Where is MicroEditor heading(if anywhere)?

[geezer]

----So, here we are nearly 2 months into 2002 without a single new entry in the workstation/Microeditor forum, nor any replies from MTU to most of the queries raised in last year's threads....

I just thought I would again try to throw out the open-ended question: Does MicroEditor have a future? If so, what?

This is not intended as an idle question. I hope that MTU, as well as users, will respond.

I know that I personally (and perhaps stupidly) do not intend to sell off or trash my MTU systems and components yet, and that I will continue to edit and master CDs in MicroEditor. I am finding workarounds for other issues with MicroEditor, but am frustrated on many occasions when I want to apply the most elegant editing paradigm I have yet seen to much of my current work.

MTU's commitment to the Karaoke market is understandable, and even admirable. The silence and vagueries surrounding MicroEditor, however, are, and have been, disturbing.....I would have thought that some of the questions raised here about file formatting/interactivity, at least, would have garnered some interest from the home office......

As many of you know, I have long been a supporter (more like a rabid cheerleader, really) of MicroEditor and MTU, so, even if the formerly stellar customer support is gone forever, this is not a gripe. I'm just asking some simple questions: Is there anywhere to go from here? Will MTU be able to help us with this transition? How do the rest of you pros out there plan on proceeding?

[Bill Odom]

It looks like we are near eol (end of life ) I hope they can get it transported to win 2000 or XP But Programming time is limited.

I sure wish there was something we end users could do !

I hate to see such a beautiful Editior not be developed more but such is Life . I will keep my four workstations alive as long as I can.

Bill

[Rich LePage]

Allow me to echo both these comments. I too sure wish
more was being said about Medit's future , but alas,
there hasn't been that much. You look at the forums
and boy-- the dates tend to be pretty far back.

I'll keep using Medit as my tool of choice. Like both of you,
I have various ways of working around things, which for
the moment seem to be OK. And like you I have a pile of
the systems in various configurations.

I really wish there could be more development though,
also wish the i/o modules were still available.
As an alternative, wish the system could accept a
3rd party i/o -- even though still requiring Krystal
too. It would open the market to other serious users,
though would require some development of course.

Medit is simply the best and most intuitive way of working
for most all the stuff I do, at least for editing.

I even still run
a couple old ATDSP56 systems though most are Krystal, and most
still use the i/o modules since having 4 outs is often very impt
for me. Having more would of course be even better....
so would multiple simult. dig. outs. The lower samp rate
but 24 bit resolution is for the moment also OK for me, I'd
rank some other priorities ahead of bumping that up for
my needs.

But as an intuitive editing environment, it's the best and
I would be lost without it. Every other product I try seems
to reveal to me very quickly that it is harder to use for
a lot of tasks than Medit is, or just won't work as
intuitively, or has other drawbacks -- or all of that!


I would certainly be willing to pay some kind of annual
upgrade/maintenance cost if that would keep development
and refinement etc going and yield positive results.

Business in the NYC area has been off somewhat since
Sept 11. It's starting to pick up a little now, but December
and January were pretty bad -- clients' projects in the
pipeline seemed to really dry up.

Apparently wasn't unique to me-- all the other studios
I talk with and a lot of talent too have been pretty slow.
Of course, then when it gets busy again, you don't have
time to take on some stuff-- what else is new? Just
had to turn down a nice job for April because it wanted
to happen smack in the middle of another large one!
Oh well... this business has always been feast/famine!

Hope others will jump into this too.

[clawson]

I, too, would dearly love to see Microeditor brought up to date since it is still, hands-down, my favorite paradigm out there. I still use all of my personal systems and work systems extensively every day. I would not give them up for anything!

However, I really must progress into the hi-rez and multi-channel arena. I have delayed it for far too long. My choices seem to come down to SADiE and Merging. (I've had a little hands-on experience with Nuendo and don't feel that it is yet up to a truly professional standard. No native systems can be adequate for my needs, I fear.) I'm leaning toward the Merging system because of its pedigree and the fact that it seems more MTU-like than other systems that I have investigated. I will be using a Merging system extensively during the next week and will report my findings here (or privately, if Dave prefers) sometime during the week after that.

I heave heavy sighs every day over the thought of having to work more with other systems and less with Microeditor. If I had tons of money to spare, I would funnel it into MTU, if Dave would let me, to keep this still-outstanding product moving forward and providing the features that the current market demands. Alas, I haven't won the lottery yet and don't make enough in public broadcasting to get me to that level any time soon.

