Avid, in association with the Avid Customer Association have announced the launch of the third annual ACA vote, which is designed to help Avid to prioritize their product and innovation roadmap, as well as gather insights and viewpoints from their user community.

In this article we show what questions and features Avid are asking about in this 3rd ACA survey and vote. The vote will be open until March 17th and the results will be announced at the Avid Connect event in Las Vegas on April 6th & 7th 2019.

Where The ACA Survey And Vote Now Fit Into Avid’s Customer Feedback Path

The annual ACA survey and vote has become a key part of Avid’s strategy for canvassing opinions form their user base about what direction and feature sets should be in upcoming product releases. As we reported in our article Avid Link App Brings A Unified Way For Users To Suggest Pro Tools Feature Requests to Avid. Will You Use It? Avid has streamlined the mechanisms by which users can submit feature requests with the first stage now being the Product Feature Request Lounges in the Avid Link app.

Back in September 2018, Avid sent out an email to Pro Tools Users giving some more information on how we can submit Feature Requests using the Lounges section of the new Avid Link app. In this email Avid explained…

Also, as part of this transition, we plan to import many of the most popular existing feature requests from IdeaScale into our annual ACA Vote at the end of this year.

The aim is that we can submit our ideas using the Feature Request lounge in the Avid Link app, throughout the year, and then Avid will choose from these requests to produce the ACA survey and vote. That said, engagement with the Avid Link app seems to be slow to get going. Sorting by Most Liked, the top feature request is Track Folders with just 29 Likes. Second place is Folder Stacks with 22 Likes and 3rd pace goes to Open Multiple Sessions At The Same Time with just 18 Likes.

Its a real shame that despite the simplification of the process by which we can make feature requests, the level of engagement from Pro Tools users has been so low. I for one, hope that when we get the release of Pro Tools 2019, which will have the Avid Link built into the installer, we will see an increase in the level of engagement with the feature request lounges.

What Is In The 3rd ACA Survey And Vote?

I have taken the 3rd ACA vote already and I am going to take you through what I found. The format and the methodology has changed somewhat from previous years. Avid explain in the Vote FAQs about who came up with the ballot categories and items…

The candidates on these ballots represented feedback and requests from across our community in recent months (ACA leadership, ACA members, online forums, market data, industry analysis, Avid’s product teams and more). Based on feedback, for this year’s Vote, we have simplified the process to enable you to focus just on the products that you are most interested in.

The ACA Executive Board of Directors, the governing body charged with the oversight of the ACA, has taken the time to review all of the items included in each ballot, as well as the categories themselves in great detail.

The items on this year’s vote represent recent feedback and requests from across our community, (ACA leadership, ACA members, online forums, market data, industry analysis, Avid product teams and more). Based on feedback, for this year’s Vote, we have simplified the process to enable you to focus just on the products that you are most interested in.

The survey starts with some introductions and explanations on how it works and the best way to complete the vote. It also explains that taking part in the vote will make you a member of the ACA automatically.

Products You Buy, Specify, or Use

As you can see from the graphic above the first stage is select the most appropriate Avid product groups.

Products You Buy, Specify, or Use - Pro Tools Software / Hardware

I chose ‘Pro Tools Software / Hardware’ and ‘Control Surfaces’. On hitting the Next button I was asked to rank 21 Pro Tools Software / Hardware features on level of importance, by putting the 5 most important in one box and any others I considered important in the second box. Here is the list of all 21 options…

• "Smart Solo Feature" including improved bus interrogation, AUTOMATED SOLO SAFE and GUI visibility of signal path

• Advance Pro Tools’ MIDI capabilities (audio-like MIDI editing, in-app MIDI keyboard, MIDI plug-ins, step sequencer, etc.)

• Enable Pro Tools virtualization on premises and/or on cloud

• Extend Pro Tools’ audio file format support (compressed audio, lossless, export more formats AAC, MXF, etc.)

• Integration of 3rd party video engines

• Make Pro Tools a central platform for audio workflows: open up Pro Tools APIs to enhance specific workflows with third-party applications and allow customers to create custom workflows.

• Extend Pro Tools’ existing support of many surround, immersive and VR audio formats, to generic immersive audio and other existing formats such as DTS-X, MPEG-H and Auro-3D.

• Improved data interchange between sessions (better Import Session Data functionality, multiple sessions open at the same time with drag&drop)

• Better Pro Tools interoperability and integration with the Avid ecosystem

• Improve video engine performance and expand video file format support

• Integration with third-party tools allowing for metadata tracking, content protection, distribution and monetization, straight from the Pro Tools application.

