Who Writes This Crap?
Over the past couple of months, I’ve upgraded both Pro Tools and Ableton Live (both now in their 8th release), thanks to my K. Rudd bonus cheque. It’s only now that I’ve finished uni for a few weeks that I’ve had a chance to really take a look at the updates and I have to say that they’re both looking pretty nifty. I found some great Ableton sound design tutorials on CDM, which started me on a hunt through many video tutorials to get me up to speed on all the new features. It’s not long before I realised that not all videos are created equal.
If you take even a quick look at the videos created by Digidesign for their terrible dTV, you really get a feel for what a dinosaur this company has become. They’re so over produced that you can’t help but cringe every time this ball-bag drops another product placement one-liner…
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Whilst we’re thankfully spared from watching baldy by Ableton, I’m still a little disappointed by the cheese I have to endure for their promo videos (not to mention pulling some weird Matrix-style location shoot)…
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…the near monotone voice over creeps me out. Crazy Germans.
What really blows my mind with nearly all of these promo videos is the consistently bad muzak. Who is responsible for these soundtracks? Why do they think that this won’t make me want to distance myself completely from their software? When will we see a video with Pan Sonic behind the controls?
That childish rant aside though, these manufacturer produced videos give you a glimpse into Digidesign’s attempt to play catch-up to far more flexible software packages like Ableton Live. One video I couldn’t find on YouTube was a dTV rant by Pro Tools HD owners about how great the Digidesign community and support is. I have no idea what these people got for saying this, but anyone that has had any experience at all with Pro Tools (not the studio-centric HD version) will testify to just how far from the truth this is.
In fact, if Pro Tools wasn’t ubiquitous in teaching environments and the film industry, I can’t see a reason anyone would want to use it these days. Logic has it’s number for professional output and Live is undoubtedly in first place for anyone wanting flexibility and ease of use. I hope someone at Digidesign is trying to turn this hulking ship around. Quickly.