Interesting - Tony Cariddi From Avid Talks Cloud Pricing, Pro Tools 12.5.1 & More

[tengai]

Originally Posted by Tony Cariddi

Hello bcwiz,

Thanks for listening to the podcast. With your 15-month upgrade plan you received all upgrades through Pro Tools 12.5. That would have included: new Freeze and Commit workflows, Clip Transparency, new batch fades workflows, unlimited busses, an improved I/O setup, plus Cloud collaboration. If you are a PT owner (as opposed to PT HD) you also received a bunch of other new capabilities.

I'm sorry to hear that you consider this a complete waste of money. Was there something additional you were expecting to receive?

Thanks,
Tony

These features along with cloud collaboration are of no value if the product can't run. And countless number of customers are experiencing stability problems on both Windows and Mac. Avid has truely damaged its image with the release of ProTools 12.x and customers are fearful of trusting their creative work with Protools. There is no worse position for a company to be in then for customers not to have confidence in their flagship product.

Protools 12.5.1 better be a game changer.

Patrick

[bcwiz]

Originally Posted by Tony Cariddi

Hi Brian, I'm going to politely ask you to please change your tone. My responses are candid and straightforward. I respect that you disagree with some of these decisions, but for the sake of everyone on the DUC, let's keep the dialog positive.

Thanks in advance,
Tony

Ok Tony

[foxes]

Originally Posted by KV626

I'll just take a moment and say kudos to Tony for taking time to personally address other members' "concerns" in this thread. Such a tough crowd around here...

+1 and I started this thread. I totally understand us 'the customers' frustrations because we pay for something that isn't doing what it said it would without crazy issues & it's our livelihoods, so - Avid have a HUGE amount to answer for.

But I appreciate Tony coming onto this thread to personally address 'us' on this......Avid need to do this much more often.....if you want to try & keep 'us' as customers.

[astroturf]

Originally Posted by Tony Cariddi

All releases, including stability releases, are now only available through an upgrade plan, or subscription license.

and this is the reason i stopped my annual renewing license so i could, with the left side of the glasses broken off and then glasses tilted, instead

thanks au keepin it real

[Actionmusic]

thanks Tony for getting involved. There's a bit of frustration here for sure. Please stay involved!

After cost of product/subs for the various strata of PT, the number one complaint about Avid is now reliability of PT - not just this forum, from what i hear in my studio world - the number of bugs, often repeatable - as now the dedicated DUC forum'ers have revealed several times. Couple this with the subscription model and it's making people abandon PT , and/or feeling they are being charged for having usable software (the commit bug will be there for pretty much everyone pre the soon-to-come 12.5.1).

As a 15 year, multi rig and $+ user and your gear buyer, doing a composition session even today using up to date VI's had multiple -9173 errors, I've been unable to upgrade to 12.5 for the instant calamity and crashes, so back to 12.4 with the white noise bursts (had on certain of my native sessions).

I've always been someone who's followed the PT recommendations for installs, clean drives, uninstalls etc even SCSI drives back in the day. I think your product is soooo vulnerable at the moment from seemingly every angle - internal bugs, 3rd party SDK use problems (maybe), different OS's (definitely). I've time to write this post but who as a pro has time to do the entire remove/move/reset/reinstall to solve everyday problems? I can run a VI and vocal session no problem in Studio One v3 (yes i know... no flaming , jus saying)

I think the worst job in the world is to be the person who reads the PT crash reports text, shades of Jimmy Kimmel celebs reading their mean tweets i think

Stability, I want to pay for, and thought i HAD paid for.....

[soybalm]

I think everyone should get the bug fixes absolutely free, no questions. Many of us, particularly HD users paid a lot of money for something that doesn't work. It's that simple. What good are all the extras if the host is broken. I'm not angry but disappointed. I'm using other software because of a request to do so and may continue to do so. We all love the PT workflow but that went away for a lot of us. I hope you find your way back and have a little heart. No extras, just fixes for free. I'm learning more and more workflows in your competitor's software, in the meantime. I'll miss xpand2 and a few other plugs but none of the new extras. Good luck.

[Stys64]

Originally Posted by Tony Cariddi

Hi JCBigler,

While I respect that you may not care cloud collaboration, many of our customers do.

