I just received this official reply from Smartsound regarding Studio 14

 

"Unfortunately we were not able to continue our support of the product. The new Soundstage technology did not provide us with a way to monetize the delivery of a plug-in and required the use of technology of ours that is more than 6 years old. This version of Quicktracks no longer runs reliably on Windows 7 or with Vista.

Additionally, the Soundstage technology would not support our new multi-layer music capabilities, which we recently updated Quicktracks (our OEM technology) to perform. We would be glad to reconsider our support of the Soundstage technology when we can sufficiently address these issues."

 

Comments?

 

Ian

I don't know the Dutch translation of the word monetize ... but it's my understanding that for SmartSound in order to provide a plug-in that's compatible with the new Soundstage technology used in S14, they 'd have to use a 6 years old Quicktracks version.
That sounds strange to me and I feel like there is something wrong there.... new Soundstage needs 6 year old Quicktracks???

I own Sonicfire Pro 5 scoring edition but have only 2 multi-layer SS CD's. For mood mapping I use SFP. 
I don't know if Soundstage supports any (other than Smartsound's) multilayer technology. That's irrelevant to me as I don't expect a S14 Smartsound plug-in to support multilayer discs nor mood mapping. 

 

plemmens:

I don't know the Dutch translation of the word monetize ...

What SmartSound is saying is they don't know how they could earn money from the development of a plug-in to Pinnacle's specifications for S14.  I would have thought they'd follow the old Eastman Kodak philosophy of give away the camera then sell the film, i.e., give away the plug-in then sell the music.

I do, however, understand their lament that SoundStage would not utilize the full range of capabilities of SmartSound's multi-layer music.  It would be analogous to playing back stereo music on a mono system.

My investment in SmartSounds is small - just 2 CD's - which I use in just about every home video I make, and with the reply posted by Ian at the top of this thread it certainly looks like the end of the road for SS plug-in use with Studio for the forseeable future.  Some will continue to use SonifFire Pro and some may try the workaround posted in another thread to make pre-fab .WAV music samples.  I would probably not work with music outside of Studio and would rather use music tools in the product or the aforementioned workaround.  For now, I am debating whether to stay with S12 and SS or move on to S14.

In the reasons to upgrade posted on the Avid site it says it will provide "moveStudio standards such as ..., automatic background music creation, ...etc.".  I also see posts taking about SoundStage.  None of the tutorials or content about the new product seems to show the music generation features.  Is it still the same look and feel?  Is the feature just called Soundstage now?  Do the same Scorefitter entries and samples show up for adding to the timeline?  If S14 uses Scorefitter music but not SmartSounds, and SmartSounds decided not to change their 6-year old technology, then was the new studio product music feature smartened-up, dumbed-down, or just changed to now only support SF or a particular type of music content?

shroyro:

In the reasons to upgrade posted on the Avid site it says it will provide "moveStudio standards such as ..., automatic background music creation, ...etc.".  I also see posts taking about SoundStage.  None of the tutorials or content about the new product seems to show the music generation features.  Is it still the same look and feel?  Is the feature just called Soundstage now?  Do the same Scorefitter entries and samples show up for adding to the timeline?  If S14 uses Scorefitter music but not SmartSounds, and SmartSounds decided not to change their 6-year old technology, then was the new studio product music feature smartened-up, dumbed-down, or just changed to now only support SF or a particular type of music content?

I don't know about S14, but in S12, all of the Scorefitter stuff was found in a subdirectory named...SoundStage

e.g. the songs are found in something similar to:

C:\Program Files\Pinnacle\Shared Files\SoundStage\Scorefitter Content\Songs 

 and the dlls are stored in

%programfiles%\pinnacle\shared files\soundstage\plugins

So...is it as simple as "scorefitter IS soundstage"?

Looking at the S14 SmartMovie tutorial here -- looks like Scorefitter (by name) is alive and well in Studio 14.

Thanks Bittman.  I guess Soundstage is Scorefitter, or at least its directory.  Regarding examples of Scorefitter, I never watched the Basic Editing tutorial to the end (impatient), and I see now that its the same tool and music.

Comments?

Thankyou Ian for following through with SmartSound and receiving an honest response.  Hopefully, this will put all the debate to rest.  (Well, I won't hold my breath on that one. )  As some of us have suggested, this is all about money.  (Nothing wrong with that.)  It also shows that SmartSound is in the business of developing their software with new capabilities and want to make the most of their development costs.  Nothing wrong with that either. 

