12 months ago Avid ran a survey through their Avid Customer Association about future directions for Pro Tools and their other product ranges. In December they ran round 1 of a follow-up survey. They have just launched round 2  and here is what I have found...

What Is Round 2?

Round 2 of voting is made up of the top results from round 1 plus any options from the 'write-in' boxes from round 1 that were sufficiently popular to warrant inclusion in round 2. Round 2 is designed to concentrate on the top priorities for the community as Avid see them. The good news is you can contribute to round 2 even if you didn't take part in round 1.

Personal Info To Start

I was surprised that I couldn't simply log in as an ACA member. Instead, there were 10 questions which required some personal info including name, email address, job description, what type of organisation I worked it etc. 

How Long Will It Take?

For round 2 you will need around 10 - 15 minutes to complete the survey. You only get one go and it must be completed in one sitting. They recommend that it is best to complete the survey on a desktop computer or tablet. Avid does not advise using a mobile device/ smartphone.

As with round 1 you are warned that at the end of the first part of the survey, you will be directed to the Emerging Trends & Technology in Media ballot, which is being underwritten by Devoncroft (Broadcast & Media Technology Market Research, Strategic Consulting, & Analysis) and that completion of this section is required for your vote to be counted. I was annoyed about this as I had completed this extra survey in round 1 but actually, when I got to the end of the Avid section in round 2, it explained that if I had completed the Devoncroft survey in Round 1, I wouldn't need to complete it again, which was good news, but why wasn't this explained at the beginning? Anyway, back to the Avid survey...

What Options Are There?

The options offered in round 2 were the same as round 1. 

• News Production & Newsroom

• TV & Film Production

• Video Editing

• Music Creation & Audio Post & Mixing

• Sports Production

• Enterprise Media Management

• Live Sound

I selected Music Creation & Audio Post & Mixing as before and was then informed that I would be asked questions on the following areas but there wasn't an option to bypass any of them...

• Workflow Category:

  • Music Creation / Audio Production

• Product Categories:

  • Media Central Platform

  • NEXIS Media Storage

  • Control Surfaces

  • Pro Tools

  • Sibelius

  • Third Party Products

Workflow Category: Music Creation / Audio Production

This was the first set of options I was asked to rank and I have put the round 1 options side by side with the round 2 options...

As with round 1, you can see, some of these options are choices from last year's survey and some are new and give us an insight into possible new feature sets Avid might be looking at.

They are still asking about the Lower Cost Audio I/O even though it was the 2nd most popular option in last year's survey and is 'under investigation' during 2018, whatever that means. 

We can also see that between rounds 1 &2 they have dropped 3 options, which we assume were not popular enough from round 1 to be brought forward to round 2, including the enhanced Pro Tools and Sibelius integration, even though it was ranked 10 in the survey 12 months ago.

Media Central And Nexis

Next came questions about Media Central and Nexis, both of which are only relevant to people in larger multi-seat facilities. It would have been nice to be able to opt out of these, but instead, as neither are relevant to me personally, I had to click N/A for all the options to be able to move on. I have included the questions and options for Media Central and Nexis so you can see what Avid is asking about...

It was interesting to see that Avid is clearly proud about what they have achieved already with Nexis...

Based on last years vote results, Avid has completed: 

• Higher Stream Counts per Engine - Ability to playback or edit a higher number of HD / 4K / UHD streams per storage engine

• Pro Tools on NEXIS - Additional optimizations to Pro Tools and NEXIS to make the experience of recording/editing/mixing audio from shared storage fast, efficient and reliable (multiple Pro Tools systems with high track count support)

• Increased NEXIS Storage System Capacity and Bandwidth - Increase the total number of supported Media Packs per system from 24 to 48; total system capacity and bandwidth will increase to 2.9PB of capacity and 20GB/s of performance

• Extreme Performance Storage Engine (all SSD) - Support Media Packs of Ten SSDs and use a 40GbE interface to enable a single 2U storage engine to provide over 4x the bandwidth of a hard drive based Media Pack

• Larger Drive Sizes in NEXIS Media Packs - Support 10TB drives, increasing total NEXIS system capacity from 4.8PB

Control Surfaces

The next set of options I was asked to rank in order of importance was a list relating to control surfaces. Again I have put the options for round 1 and round 2 side by side to make comparisons easier...

