Dave Avid PM:

Guys, what is the issue here?

From the perspective of the user it seems the Avid products are a family.  MC/Symphony/Unity/ISIS/Airspeed/Interplay are brothers and sisters. Continuously living in the same house in Tewksbury growing up.

Then there is their nephew DS living far away in Montreal.

Brothers and sisters communicate on a daily basis as they live in the same house. Nephew DS calls by phone or email once a month. Now, in any family situation like this exist and it this is fully understandable. There is nothing wrong being a Nephew. But every time the DS community asks Avid about DS's family status, you answer that it is the same as all the other products.

If this impression of DS we have is wrong then that still means something is wrong in the communication that came from Avid considering DS over the past years.   

 

Dave Avid PM:

Guys, what is the issue here?

 

Yeah, what IS the issue here?

A bit might be a big heap of mistrust or maybe
it even should be rephrased as DISTRUST.

In other words, we hear what you (ie. Avid) are
saying, but don´t necessarily belive in it.
Not just yet anyway. Maybe not until we see more
evidence of a change in the "new thinking-
for-DS"-strategy.

As for now I feel that the DS is not included
in "new thinking" at all.

If you go to www.avid.com or any of the previously
localized websites, you now end up at
http://www.avid.com/US.

And finally there, where is any mentioning of the DS?

I look left, I look right, I look up, I look down...

Aaah, down here's something... let's see...

Media Composer
Pro Tools
VENUE
Interplay
Pinnacle
M-Audio

Hmmm, no Avid DS?

Aaah, "View more products", that must be it?

So "CLICK", and let's see...

Axion, Axiom Pro, Dazzle, DCO, Deko, Delta...?

Hmmm, where the hell is it...?

Okey, so let's back up again to the start.

Letäs choose "Products", that must be it?

Hmmm, nope, the same Axion, Axiom Pro... stuff...?

Okey, so let's try "Browse products" up to the left...

Hmmm, Media Composer, Pro Tools... and so on...

But hey, "All products", that surely must be it...?

But there nothing here either. Aaah. but wait,
"Video Editing Professional" down to the left,
that MUST have something.

Yes, yes, yes, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss...

...there it is, albeit as a tiny insigificant underlined link.

But who cares, there it is.

AND I'M SOOOO HAPPY.

And "how cares" might be a couple of keywords here.

WHO CARES about a product they even don't know
exist, and if they knew, certainly would have a hard
time finding information on?

To me it seems that Avid almost is deliberately hiding
this product from the world. And it certainly doesn't
appear to be part of THE FAMILY. And the negative
signals sent to me, from this "behaviour", as a
dedicated user, that creates DISTRUST.

Yeah, so what IS the issue here...?

//mike

Well Dave..

Clearer then the post from Mike it doesn't get.

I would start bringing DS's exposure online to the same level as the other products. Can't be too much work to add DS with links to all relevant lists.

Here is the deal.  I'm fully willing to come up here and let you know what is going on.  But I won't continue to do so if it continues to be an all out slug fest to provide you with basic information. Somebody asked a question about MC 5 and DS, I answered it, yet I continue to get pushed with comments that have nothing to do with the original question.  If your wondering why there is no dialog on a regular basis, I ask you to look at your responses.  This is a simple question and I explained how it works.  We're not going to hold MC, ISIS and Interplay releases on the shelf for 30-90 days while we make it work with DS, just as we wouldn't hold DS on the shelf while we test other products.  It just doesn't make business sense.

So, I ask that if you want me to participate on this community, then you have to have a dialog that allows us to communicate.  

Dave,

I disagree that this is a slug fest. If you can't stand non-personal professional criticism then you will occasionally have a hard time here on these forums. In the new thinking Avid stated that it wants to listen better to its users and that will include criticism sometimes. Statements like "What I am telling you is that this is the way we have always developed products." point towards a conservative unchangeable method of developing products. I find it no more then logical that DS fans want to see that differently.

Right tone or not, what Mike is pointing out is that he believes DS does not get the same attention within Avid as the other products.  That was also confirmed by the MC-DS integration process on the DS side being a reactionary process in this case.

I think the DS users would like to see the development of DS to be a parallel process not sequential reactionary. A process where software developers work in teams knowing where the development of other products are going. Exchanging standards, for example project file syntax and timeline syntax.

All of us understand that testing is a very important process and that it needs time. But that DS has to wait with testing until MC development finishes 100% I do not. It sounds like delaying development for DS due to a lack of internal communication. 

 

And I'll say it again, DS has it's own development team, product architects and product managers work on both with Media Composer and DS.  

No reaction on DS testing at all, this has been the plan for Media Composer 5 and DS testing since we proposed the project to our business review team last year.

You can keep saying it over and over and over but that doesn't make it true; we lock the code down on Media Composer then test DS with the locked down code.  You don't want Media Composer changing because you essentially have to go back to step 1 with your testing.  It's how software testing works.

Your assumptions about a lack of internal communication are completely incorrect, it's the same exact team which develops both products.

This has been the plan all along.

Sorry Dave, are you the Product Manager for DS or for Media Composer? Or both?

 

cheers,

Bogdan Grigoresco

www.finale.tv

Dave Avid PM:

we lock the code down on Media Composer then test DS with the locked down code.  You don't want Media Composer changing because you essentially have to go back to step 1 with your testing.  It's how software testing works

 

I get it, and it makes sense to me... the last thing that would help move DS ahead is going in circles testing with an unlocked version of MC... I'd rather see the dev's working on layers in the CC, dark UI, CC pannel, 3D tracking, variable softness in roto, on and on... then implement AMA once MC has it locked.... i think it's all about how the resources are used, and to me it seems Dave is approaching the issues at hand in a reasonable manner...

One thing to keep in mind is that DS often rolls out it's upgrades at IBC in Sept, so we might be on hold for a few more months...

d.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm the product manager for both.  I run Video Product Management for the professional video editors.

Thanks for the clarification and wish you best of luck in this capacity.

 

cheers,

Bogdan Grigoresco

www.finale.tv

Dave Avid PM:

Your assumptions about a lack of internal communication are completely incorrect, it's the same exact team which develops both products. DS has it's own development team, product architects and product managers work on both with Media Composer and DS.  

Thx Dave for sharing that. That gives an little insight in how things work. It's a lack of this kind of knowledge that makes the user perspective, or mine in this case, the way it is.

Am I right that the architects and product managers do generally know what has to change at the DS side before they start as they have the knowledge about what has changed at the MC side?

And I still have 2 other questions.

A lock down of software is of course when you leave the beta stage. But after the .0 release come the updates. Does with every update the process start over again?

Then, and this is the main issue I guess, why is MC the first to develop new features and DS adapting to those changes. Why is it not the other way around? I guess that is by choice, not coincidence.