Avid Experiences/Suggestions in a Lab enviroment

[kuwaharg]

Hello All,
Our Digital Media department is thinking about moving from Final Cut Pro to Avid for next Fall. I would like to hear about any one's experience with Avid and managing it in a lab environment. We are meeting an Avid rep in a few weeks, but I want to be armed with the right info going in.

What product did you purchase?
Any special licensing you had to get for a computer lab?
Did you get one product key that could be installed on many machines?
Any thing special (scripting, tweeks, etc) you had to do to get it to deploy via Casper?
Any other considerations we should make when helping Digital Media make this decision?

[blackholemac]

Well, not to be a damper on Avid, but when I put it in a VERY small lab, I've determined a couple of things...OS upgrades are kind of painful unless Avid certifies their products to work with them and also everything they sell seems to come with dongles. You probably could work with them on the second issue. As for mass deployment, our small lab isn't that big so it is one of only two packages that I hand install so I don't have much to say there. I will note as a prop up to Final Cut that we can get both Final Cut 7 and Final Cut X to successfully co-exist on the same machine and my workflow for it is seemless.

[nessts]

i am pretty sure you wont get a lab environment, AVID is usally tied to hardware as well, and its not cheap, if you do, more power to you. we just make a backup of the Mac prior to any updates, and yes check with AVID on compatibility before you even think about installing updates. there are drivers etc, very specific configs that have to be maintained, so isolate AVID machines in their own group in Casper so you don't accidentally scope them into some update.

[barnesaw]

Hardware dongles. Had I known that, I would have refused to out it into production. We had to manually load each license number onto a separated dongle. Then, to prevent theft/loss, we have to lick the ilok devices into boxes which are VERY permanently attached to the bottom of the desks. With USB extension cables.

I did up a quick and dirty EA to enumerate iLok serials and use a smart group with notifications to figure out when the iLok is unplugged too. Helps minimize the "Pro Tools isn't working" requests.

Better option? Use PCs with a USB card that has an internal USB. And lock the case.

[chris_kemp]

@barnesaw Yep, that's what I did at my last job when I built out ProTools workstations - connected a tail to an extra internal USB header, put the dongle in the case & locked it.

Just my personal opinion - I can't speak for my company's position on this at all - but I'd be very wary of getting into Avid at the moment. They went through a big upheaval end of last year, losing a bunch of devs, and I was disturbed enough to dump PT on my personal workstation and go back to the many other DAWs I have to choose from.

[franton]

Avid products give me the biggest headaches. Before I joined where I am, I worked for a school that required Sibelius. Unless you've got the correct licences to plug into their licence server app, you have to manually activate it upon every install.

I'd imagine their video editing software is just as bad.

[donmontalvo]

Very clean packages, no need to rewrap.