Avid Hates You

 So if it isn't working for you on your phone or tablet or whatever the kids have now please let me know, because I foolishly believe I've got things in a good and stable place. Cheers!

I've upgraded to Avid 8.5.6 over the last few years, and you may have noticed that the number of posts I put in my blog has dropped dramatically. That's good. It means Avid is scared that they might start losing market share to Adobe Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve, or Sony Vegas (okay, definitely NOT Sony Vegas). They've started improving workflow, fixing bugs, and even - seriously - demystifying some of the many many error messages that appear while you work. It's great! It's almost enough to make you think that Avid doesn't truly hate your goddamn guts anymore. And then shit like this happens: That is not at all what my graphic is supposed to look like during playback. What it's supposed to look like is this: Isn't that lovely? So why the fuck isn't it playing back correctly? Let's talk about how complicated this graphic is: It isn't. At all. Complicated. It's simple enough to ride the short bus and get a free candy and a pat on the head ...

I don't usually post news in this blog, because it's supposed to be a place for bug fixes, error message decoding, and ranting and the useless fucking quality assurance team that Avid employs (if any such team exists). In this case, however, it seems like we can chalk up another very large hash mark on the side of "there is no QA." Why? Because Avid-installed Macs across hollywood are failing to boot up after being shutdown. This issue hasn't affected me (yet), but holy fucking shit this is a bad fucking bug. I mean, how goddamned hard is it to NOT BREAK THE COMPUTER, AVID??? Which, I mean, if you've used Avid for even thirty minutes ever in your life you know that breaking the computer is like their favorite pastime. So now we're stuck with a software program that frequently requires a full reboot (and PRAM clear) to resolve issues in, coupled with a bug that prevents the system from properly fucking rebooting after you shut it down or restart. Yay. It...

Are you working on the newest, "top of the line," "best," Avid? Do you have multigroups? Are your multigroups completely fucking broken such that you can't select which camera is active in your quad or nine splits, and if you just cut the whole damn thing into your sequence, matching back into it actually takes you to a subgroup rather than the main group? If so, the problem isn't you. It's motherfucking Avid. More specifically, Avid is crawling its way into the future of tapeless workflow and vast arrays of digital codecs in exactly the same way that a two year old might cling to every available surface in order to avoid being unceremoniously deposited into a crib. Seriously, Avid, why are you fighting the future? Why do you hate progress? Why can't you make LUTs work in any sort of reasonable way? Wait... LUTs? Color Look Up Tables? Why the fuck are those even being mentioned in a rant about how bad Avid is at future proofing their product? W...

Seriously Avid, h ow is this acceptable?  The latest versions of Avid (8.6+) require brand new AMA plugins from nablit, ins tead of the old ones from Sony.  Okay, great.  The instructions for upgrading to the new plugins say, and I quote: Note: The nablet plug-ins and the legacy Sony plug-ins cannot coexist on the same system. Having them both installed will result in unpredictable behaviors of the editing application. Okay.  Um...  That sort of begs the question:  How do I uninstall the old Sony plug-ins? Maybe Avid's website will help (oh my god, I can't believe I just typed that sentence). Please uninstall previous AMA plugin, prior to installing any updated AMA plugin. Note : The nablet plug-ins and the legacy Sony plug-ins cannot coexist on the same system. Having them both installed will result in unpredictable behaviors of the editing application. So that's a no.  Well what the fuck, Avid?  You can't just tell me how to uninstall...

Has anyone, in the last ten years, ever intentionally  used the Avid AVC-Intra 100 codec for fucking anything ?  Seriously.  I would love for someone to speak the fuck up here and tell me why this shit ass codec still exists.  Because holy fuck is it ever a shitty codec.  It's low res, poor quality, and has a huge file size.  There is literally zero reason you'd ever use it.  DNx36 is a baller-ass pimp codec in comparison, and don't even get me started on the best codec ever made, DNx145.  WHAT THE FUCK, AVID?  CLEAN YOUR FUCKING ROOM.  Seriously, there's so much old "legacy" bullshit in this program that just has no goddam reason for existing.  Just in case anyone from Avid is reading this, let me enlighten you: AVC-Intra 100.  Fuck you. Motion effects that aren't "Timewarp." Resize, reposition, etc. effects that aren't "3D Warp." For that matter, if you can promote the effect to anything, WHY FUCKING HAVE IT?  Yo...

What the actual fuck, Avid. Why???  WHY!?!?  Why would you make it so that the button I press when I want CAPS to STAY THE FUCK ON disables itself every time I open the Title Tool Application? Jesus Christ, Avid. Jesus. Motherfucking. Christ. (Avid 8 only). UPDATE: As of Avid 8.5.6, there is an option to turn this "feature" off. Go to: Settings > General and then uncheck the box marked "Enable Caps-Lock Protection (clears and restores on focus change)." I wonder what other lovely "features" Avid has added lately without documenting them or including a means of changing them in the initial release? UGH.