Well, it's back to Microeditor for me right now as I once again use it to produce three or four projects in the same time that it would take me to do one with another system.

Best of luck to us all...

Chas.

--
Charles Lawson
Senior Recording/Production Engineer
WETA Radio & Television, Washington, D. C.

[MTUSUPPORT]

All of you guys are great! Larry is working on Microeditor now, and we should have a new version soon, that will run under Windows 2000. Should be within the next few weeks.

[geezer]

---So, Bryan, could you tell us what this new version will include?

Also, do you expect Win2000 to be around long enough to make this worthwhile? What about XP?

[Rich LePage]

In reply to Charles:

Thx for the info on Nuendo, I haven't looked at it indepth
and so will avoid that for now anyway. I messed with some
of their other stuff and found it cumbersome in use.

Will be curious about your "Merging" experience, so pls
post when you have used it some.

I did some testing of the original Sadie quite some time
ago. Though some parts of it were very elegant,
including the varispeed, a found a lot was very
counter-intuitive, perhaps spoiled by MTU!
(and that was many Medit versions ago on the
old DSP board, too)

I set up several tests where I attempted same
basic edits on both systems, just chopping up
some music and doing crossfades etc. --easy stuff.
Waited until I'd played with Sadie for about a week
to try and eliminate the un-familiarity factor.
The result was that it took me still over twice as long
with Sadie to do simple stuff as compared with Medit.
Had about the same result for normal everyday
"chop out the bad stuff" dialog editing, too.


Based on that I shipped them their demo unit back,
after talking with their head guy in the UK.
Also, the "waveform" in Sadie was actually a bitmap
graphic, and when you changed gain,etc, the bitmap
did not change-- nor did it on fades etc either.
Not the end of the earth, but was suprising.

The thing did sound quite good though.

I know they've made lots of changes since back
when I tried it, so will also be curious what you
think of it, coming from the MTU paradigm.
I know one classical label who bought Sadie
for mastering and their guy has told me he's
very happy with it for that kind of work. I think our kind
of editing might've been beyond Sadie's initial
design scope back then.

All best,

Rich

[MTUSUPPORT]

Charles,
I have not tested this version on XP. I am getting a system up and running with XP to test this. The new version doesn't have any new features; just runs on 2000. We expect to release V5.5 running with 2000 and XP.

[Bill Odom]

Great News Brian !!

I look forward to beta test on both win 2k and windows XP

I will set a machine up on XP this week !

My oldest son Tim just got a job with Microsoft tech suport for Windows XP and just finished his training. I look forward to beta testing it on the more secure platform than the win 98 machines we have had to use.

Any possibilities of new features down the road ?

[LesMizzell]

I've gotten my version of Medit and MicroCD "out of sync" before (one ran, the other didn't) with conflicting versions of various drivers and stuff....

If I upgrade to 5.5 and upgrade the computer to Win2000/XP, will MicroCD safely run on the same system as well?

[geezer]

---Hey Les, this is a very good question which we all need answered....XP is great, and it seems like the migration to XP while keeping up the MicroCD interaction may be the last real upgrade we'll see.

I know I said a while ago that I wouldn't talk about Nuendo on the forum, but I will give a bit of an update to those that are interested. I am hopefully not repeating myself here: I finished a video post project a couple of months ago on Nuendo, and was pleasantly surprised ultimately (A) at the basic ease of operation and power of the system and ultimately disgusted (B) by the poor support on the corporate level.

A-
It took me awhile to wade through the manual and figure out ways to work that mirrored the obvious and speedy ways of working I use in MicroEditor, but I eventually found them and they were, indeed, fast. I actually ended up appreciating the fluid way they have of using the multitrack interface, and it became a great organizational tool, and the plug-ins were mighty useful.

There are a couple of issues however: OMF from Avid Media Composer didn't really translate until I shelled out $800 for AVTransfer from Fairlight....To be fair, OMF is a hassle for everybody, and AVT seems to be the only real solution for a PC rig, but.....Also, Nuendo doesn't really chase, but only jams. It, however, jams really well when using the Timelock Pro. Latency while jamming did not ever seem to be an issue, either.

B-
When talking about the above picture-related issues and some other time code stuff that is important on their forum, I and everyone else with similar concerns, received ZERO replies from the company moderators....I really mean zero. I am hoping that the new version out in a few months will just deal with the issues, and that will make up for the gross insult currently.

