke

Date:1/6/2012 7:20:05 AM

http://www.avid.com/US/specialoffers/product-trials

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: craftech

Date:1/6/2012 7:21:01 AM

You beat me to it Peter.

John

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Jay Gladwell

Date:1/6/2012 8:21:22 AM

Thank you, Peter.

You, too, John.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: PeterDuke

Date:1/6/2012 5:44:30 PM

I had to use Google. Is that cheating? I couldn't find a link from Avid's main site.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Soniclight

Date:1/6/2012 10:49:37 PM

Farss,

Just a small nit-pick and/or misunderstanding on my part...

"I bought the CS5.5 Production Premium bundle before Christmas for around the same price as Vegas Pro." Well, that must have been either an upgrade or academic price for the full retail is way more expensive than that (one reason I've never even considered it, unfortunately :o)

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: PeterDuke

Date:1/7/2012 12:18:50 AM

Adobe, Avid and others had a grab-the-disenchanted-FCP-users frenzy a few months ago and Adobe Production Premium could be had for $800 - $900. More expensive than Vegas but "about" the same price. I think SCS also had a special on Vegas Pro too at the time, if memory serves me right. It was supposed to be a competitive upgrade, but the rules were pretty lax.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: farss

Date:1/7/2012 4:05:48 AM

"Adobe, Avid and others had a grab-the-disenchanted-FCP-users frenzy a few months ago and Adobe Production Premium could be had for $800 - $900."

That's correct and how I bought it at such a competitive price. You really only had to ask and you got the discount. It was even cheaper to buy a new licence than pay for the upgrade.

SCS had the same deal but they wanted proof you owned the competitors product.

The other way you can get Adobe's packages very cheaply is bundled with hardware.

Here's a question, why does no one talk about Illustrator. I had my first play with a week ago, both inordinately frustrating but powerful compared to PS.

Bob.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: atom12

Date:1/10/2012 12:22:27 PM

For me, my relationship with Illustrator has always fallen into the "inordinately frustrating" zone. It's THE tool for vector data manipulation, but my head doesn't go much farther than using it for logo touchups and occasionally exporting text to use in 3D programs.
It's especially frustrating to watch a good Illustrator artist whip out a photoreal product with gradient masks and such while I sit with a question mark above my head. I've been able to get a good and artistic handle on most SW that is thrown at me, but with Illustrator I always end up throwing in the towel.

Larry

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: robwood

Date:1/10/2012 12:50:40 PM

"Even worse, one of Vegas's best features, it didn't crash, is now but a distant memory." -Farss

^^ This.

Subject:RE: give me your opinion please

Reply by: Laurence

Date:3/4/2012 1:43:07 AM

For anyone interested in Avid Studo, there is a really good deal on it here.

What has me interested in Avid studio is that there is an Avid Studio iPad app that lets you start an edit on the iPad, and then import it to the PC version for finishing touches. At this point the app crashes quite regularly and the export/import resolution is limited to 720p, so it's not ready for real world use quite yet, but boy is this interesting to me.

Subject:Avid Studio

Reply by: Rayl

Date:3/4/2012 1:05:05 PM

My wife is using Avid Studio-Also has vp11-likes studio better

Seems like a fairly complete program-maybe not all the bells etc

but it works well.

B&H has it for 113.95

Ray