• Enhance Pro Tools’ session organization capabilities with track folders and audio clip folders.

• UNDO Deleted Tracks

• Improve satellite link performance and functionality

• Support for ARA technology (Audio Random Access) allowing increased communication of key information between the Pro Tools timeline and specific plug-ins

• Provide more user customization capabilities to Pro Tools, such as feature modularity, abstraction of functionality user doesn’t need, custom keyboard shortcuts, and portability of user preferences

• New, professional audio interfaces

• Adapting current cloud collaboration to work on-premises….and developing to allow POST workflows

• Audio over IP capabilities: Dante, Ravenna, AVB, AES67…

• Allow use of the "Dolby Audio Bridge" for connection with renderer software.

• Future higher power more modular HDX replacement

Products You Buy, Specify, or Use - Pro Tools Software / Hardware - What We Think

What would you put in your top 5? I found it really quite difficult to select a top 5 as there were so may that I considered to be important but in the end I went for…

1. Enhance Pro Tools’ session organization capabilities with track folders and audio clip folders.

2. Future higher power more modular HDX replacement

3. Improve video engine performance and expand video file format support

4. Extend Pro Tools’ existing support of many surround, immersive and VR audio formats, to generic immersive audio and other existing formats such as DTS-X, MPEG-H and Auro-3D.

5. New, professional audio interfaces

The format and topics have some old favourites like ‘track folders and audio clip folders’ but no mention of a sub $1000 interface with AoIP built in. Instead the list seems to include a significant number of broader areas of interest, rather than specific exact feature or products requests. There are also a good number of topics that we haven’t seen before which to me shows that Avid are looking further afield and having informal chats with a wider range of users to draw up this list of options.

For me the folders in the clip list is the most important feature that Avid need to add. It was at the top of the old Ideascale, it’s at the top of the Avid Link Lounge, and its been on both the previous ACA votes.

Support for ARA would be brilliant. To have that ARA workflow for products like iZotope RX would be really useful and streamline the workflow even more.

Immersive audio continues to grow and it would be great to have support for other systems like DTS and Auro 3D as well as the more open immersive audio format.

What do you make of this list? Are there any surprises or notable omissions? Do share your thought in the comments below.

Products You Buy, Specify, or Use - Control Surfaces

The other product I selected was Control Surfaces. In this section you are asked to rank these 6 Control Surfaces features on level of importance. Again there was a top 5 box and an ‘Also Important’ box.

1. Enhance Pro Tools/EUCON metering with Input/Output punch meters, loudness metering and a floating meter bridge

2. EUCON control of clip effects from surface

3. EUCON plug-in instantiation from surface

4. EUCON custom plug-in maps

5. EUCON Performance improvements (open/close session times, responsiveness)

6. Allow more CoreAudio outputs for MADI and AoE

Products You Buy, Specify, or Use - Control Surfaces - What We Think

With only 6 options this was a little easier but for me there was a notable omission and that is extending Eucon support to 3rd party control surfaces like the JLCooper or the Presonus Faderport range. This would give users a much bigger range of control surfaces to choose from whilst maintaining the deep Eucon integration with Pro Tools.

My other observation in this section is the option, ‘Allow more CoreAudio outputs for MADI and AoE’. It seems to be a fish out of water in the control surfaces section. What has CoreAudio, MADI and AoE got to do with control surfaces?

What do you make of this list? Is this what you expected or are there items missing off this list that you would like to see? Do share your thought in the comments below.

Emerging Trends & Technology in Media

As I had only selected Pro Tools Software / Hardware and Control Surfaces that was the end of the Avid focussed section. We are then moved onto the Emerging Trends & Technology in Media section which we are told…

The Emerging Technologies section will ask you questions about industry trends, projects, technology adoption, and your opinions of individual technology suppliers (for the purposes of anonymous benchmarking of performance). All individual answers are kept strictly confidential.

This section took a lot longer to complete than the Avid section and there seemed to be no way to opt out of it and be sure that the Avid related data would be submitted. The first section about industry trends I found relevant and helpful but in the subsequent parts, I wasn’t taken with the format or the options given and it felt like this was the part of the survey that was funding the first section.

Be In The Room Or Shut Up

Despite my issues with most of the 2nd part of the survey, my view with these opportunities is to be honest but fair and to voice my opinions and experiences. The phrase ‘Decisions are made by people who are in the room’ comes to mind. If we do not take part in these surveys and votes and we do not add constructive comments whenever the opportunity is offered then we can’t complain when the features we would like in products are not included.

So I commend you to take part in this 3rd ACA survey and vote so that we can make our views as clear as possible to Avid about how we want Pro Tools to be developed.