Hi All,
After almost a year of going back and forth with Avid on the new 2022 LTM policy, being no backwards compatibility with previous versions. which results in the need for forklift upgrading of mediacentral production + cloud UX + Media composer + iNews, Avid Graphics systems, which has practical problems regarding the amount of work needed in a short time and the risks involved if a problem is encountered, but mostly any compatibility issue, being Avid hardware and software or 3rd party hardware software blocking an upgrade of an entire system, I believe the time has come to put a post out here (also) asking on how other users/technicians/acsr's/resellers are dealing with this.
Over the past 2 years the amount of Mediacentral, Media composer, Nexis,etc... updates that caused minor and mayor issues were of an amount that the Mediacentral production customers in our market were either partially rolled back or stayed on 2018.x.x versions. As a result some systems use a mix of versions, typically Media composer 2018.12.15 against Mediacentral production 2021.x products which function and are more or less supported by Avid.
But its the experiences of the past 2 years, trying an update, finding one or more issues, engaging with support, waiting for a fix, etc.. that make customers (and us resellers) very sceptical about upgrading into a 2022 version.
As time progresses, fixes for problems found in 2020/2021 versions are ONLY ending up in mediacentral production and cloud UX 2022 versions while Media composer 2020 and 2021 are still being maintained. (The latest patch for Media composer, 2020.12.7 coming soon). And this increases the pressure to upgrade relative to previous versions.
My questions to the Mediacentral production (Interplay) users in the community are:
- Are you able to follow the new LTM compatibility rules to the letter or do you apply a pragmatic approach, meaning upgrading product by product and temporarily using a unsupported setup prior upgrading other products?
- Have the 2022 mediacentral versions reached a point that they are 99.xx% stable and can be deployed with 'ease of mind'?
- If you find an issue do you roll back a whole system (if possible/supported) or do you accept running an unsupported setup for a period of xx months (as long as it takes to develop and roll out a fix)?
- Are you using (virtual) replicas of a setup in a lab to test an upgrade prior rolling it out in a production environment?
The 'big' question:
- How do you deal with Avid in this? Obviously you engage with Avid support, but do you ask assistance from Avid services and sales?
Thanks for any feedback from a reseller tech getting desperate.