There is a fair amount of expressed and latent anger out there about this kind of stuff....I suppose if I didn't have the original great support from MTU I would be just as pissed at MTU right now.

Anyway, it is a good product, but I'm more than a little worried about the direction of the software development and support right now....It has taken on a huge part of the market, though, and I sure can't afford Pro Tools.

[OmegAudio]

As I read through the forums I see a recurring theme.
Medit has reached EOL.
This saddens me because I currently have to recommend cheap off the shelf software to the retail computer market that I know does not perform.

If we as a user group can pull together and invest in Medit, Medit could rapidly become a driving force in the home studio and PC audio market again.

What would be required is that Medit be able to utilize some third party audio interface, such as those from M-Audio. Of course we will be told the software has to be re-written from the ground up and would take an exorbitant amount of resources. This is an investment opportunity for those of us who work with and love Medit and MicroCD. The return to the investor would be a great reward, not to mention saving Medit’s life.

Digidesign is making their software available free, I believe to try to capture this home studio and PC market group, as well as indoctrinate to their paradigm. Their free software runs off of any PC compatible sound card or audio interface. Getting Medit able to work with other audio hardware would be the resurrection of Medit.

The vision that built this software is a tremendous one. The commitment by others to this software is far reaching. Of course the world of the PC is changing minute by minute, and we have all had to adapt. We all know people, us included, who work with hard to use, clumsy software. If those we know could download Medit for less than $100, word would spread, and creativity would again become easy.

Soon we would be reading articles about the hot new software that is taking the home studio by storm, Microsound and MicroCD! Imagine how tremendous this would be. Soon Dave’s problem would be getting enough download sites to handle the volume.

I love my Microsound and know others would fall in love with it if given the chance. Specially those using the consumer/home studio software.

[Rich LePage]

Though of course this is "preaching to the converted",
I couldn't agree more - I'd be happy to come up with
reasonable amount of money for Medit to be able to work
with other hardware.

I too love the program as many here know and use it
every day and rely on it. We have numerous MTU systems,
mostly 4 channel though some are Krystal only.
It continues to be essential for most of what we do
and I manage to do some very dense and complex work
with it, very editing and compositing-intensive.

However, if that were ever to happen, I'd like to see it
more focused toward perhaps slightly higher end interfaces,
maybe like the Aardvark stuff--- which just happens to use
the same Motorola DSP on the PCI card that Krystal does.

I tried getting Krystal and the Aard Q10 to live in the same
P4 machine, but alas, not to be -- most likely because Medit
was seeing the other Motorola DSP. (That's what I heard from Aard when I asked them just what was under the big potted module that's on their PCI board anyway). Tried this both
under Win98/Medit5.4 and also XP/Medit5.5, but no go.
Medit will give you the unable to load DSP code message.

But with all the low level DSP code already there and working in Medit, it sure would be fabulous if it could run on other hardware, even if MTU required it be on cards using the Moto DSP like the Aard stuff. It would be mostly a matter of mapping assignments it seems to me. Even if Medit required pairs for stereo, being able to have 4 pairs of outs (8 total) would be terrific and would make the program truly multitrack.

The Q10 is 8 i/o plus 2 chan monitor and seems very clean from limited testing done with it. They have their own utility software for setting up and mapping channels, and then it passes control to the host app. It also has 2 chan SPDIF i/o and can handle
external word clock (which they also make).

I've only run it though with Cool Edit Pro 2x, which is no longer -- it's now called Adobe Audition (Syntrillium was bought by Adobe).
There is a free re-branded upgrade from Adobe (web site) for CEP 2.x users, but I've not installed that as yet though I downloaded it a few days ago. You have to have the CEP serial number and the version has to be 2.0 or better. I'm not sure if they offer anything to the regular Cool Edit (non Pro versions) user beyond a discount on a full upgrade.

I too hope that MTU will re-visit breathing new life into Medit, I'd sure support that all I possibly could. Ditto with Micro CD and making it work with more current CD drives. I still use mostly Yamaha 8x SCSI drives, and find the older version of MicroCD that supports those incredibly reliable. But I'd love to see it upgraded to allow CD Text capability as well as to support more of the newer drives.