The new Soundstage technology did not provide us with a way to monetize the delivery of a plug-in and required the use of technology of ours that is more than 6 years old. This version of Quicktracks no longer runs reliably on Windows 7 or with Vista. 

We can all stop bashing Pinnacle/Avid and SmartSound, and place the blame where it truly lies:  M$FT. 

 

(And Bitt, there was something funky about your link.  It took me to a page that requested me to update my Flash Player.  That linked me to an Adobe page that was promoting all Adobe products, including Premiere and Premiere Elements.  Is it any wonder Avid is having $ problems?  )

Be careful. There was a flash player virus link that looked a lot like that.

I'm gonna point my finger at SmartSounds.........it all boils down to $$$$.  They want and want and want..........jeeeeeez, and just look at how much they charge for just one frickin CD.  If they lowered their prices, everyone would buy more of their music !!  I also use SonicFire Pro, but I haven't been buying their CD's anymore, cause they want almost $100 apiece.........they are just plain greedy!  Even when they were pushing the specials, (which we don't see now,) they didn't offer the good stuff.......... yeah we knew !?

I am still not buying their CD's, cause they want almost $100 apiece.........they are just plain greedy!

So, what I wonder:  What do you think a "reasonable" price would be?  Would you buy Smartsound discs for $50?  $30?  How about $20?

Specials which we don't see now?

 

 

bittmann:

I am still not buying their CD's, cause they want almost $100 apiece.........they are just plain greedy!

So, what I wonder:  What do you think a "reasonable" price would be?  Would you buy Smartsound discs for $50?  $30?  How about $20?

Specials which we don't see now?

 

 

The people at this link must use other NLE's besides Pinnacle.

The people at this link must use other NLE's besides Pinnacle.

rstrong:

I'm gonna point my finger at SmartSounds.........it all boils down to $$$$.  They want and want and want..........jeeeeeez, and just look at how much they charge for just one frickin CD.  If they lowered their prices, everyone would buy more of their music !!  I use SonicFire Pro, but I am still not buying their CD's, cause they want almost $100 apiece.........they are just plain greedy!  Even when they were pushing the specials, (which we don't see now,) they didn't offer the good stuff.......... yeah we knew !?

I guess this all depends on what your going to use the music for. For me, a non musician, it's makes my project work flow go faster. SmartSound is only one source where I get my music from.

I have about 30 if there disks now, and I have never paid full price for any of them. (Well there was one, but it came with a free copy of Sonic Fire 4 pro, which I upgraded to Version 5 for free when it first came out, but that offer is gone now). I'm averaging in the $30 range for all of the disks I have purchased. When on sale; there single tracks disk are cheaper then the MultiTracks disk, you just have to wait for the sells. Even when I'm doing a custom DVD, and need special music, I just purchase the single song for them, but on those I charge the customer, I don't eat that price. I've not needed to do this in quit awhile now, because the library is getting large enough to have something for everyone.

IMO $30 (Average) is a reasonable price, considering it's royalty free, so when my son wants to put one of his videos on the web, I don't have to worry if the music industry will be calling with one of there Lawyer's and demanding there royalty payment. There have been a couple cases locally in the past few years on this. The first person (I knew is parents) paid the approx $3,000 royalty volition fee to avoid going to court, the other person fought it, and won (there were special circumstances on this one) but spent over $25,000 is attorneys fees, so did he really win?

Even with ScoreFitter, you have to way the cost over what you get out of it. This will be very different from one person to the next. But for me, I need a large selection to satisfy everyone needs.

I buy SS discs on sale as much as I can, but if you think SS discs are expensive, you probably haven't shopped for royalty free music much. You can easily pay $100 for 15-/30-/60-second versions of a single song, and not have nearly the flexibility you have with SS.

I have never found any royalty free source that supplies the quality and quantity of music that SS does. That is why it's so disappointing that S14 isn't supporting it, but at least there's SonicFire.

B

 

$20 to $30 a disk would be acceptable..............on all their disks!

rstrong:

$20 to $30 a disk would be acceptable..............on all their disks!