This suggests that they are looking into replacements for the Artist Mix and C24 but they seem to have dropped the idea of allowing multiple S3 control surfaces to be linked together as you can with the Artist Mix. It is good to see that the Eucon developments are still in the mix. 

Pro Tools

Next, I was asked to rank a range of Pro Tools related options, but not before Avid proudly told me what they had achieved since the last survey...

Based on last years vote results, Avid has completed: 

• Immersive / 3D Audio Integration - Further integration of Dolby ATMOS and other 3D formats into Pro Tools mixer

• Enhanced MIDI Functionality - New MIDI tools to further music creation workflows

• VR Workflows - Support of VR workflows for Pro Tools

• Enhanced qualification/performance for Pro Tools on Nexis shared storage - Qualification for Pro Tools on NEXIS to include support for 12+ workstations and high track counts plus video

For this year's survey, these are the Pro Tools options...

Again, I feel there is some unnecessary duplication between the workflow section at the start of the survey and the Pro Tools features question.

I am pleased to see 'On Premises Collaboration' has stayed on the list for the film post-production community as I cannot help think that the collaboration features could be very useful for you as long as it is completely secure across an internal network.

Personally, I am very pleased to see 'Enhanced Import Session Data (Multiple Sessions Open at Once)', 'Phonetic Indexing of Audio in Pro Tools (phonetic text search of audio in Workspace to find all dialog matches for entered text)' has made it through to round 2 but bitterly disappointed that Folders in the Clips List has not made it through.   

It is also disappointing to see that the enhanced cloud collaboration enhancements haven't made it through to round 2 as I feel that those features would complete the cloud collaboration feature set. I have to wonder if this didn't receive many votes because cloud collaboration isn't itself that popular a feature.

I guess the game engine integration wasn't popular enough either but the games industry is only going to get bigger and maybe there are times when you need to make a feature set choice that you know is going to be important even though not that many current users can see the benefits.

Sibelius

Next was Sibelius which again I would have liked to have been able to bypass as it isn't relevant to me personally. Here are the options Avid are looking at...

• Enhanced Integration with Pro Tools (Previous Vote: Ranked #2, Advanced to Round 2, Under Investigation)

• Sibelius for iOS (Previous Vote: Ranked #5, Advanced to Round 2, Under Investigation)

• Sync your own MP3 with Sibelius | Cloud Sharing

• In-App marketplace - ability to buy virtual instruments, supporting applications and music fonts within Sibelius

• Sibelius for Chrome OS

• Marketplace for Virtual Instruments - Ability to purchase additional virtual instruments inside the Sibelius application (Previous Vote: Ranked #7)

• Sibelius UI Enhancement - Streamlined workflows and updated, inspector focused workflows (Previous Vote: Ranked #4)

• Faster score editing workflows (Previous Vote: Ranked #1, Advanced to Round 2, In Queue for 2018)

Third Party Integration

Next, I was asked to chose one 3rd party product that I would like to see integrated into Pro Tools. The list of options was...

In round 1, this seemed to me to be a strange list, so I chose Other and asked for iZotope RX integration. Clearly, my choice, or anyone else's choice, wasn't popular enough to make the list for round 2.

I am very curious as to how these products came to be selected and why there are not any post orientated options here. Also, why has the iConnectivity range of interfaces been selected over much bigger brands like Focusrite, which Avid already have a partnership agreement with?

Do Take The Survey

I still strongly recommend that all Avid users take this survey, as it enables us to have a say in what Avid are planning. Although it is a structured survey, there were options for personalised suggestions in round 1 and even though they aren't there in round 2, it is my view that if we don't comment and complete the survey, it becomes harder to criticise Avid when they don't add the features we are looking for.

The Results

Round 2 is open until March 9th, 2018 and the results will be announced at the Avid Connect event in Las Vegas between April 6th and 8th, 2018.

What Do You Think About The Questions?

Do share in the comments below about what you think about the subject areas Avid are looking at in this survey and the changes between round 1 and round 2. Are they asking the right questions? Are they looking at features you want? If not what features do you want?