$999 FCP to Avid Symphony crossgrade offer

Saw this offer. Are they discontinuing Symphony?

That's a really good deal.

[shop.avid.com]

Read the note under the "add to cart" button.

So funny, someone at Autodesk started that on Twitter. "They must be canceling Symphony." Wonder why nobody thought Avid was canceling Media Composer last year when they dropped the price.

The answer I'm getting is "No." This is a two month, one time only, take it or leave it offer. I'm already planning to change my order of four Media Composers to four Symphonies if for no other reason than the Boris Continuum Complete in each package and the awesome color grading tool.

I'll definitely be adding the Baselight for Avid to at least one of our systems too!

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

No. Not going to happen as far as anyone at Avid has told me. One would think MC would be dead sooner than later and all would go to Symphony, not the other way around.

Michael Horton
-------------------

I am not even "brand new" to Avid. Getting ready to take classes at video symphony at the end of the month. I have MC 5.5 because of the crossgrade deal due to FCP X. Question: Do I spend the 500 bucks to upgrade to MC 6 or do I purchase Avid symphony for $1000. Don't know what the difference between the two are. I typically cut Indie features and docs.

I left a message with Avid but haven't heard back yet.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

I haven't worked with Symphony, but IMO, it's like having the Avid version of Apple Color.

The price is tempting. I'm just wondering 2 things- future upgrade costs and compatibility with Avid MC.

The upgrade costs is straightforward. The compatibility bit, is because I would like more finishing options built into my NLE, but still allow the flexibility of sharing bins and edits, just like you do in MC.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thank you for your input Strypes. Greatly appreciated. You bring up some interesting points. I am strictly an editor who just cuts. I don't perform color correcting/finishing - not my bag. So I guess it doesn't make sense for me to purchase symphony other than having the boris effects. Not sure if that is worth me spending an additional 500 especially when you bring up the unknown upgrade costs and compatibility.

So much to think about. Glad we have options

J

I read a bit into it, and it seems that you can port Symphony projects into MC.

Am I thinking about it? Yes, I am. I am primarily an editor, but I do a bit of color correction work, and I would like nothing more than to have good color correction tools at my disposal so I can finish it in the same software.



www.strypesinpost.com

I work on MC and Symphony every day. If the box attached to either is a NitrisDX (which it usually is for me) - then the difference you'll notice between the two... so negligible to be almost non-existent. Same goes if neither have NitrisDX (they are just slower).

Occasionally I wish I had source-side colour correction in MC (i.e. where you can apply a grade to every instance from this tape / master clip / sub clip). But that's it.

Personally I never use Symphony secondary colour correction, I find it imprecise and will use another layer and key to get a better result.

I never use universal mastering.

If you asked me at the end of the day if I was on Symphony or MC I mostly couldn't tell you. Projects / files / settings etc are completely interchangeable in my experience. Lots of folks have called for the merging of the two products for many years now as 99% of the Symphony features have migrated down to MC.

If you don't already own Avid then it's a **great** deal.

If you have Avid pre v5.5 then it's a pretty good upgrade price. From v5.5 then you might want to hold off for a deal to v6.5
<speculate>Q4 12 or Q2 13 based on previous releases</speculate>
as there aren't that many folks using v6.x in anger yet.

But then Smoke was a great editor and finisher when it was $100,000 turnkey.... now it's going to be $3500 with less of a learning curve (plus the cost of the rest of the system plus the cost of upgrades plus the cost of sparks...)

And if you a standalone edit bay then Avid DS is also a fantastic editor, with much better effects than MC/Symp...

CS6/Lightworks/Edius I don't have experience of

It should be noted that while for many people, Symphony and Media Composer are essentially the same thing, Symphony comes with Boris Continuum Complete--something that's not bundled with MC anymore. And while I'm an effects guy, I've found BCC to be very useful. Not to be overlooked.

- Justin Barham -

That's a good point. Boris is useful, the problem is that I dont know what the upgrade costs are. I'm on MC6. Boris will cost $500 for the upgrade. Symphony will cost $1000, but it comes with Boris. I'm not sure if I'll be required to upgrade Boris in the future for more $, or if purchasing Symphony will result in future Boris upgrades. A $1000 upgrade every year (Boris & MC is pretty hefty). This model would actually be pricier than previous Avid MC upgrades (which used to include Boris and Squeeze).



www.strypesinpost.com

Another good point Strypes. I'm not sure what the recent history is with the Symphony upgrades. Certainly that should be considered too.

- Justin Barham -

We had a discussion about Symphony vs. Media Composer at our recent Atlanta Cutters meeting. First off, keep in mind that right now Symphony is $500 LESS than Media Composer if you use the Cross Grade.

Second, apparently Avid has no plans to discontinue Symphony and in fact plans to enhance that tool moving forward. I guess the idea is to create more of a differentiation between MC and Symphony. One big question I get is "Is Symphony really worth the extra $3500 for just a color corrector?" Honestly, I'm not sure, especially with Smoke now being $3500.