Also, there have been an enormous amount of bugs addressed in the past 6 months alone. Some of them are documented in this light reading here:
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/R...-Release-Notes

Thanks for being a part of the Avid community,
Tony

Why not release an option where PT users who do not want cloud collaboration? Make the product stable as well.

[nigelpry]

Originally Posted by Tony Cariddi

Hi Brian, I'm going to politely ask you to please change your tone. My responses are candid and straightforward. I respect that you disagree with some of these decisions, but for the sake of everyone on the DUC, let's keep the dialog positive.

Thanks in advance,
Tony

Tony, my initial thoughts were that you have enough people on your back already in this thread, however, no one is taking the bull by the horns, so ...

Your responses may be candid and straightforward, in your view. But, your simple statement of fact regarding needing to be on a plan to get bug fix updates completely ignores its contradictory nature as compared to your previous statement some time ago that bug fix updates would continue to be provided for free.

I would say this ....

1) Your job title conveys the impression that you might well be a key decision maker within the Avid corporate machine.

2) If you are not a decision maker it was perhaps unwise of you to initially declare that bug fixes would be provided for free.

3) The policy change to provide bug fix updates only to people on active plans, was activated 'under the radar', generally only becoming apparent through scrutiny of the updated faq .... which you must know is not something people recheck on a daily basis to see what changes have been slipped in.

4) Your silence regarding the change in policy may be due to personal embarrassment, but you would acquire more respect from us if you explicitly talked about the change, perhaps even explaining why the change was needed, or revealing that you had originally misunderstood the intended policy. Ignoring the contradiction does you no credit.

5) So long as you do not address item 4, many people here will continue to have little (or no) faith in what you say going forward.

6) Without going into detailed examples (unless you want us to), you, I, and everyone else here, knows that this is not the first time questions have been raised regarding statements you have made .... questions that have sometimes gone unanswered, either by you ignoring them completely, or by you responding with words that do not actually answer the question asked.

As in the case in this thread, where the question was clearly about the contradictory nature of your earlier statement on bug fix updates, as compared to the now explicitly updated policy. Your answer is no more than a bald declaration of current policy, ignoring the contradiction.

7) Frustration with your input here on the DUC extends further, to your repetitive episodes of 'disappearance'. We all understand that you are a busy man, with very limited time available to participate here. However, when you get yourself involved by posting to a thread, I do believe that some onus of responsibility then exists for you to respond to other posts in that thread directly addressing what you've said, or seeking clarification, or querying, etc.

Too often, such posts go unanswered by you. We are then left to speculate as to your motives in doing so, and this does little to enhance your reputation here.

......

I would like to leave you with this .... Everyone here wants Avid and Pro Tools to do well. We all want you to do your job well, and we all want to have faith in what you say. NOTE ... I REPEAT ... we all want to have faith in what YOU say. Whether we can do so is entirely dependent on how you interact with us, openness and honesty are key.

My comments above are not an exercise in mud slinging, at all, but are, rather, an attempt at some constructive criticism that hopefully provides you with an insight into how your actions, reactions, and inactions, impact upon DUCers' perceptions of you, but also, in light of your role within Avid, our perceptions of Avid itself.

Avid's large corporate clients may have a completely different perception of you, perhaps they have opportunity to meet and converse with you face to face, but for most DUCers, our perception of you is based entirely on our interactions with you here, and what we see of you on the occasional video, which provides only one way communication.

I would reiterate that what most DUCers crave is openness and honesty, even when the information may not be particularly palatable to us. If we know what the situation is, really, we are better able to deal with it. We may be irritated, annoyed, upset, etc, if the information supplied is that a problem giving us grief is going to take longer to be addressed than we'd hoped, but knowing that actually will calm those emotions quite quickly, once spleens have vented. Not knowing causes much greater irritation, and does damage that is not fully repaired when a fix is finally released, so that positive impressions of Avid are gradually eroded.

What's even worse, is when we perceive we are bring fed a line, and nothing is done to address that perception, as the resultant bad taste lingers and festers for much longer. When concerns, issues, bugs etc are ignored, or when significant time passes and little or nothing by way of update info is provided, that smacks of disdain. All of this further erodes our faith in Avid and leads to, little by little, people abandoning its software and hardware if their cicumstances allow. None of that can be good for Avid in the long term. The loss of even one customer must be regarded as a failure, unless they have abandoned the industry or this mortal coil.