For a disk-full of royalty free music with the flexibility for music creation?  As your signature says: "Life is but a dream"

Most of the Sonicfire collection is very high quality, their application works well, stable, and can be learned quickly. They run specials very often and the prices at that time are more than fair. I can understand the hobbiest protesting, but anyone running a business has to understand that suppliers and content creators also need to support their families and sustain their businesses. The musicians that orchestrate and perform need to be paid.

Sonicfire apparently has found that income derived from partnering with some applications does not generate sufficient revenue to justify development and sales to those oems.

Its that simple.

rstrong:

I'm gonna point my finger at SmartSounds.........it all boils down to $$$$.  They want and want and want..........jeeeeeez, and just look at how much they charge for just one frickin CD.  If they lowered their prices, everyone would buy more of their music !!  I use SonicFire Pro, but I am still not buying their CD's, cause they want almost $100 apiece.........they are just plain greedy!  Even when they were pushing the specials, (which we don't see now,) they didn't offer the good stuff.......... yeah we knew !?

Avid/Pinnacle and Smartsound are in the business to make money. They are not my "friend", but someone that markets a product that they hope I will buy and support. I have used Smartsound since the old Pinnacle DV500 days, thru Avid Liquid and Studio. I have Sonic Fire Pro 5 and several mult layer disks in addition to about 20 Smartsound library disks. I use Smartsound in every video I have done since the DV500 days and find their product indispensable. While I have ordered S14 (DVD not download), I am disappointed about the lack of Smartsound support. I have not heard of anyone reviewing Soundstage/Scorefitter or whatever it's called. I do know that Avid/Pinnacle did not offer any real support for their product producing only 2 CD's of cheesy sounding midi music. I much prefer the "real" sound of the Smartsound CD's I have. 

So... who has actually used the new music program in S14? Is it still Scorefitter? And, what are Avid/Pinnacle's plan for this program? I have enough visual "bells and whistles" to last me a lifetime. Scoring a video, any video, does more for it than any cheezy whiz bang transition and ever do.

Oh, and I would pay for a Smartsound plug in.

So... who has actually used the new music program in S14? Is it still Scorefitter?

To my eyes and ears, it appears and sounds identical to the tool in S12.

Tony P:

Oh, and I would pay for a Smartsound plug in.

Me too, I'd pay even more if it supported the multi-tracks in the plugging. (Hint, Hint SmartSound are you paying attention! No pun intended!)

Smartsound makes it so easy to make a good video. I have never produce a DVD that did not have at least two music scores on it (One for the menu and one for the finial credits) most have three or more. Most of my DVD's have a photo album segment on them, theres one more sound track. Smartsound is the music of choice, because if any body has ever made a DVD for somebody else, you know the most boring and time consuming part is letting them pick the music, you can wast hours on this! All I do now, is give them a list of the music I have, point them to the Smartsound web site (Or some other music royalty free web site I use) till them to pick out the music from the list, OR they provide my with a complete sound track. I'm done, they sometimes come back with a very short list, because they need to here the full sound track and not just the sampler track. I put these into there DVD and I'm done! I can't give them a scorefitter list, because they there no place for them to listen and decide from there home using there time! When you doing this as a hobby, and only charging $5 a disk (Most people still give me $10 to $20 a disk, but I only ask $5 to cover the out of pocket cost), I don't want to listen to somebody play 100 different music samples over and over again, just go home, decide and email me with your decision.

I have nothing against Scorefitter, but today, nobody has told me they wanted one of these tracks in there DVD, (This is mainly due to list very limited selection), and it does not fit into my work flow for the above reasons. To date, I can only remember using one scorefitter sound track on one of my person DVD's, because the music fit that situation.

I'm sure if SonicFire felt the sales to Studio 12~14 users justified the investment they'd have to make, they would move on it in a heartbeat.

Has anyone actually tried to use Smartsound with S14?

 

Ian

Now that the FAQs are out, the official reply from Pinnacle seems fairly consistent:

There are errors in the Help File and Manual (this should settle any questions about the reason for Declic's initial excitement)

Smartsound won't work in Studio (this seems to be fairly non-ambiguous)

and SoundStage is the "new" sound-generator interface that Studio now uses (this FAQ looks quite a bit like the previous one, doesn't it?)

BittMann

That's what we were told about S12, it still worked. So has anybody actually had a go at bringing in Smartsound to S14 using the pinnacle music exe file and an old version of Quick tracks? I don't have a copy yet so am not able to play around with it myself.

 Ian