At NAB Avid presented its Avid Everywhere concept. While Everywhere is a over-arching marketing concept, involving “the cloud”, storage, asset management, a marketplace and more, for most independent editors, Avid is all about Media Composer and/or Pro Tools. Given that, there’s very little in the Everywhere concept that affects these users. The most salient part is a restructuring of licensing and software options.
Media Composer and the options
Avid’s flagship NLE is now known as Media Composer | Software and version numbers are only internal, rather than part of the product branding. Avid released Media Composer version 8.0 in May, but it is only known as Media Composer. Added to this are three options: Media Composer | Symphony, Media Composer | NewsCutter and Media Composer | Cloud. NewsCutter, which always was a variation of Media Composer, is now sold as an option, which adds news-centric features to the interface. Media Composer | Cloud (formerly known as Interplay Sphere) is essentially a plug-in to Media Composer that allows remote access to an Avid asset management and storage system. NewsCutter and Cloud require a larger facility infrastructure, so I’ll skip them in this discussion. They have little bearing on what most independent editors do.
Two other past options, PhraseFind and ScriptSync, are currently not available, as these are based on a phonetic search engine technology licensed from Nexidia. Avid and Nexidia are in current discussions for a new licensing arrangement. While many editors rely on this technology, most do not. It is important to realize that Avid’s script integration and the internal Find tool are not completely tied to this technology and continue to work fine. The Nexidia options add a level of automation to the process through a phonetic match-up between waveforms and typed text.
Without ScriptSync, you can still create script-based bins, but the alignment of takes to script lines has to be done manually. Without PhraseFind, you can still search for text found in bin fields, but you cannot search by audio. Nexidia sells its own products, as well as licenses another application for editors that is sold through BorisFX as Soundbite. This is a standalone application geared to Final Cut and Premiere, but is not compatible with Media Composer. Until this gets resolved, Avid has advised editors who are dependent on ScriptSync or PhraseFind, not to upgrade past Media Composer version 7 software. Resellers still have these options available, in a version that is compatible with earlier versions of Media Composer.
Enter the new model
Media Composer version 8 is the first release of the application under the new licensing guidelines. You can now buy or rent Media Composer using three methods: perpetual license (own), subscription (rental) or floating license. The latter applies to larger facilities that are interested in purchasing “packs” of 20 or 50 perpetual licenses, which can be assigned to various machines as their production needs shift. The subscription license is based on an annual commitment ($49.99/mo-individual) or month-by-month ($74.99/mo-individual) rental and may be used by individuals or facilities. For example, facilities may have a number of perpetual licenses, but need to add a few seats of Media Composer for several months to accommodate an incoming, short-term production. They could choose to augment their “owned” licenses with additional subscription licenses to get through this immediate production crunch.
Most customers are likely to be interested in the changes in how you “own” the software, as the perpetual license model has changed from that of the past. When you now purchase Media Composer | Software, the cost is $1299, which covers the cost of the software plus one year of Avid support and any upgrades within the course of that year. (The actual support portion of that includes unlimited tech support over the web and one tech support phone call per month.) Customers still interested in a hardware license key (dongle) may purchase one for an additional $500. The Symphony option adds $749 to the bill. Current Media Composer owners (MC 6.5 or higher) can upgrade to MC 8 simply by purchasing a single year of support at $299 before the end of 2014. No matter how they got there (new purchase or renewal of an existing license) the software license is now on the current plan.
The important thing is that you have to renew again at the end of the first year of support. This is where the complaints have come in. As long as you renew your support contract each year at $299 (current price) then you will get any Avid updates to the software without having to purchase a separate software upgrade. (In the past, a Media Composer version upgrade has been more expensive than that year of support.) However, if you decide to let the support lapse for a year and then decide you want an upgrade, you will have to repurchase the product and any options anew.
Let’s say you bought Media Composer with the Symphony option – $1299 + $749. Hypothetically, by the end of the first year, Media Composer | Software has moved up to v8.5 and then you decide not to renew. From that point on, your version is “frozen” and cannot be upgraded. A year later, Media Composer | Software v10 comes out with enough compelling features to get you back on board. You cannot renew your v8.5 software license to upgrade, but instead have to purchase the current version Media Composer and Symphony again. Now you have two licenses: MC v8.5 and MC v10. Both work, but the older one is not upgradeable while the newer one is, as long as you renew its support contract after the end of the first year from the time of purchase.
Third-party bundles
In addition to the Nexidia issue, Avid now offers fewer third-party applications and effects as a bundle with the software. With the last few versions, you received Avid DVD, AvidFX, Sorenson Squeeze and BorisFX BCC filters (BCC only with the Symphony option). Avid DVD is no longer being developed. Variations of the others are now sold with a separate Production Pack third-party bundle. It gets a little confusing, because the options vary a bit between the perpetual and subscription models. If you buy the software, you now only get the NewBlueFX Titler Pro 1 and a starter set of their filters. “Lite” versions of Sorenson Squeeze and BCC (4 effects only) are offered with the subscription model. Since these are third-party products, you can still purchase them independently and existing versions that you already own will continue to work with Media Composer. BorisFX is offering upgrade deals to their products from past versions. Since AvidFX is simply an OEM version of Boris RED, one of their current deals is to upgrade from AvidFX to Boris RED 5.5 for $295. You can also upgrade to BCC 9 AVX for $599.
It’s a shame to lose the tools that were included in the past, but it really boils down to a consequence of the industry’s “race to the bottom”. At the prices that Avid currently sells Media Composer | Software, there simply is no margin left over to make third-party bundling deals. Developers aren’t going to accept a pittance just to be packaged with Media Composer. From the customer’s angle, you still have a decent set of audio and video filters included with Media Composer, including the NewBlueFX starter filters, Avid Illusion effects and the built-in Animatte effects tools. If you need more than that, you’ll simply have to purchase other plug-ins.
What to do
You own Media Composer version 7. What should you do now? The good news is that there’s no urgency to upgrade. MC v8 is essentially the same as v7.0.4, except with a new resident license tool (Application Manager). There are no new compelling features in MC v8 itself. Avid has promised one or more upgrades to happen during the year and resolution-independence has been mentioned as a technology that will come to Media Composer (although no specific commitment to a timeframe). You have until the end of the year to spend your $299 for support and get onto version 8.x. The smart money is advising to wait a few months and see what the next update brings. If it’s compelling, then you can take advantage of the deal and purchase the annual support, which gives you access to the new software (if you are on a recent version of Media Composer). The advantage to this is that the one-year clock starts at that time, so the later in the year that you do this, the longer the time (from now) that you have, before you need to renew again.
Changes like this always create a certain amount of tension. That’s been clear in the debates around Adobe’s shift to subscription with Creative Cloud. Users will inevitably compare the new costs to their old upgrade patterns and what the software used to cost them. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, since financial pressures change and none of these companies have ever said that changes to their pricing wouldn’t happen, if it’s necessary. It seems to me that Avid has adopted the best blend of purchase and rental that I’ve seen among the NLE companies. There’s an incentive to stay current with the software, which is both to Avid’s and the customer’s advantage. If you were a loyal user who stayed current and always bought the upgrades when they came out, then the new deal is better for you financially. If you tended to sit on old versions and only sporadically upgraded, then you are likely to pay more this way. No right or wrong – just the way it is.
©2014 Oliver Peters
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