My plan for today was to get the Symphonies because I saved $2500 over 5 workstations. That was a no brainer. Next year, I will either upgrade the Symphonies or simply purchase all Media Composers if I don't need the extra features of Symphony any longer. Weighing the Upgrade costs vs. the full costs of Media Composer wil make the final determination.

My point being is if you're worried about the future upgrade costs, I think this will all even out even if you just bought Symphony this year for the cross-grade offer and then paid full price for MC next year.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

>One big question I get is "Is Symphony really worth the extra $3500 for just a color corrector?" Honestly, I'm not sure,
>especially with Smoke now being $3500.

I don't know. My idea of an NLE is a good storytelling machine (audio and video edits) with robust tools to deal with lots of rushes and do multicam edits easily. Does Smoke have all that? I'm not so sure. My idea of a finishing machine is one that is able to roto, track very well, key very well, color correct, run optical flow, do sky replacements, comp some explosions, comp in 3D titles and output open exrs in half float in almost real time.

My impression of Symphony is that it is some kind of finishing tool built upon MC. It started out when edit machines couldn't color correct for nuts, and DVE was a standalone hardware box that looked like this:



Some of the color correction tools in Symphony were ported over to MC after Apple released the 3 way color corrector in FCP, but I'm trying to get more information into how one color corrects on Symphony (can you easily drop power windows and track them like in the Resolve). The idea that the CC tools are within Avid, means that you can CC and not have to worry too much about the client coming back with edit changes the next day. It is a very simple, but very powerful idea.



www.strypesinpost.com

Smoke does not have MultiCam at this time. Definitely going to be one of the most requested features I'm sure.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Boy I hope SMOKE develops a cross-grade deal. I am ready...just did the shiny new Symphony 6 upgrade and CS6 Production Premium is next. Would love to learn smoke...it is fairly specialized

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

grafixjoe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Boy I hope SMOKE develops a cross-grade deal. I am
> ready...just did the shiny new Symphony 6 upgrade
> and CS6 Production Premium is next. Would love to
> learn smoke...it is fairly specialized

$14,999 to $3,495 is the deal I'm pretty sure. Nothing beyond that was announced at NAB. Honestly not all that specialized any longer. If you know After Effects, Motion, Color, Resolve, etc... you're already mostly on your way to Smoke 2013.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

>you're already mostly on your way to Smoke 2013.

With the exception of batch, which is the single most powerful feature on Smoke 2013, IMO. Joey should take to that easily since he has prior training in Nuke.

Speaking of which, I kinda wonder if the price point of SMac will cause Nuke users to switch. It's a great time for post guys.



www.strypesinpost.com

Maybe not in your market Walter...it is specialized down here in the fact that only one place in my market uses it (AFAIK). I have only seen ONE AD for an operator in my market and it's the same studio over & over. AE has been my bread & butta for 16 years and like strypes mentions...I have had NUKE training

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Speaking of which, I kinda wonder if the price
> point of SMac will cause Nuke users to switch.
> It's a great time for post guys.

How do the compositing features in Smoke compare with Nuke? I'm still using Shake and was planning to switch to Nuke this year, but your comment has intrigued me.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

I have to state first that I'm not a compositor, so I know quite little about the internal workings of both platforms.

Between the two, Smoke is able to render up to half float, Nuke, up to full float. Smoke is known for having more real time power (meaning that it uses GPU extensively). Nuke has almost never been known for real time effects. So there is some difference in render precision between the two, and also performance.

Batch, Connect FX, node trees. If you ask me, it's the biggest thing in this release of SMac, minus the price drop. And the beauty of nodes is they all function the same way, except that you need to get used to looking at node trees from left to right, which isn't a big deal. Connecting nodes is very fast in Batch. You grab a node and swipe it across to connect to another node or a few nodes at a time. Not sure what they changed in Batch.

Sparks/Effects/Plugins... SMac seems a little limited. Furnace is only available for the Linux cousin. Hopefully they port it over to the Mac. Nuke has pretty cool keyers (Primatte, Keylight, IBK), but I've never heard a Flame or Smoke guy complain about the Master Keyer.

In Nuke, you work shot by shot, in Smoke you can import footage via XML, and importing footage and sequences is quite robust. Smoke has a work desk, so you don't clutter up your timeline. Not sure if they changed it.

Smoke's reputation has always been in being an all-round finishing tool, and is known for speed. Nuke has always been a VFX tool. It is very interesting now that Smoke has batch, and I would wait a bit to see how the new features work out. It's just strange that Autodesk is trying to market Smoke as an NLE, or maybe they are trying to head in that direction, and have Flame take on the heavy VFX work. I'm also not sure what will happen to Flame now that Smoke 2013 is Mac only. Will Autodesk eventually streamline their product offerings onto one platform?



www.strypesinpost.com