Happy New Year to all fellow editors and Avid employees - thank you for this forum and the community it provides, especially for those outside of major facilities where you can chat to fellow editors.
I have long loved that when you buy software, it is yours, and if a company should go under, you still have it. I increasingly am getting frustrated by many software vendors - from the biggies to the leisure developers - that now insist on version releases every year no matter what state of "readiness" the software is for market. In Avid's case I see v5.5 as a high water mark for stability and features.
Given that Avid (from my perspective):
* Positions itself as a professional/broadcaster/production house developer not indi home user solution (not that there aren't many of us, including myself, that fall into this size of concern).
* Needs to pay its employees to continually develop its product as well as bug fixing current versions
And that end users:
* Tend to be users/facilities that choose Avid for speed and reliability
* Are therefore more reticent to simply upgrade because there is a new version
I now feel that the model that suits this company best is to encourage users to subscribe each month and then choose whether to install new versions or not (keep that good old dongle). Break away from the mentality that a new version must be released every year. To me, despite some new features, everything released since v6 is more about (or should be more about) fixing bugs. We should support development of the new video engine (with perhaps a whole new suite of bugs) with an emphasis on beta releases for the brave but no full release until it is stable enough for pro use.
Currently I upgrade every year but haven't installed a new version since 2011/2. This equates to ~$30-$50 per month I am effectively subscribing - an insignificant cost when running a business. I would look at:
* Increase the price for upgrade for those who do not subscribe by perhaps double - we want Avid to develop great editing solutions and to survive they must be profitable.
* Bring in a monthly subscription of say $50/month - more than the current upgrade price but substantially less than the no subscription price
* Subscribers get the full plugin set of tools - upgraders need to choose the tools and pay extra for each
Given how agressively Adobe is going after the "all tools for 1 price" market, I fear for Avids viability regardless of its strengths as they stand now.
This comes into sharp focus for me this year as I plan our new hardware and MC version going forward - the new video engine is the prize and it will need new hardware I am sure. Our current machine and 5.5 is showing its age - back then 50% of our work was SD and render times weren't an issue. Now 100% of our work is HD and the render times are killing me when I know v7 will help.
I will continue to pay for upgrades until it is released but no new installations/hardware until it has runs on the board. 5.5 works fine and I don't want to trouble shoot a new install now only to do it all again in 6 months.
Just my perspective for 2014 - a year that I feel has a lot of promise.