Replication plants have often raved about the stuff done with MicroCD at 2x and on gold blanks, and we have only ever had one master rejected by a plant, ages ago, out of many hundreds we've done. They tell us that for direct glass mastering at their end, the stuff we send them that way really works well.
I do refs with it at higher speeds on silver Mitsuis, but masters on gold and at 2x. Slower but very reliable, so worth it.

You're right about the Digi free stuff, but I never really
have been able to get that to run very well on anything-- though part of it may well be me being extremely un-used to working with it-- it seems incredibly cumbersome compared to Medit for
doing even basic things-- but then a lot of other stuff seems that way to me! I do use Cool Edit Pro often though for some processing and de-clicking etc on WAV files, sometimes on SFs too but that gets a little more difficult - others have written about that in these forums.

Count on my vote for new life for Medit for sure!

Rich

[geezer]

I started this post almost a year ago, and some of the most recent responses raise issues that go back literally to 1996!

I would love for these things to happen, but I don't realistically see MTU doing anything more with MicroEditor, and they have as much as said so time and time again (Prove me wrong , Dave!). I am actually kind of surprised that it was rewritten for XP.

I recently (and perhaps stupidly) bought a functional third MTU system from a user abandoning it for good, which means I have 2 on line and am waiting to figure out what to do with the parts I have for a 3rd.......With this new/used system came all the documentation, which included an official sheet from MTU promising multitrack projects and output in the next few months! 1996!

With Krystal in 1996, we got 24bit projects, some clean-up and enhancement of the code, and the death of further development for MicroEditor.

Nothing in terms of feature development has happened since then. None of the polling for money and interest has resulted in development. None of the user attempts to posit a simple development strategy have resulted in developments. None of the user attempts to clarify file-sharing info has resulted in good file sharing info.

I just see no evidence that anything further is in the cards. The business decision seems to have been made a very long time ago.

Again, Dave et al, I would love to be proved wrong.

[geezer]

I bought my first MTU system in August of 1994. It cost me $12,500, a lot of which I had to borrow from a bank.

I bought that system because the personal support from MTU was incredible. I realized shortly thereafter that the development level, especially the elegance used in incorporating new features, was also incredible.

So much happened in those first two to three years that it really took me until last year to realize how much stopped shortly after Krystal was up and running and stable......I was riding on that 1994-1997 or so run until sometime in 2001-2002. If we didn't still have these very efficient and functional machines to use, it would almost be like I had fantasized it.

The change cannot be denied, though. The support continued for awhile, but the development just stopped. I know there was a serious hardware and money bottleneck that took Dave by surprise, too. I certainly can't talk for him, but it just seems like once everyone realized how bad the money situation was, it was too late for MicroEditor and Karaoke was the only thing bringing in the bucks.

I know that I personally have finally given up, though I obviously have not given up on the system as it exists now. It only does what it does, though. I have already bought into another system grudgingly to take on some of my other DAW duties, and I think we all will probably have to go down that road eventually.

I still hope that I can integrate my third system into the same computer with my newer (Nuendo, at this point) rig and get a little more involved in file sharing around the CD editing and mastering I still do on MTU stuff. I have not yet had the time to devote to this software/hardware exercise, though. I figure I need a solid 4 days to really work it out, or I need to buy yet another XP computer just for the modern MTU rig.......If anyone can give me some tips, I'd love to hear it, but I've got other fish to fry for now...

[geezer]

I have raised these few questions again and again without answers, here, but I'll try one more time. The answers to these questions are the key, as I see it, to any further integration of MTU into a modern production environment. If the questions have been ansered effectively before, I apologize for my poor memory:

1. Will MTU's "Save as WAV" save a 24bit wave file from inside a 24 bit project?

2. Can anyone clearly define how to access the header info and how to work with it in order to exchange 32bit files with other modern programs (a la Cool Edit)?

3. Can Microeditor open a 24bit Broadcast Wave file, or can the extension be changed to have it simply be a .wav?

4. If so, what happens to the time code info?


Having complete and clear answers to the above questions would make life much easier for all of us, even with zero further development.....If the obvious needs above can be addressed by a little programming, tell us and tell us what it would cost.


....Anyone who wants to respond to me directly: Jim Smith mudsmith@earthlink.net


The 96k roadblock will be a real issue in another couple of years, but these questions answered will help us all get to at least that point.......I am seeing myself go into 96kmode on projects right now, but it still isn't encompassing my whole business, and CDs aren't going away anytime soon.