I hope you are able to read this post taking cognisance of the spirit of its intent, which is simply, and hopefully, to encourage a positive change in Avid's, and your, approach to communications here on the DUC, while also highlighting some of the factors that are undermining our confidence and souring our perceptions. A positive change in approach by Avid would undoubtedly be reciprocated by DUCers here.

[MediaBrain]

First, I appreciate Avid's unenviable position, but quite a bit of it is also self-inflicted. The digital world is moving faster than ever, and Avid seemed to be caught off guard by smaller, more nimble competitors that had more willingness to listen to their customers (i.e. Ideascale), less aversion to risk, and thus more resulting innovation. That put Avid in a position where it had to catch up quickly and in the midst of layoffs- hence the unlocking of HD features to catch up to the new paradigm established by the market at large. Then, while the implementation of features like commit and freeze are fantastic, the growing pains have been the litany of stability issues plaguing users here - myself included. It's been extremely frustrating - especially when stability issues with your product make me look foolish in front of my clients.

We're here now, and the only value in reliving that past is learning from it. I'm much more interested in how Avid regains some of that lost trust. I see the value in the subscription plan model being more frequent updates, direct communication to support to identify and resolve issues faster, and the ability to adapt to the new "always-up-to-date" model that most software and solution providers are pushing vigorously. My concern is that some of those things aren't happening still. It would be reassuring to see bug fix updates occur more frequently that aren't tied to feature releases. Things like noise blasts are mission critical and the only reason I upgraded to 12.5 was to get rid of that issue. I had no interest in cloud (though congratulations on achieving it) only to find a dozen other issues pop up for the one that was fixed. Good luck getting there, but please do it quickly. My customers are only so patient with me, and that means I can only be so patient with you.

Also as an HD user, I still feel penalized and fail to see what the 4x cost is buying me. I know there are differences, but I the ones remaining are of little value to me except maybe HEAT. The best answer we get is maybe sometime in a year or more something is coming but we can't tell you what or whether you'll even be interested. That's a lot of coin for something that isn't returning. It'd be nice to be offered downgrade/upgrade options for those interested in moving one way or the other until Avid demonstrates some value there.

[Extreme Mixing]

Yes, Tony, Thank for stopping by. There is a lot of frustration here. I know that you are aware of that. I want the 9073 errors to stop. I want video to work in Pro Tools. Hard to believe that Avid, of all companies, is having trouble with that!

Pro Tools has unexpectedly crashed messages come up several times a day for me. I have had periods where I didn't get any of that behavior for months on end. It gave me confidence in the product and encouraged me to buy new systems and to recommend them to my clients.

I'm not getting noise blasts now, but I am getting looping of a few beats of the music that doesn't stop until I press and hold the power button on my new Mac Pro. I own HD Native and an Omni Interface. Several times it has just kept playing but I loose all control of the computer--like the keyboard and mouse were suddenly disconnected.

I've been Pro Tools for almost 20 years now. Until recently I have NEVER heard Pro Tools play a "mistake". Last night I clearly heard my session play a random vocal line in an errant place. I rolled back and everything was fine. It happened twice. I thought I must have made a mistake editing, but not so...

I used to be able to bounce my mixes online. I feel that it's important to listen down that last time to make sure everything is perfect. I can't do that now, because at least half of the time, Pro Tools in unable to complete the bounce. CPU maxed out, and it tells me to remove some plug ins. In that situation, I would have been listening down for several hours, and it would usually play the whole song without a snag. Why can't it make it through a bounce?

Then there's the commit/undo list bug. That sucks. I don't know how that got by QC, but that is a major new feature that is not very helpful. Now I have to commit. Save. Clear the undo list and hope. Usually It crashes and I have to restart the computer.

Then there is the Core Audio Application. If I use my Avid interfaces with any other program, from iTunes to Logic, I have to restart, and then hold the n key during my relaunch of Pro Tools.

Don't even let me start on Virtual Instruments... I switched to Logic for my midi writing works.

Those are some of the things on my list. I'm not mad, or looking for my money back. I just want these issues fixed. These are just a few things off the top of my head. I should really keep a list so that I don't forget some of the issues.

Steve