It’s official: Avid is finally going to lay the DS to rest

It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone but it would appear that Avid is finally going to bring the axe down on their long suffering, little loved, often misunderstood but rabidly niche product the Avid D|S. Rumors of the demise of DS have floated about for a long time, most recently at NAB 2013 when Avid didn’t see fit to even bring DS to the show floor. A thread in the Avid Community forums on Monday night gave the unofficial word as Marianna, Avid’s amazing customer rep, told the world the product is End of Life.

UPDATE: Official word from Avid is below at the bottom of this post. The letter from earlier today wasn't the official release so we've pulled it. We'll post the new letter customers when we receive it. The Q and A is still posted which answers a lot of questions. The official updated letter is now below.

While that hasn't been official word from Avid as of yet this was the post on the Avid forum that pretty much confirms this news:

Folks - The DS is EOL. :( Details to follow by the end of the week. Marianna

We're reached out to Avid for an official comment.

It really is a rather sad end for a product that had a small but very loyal and rabidly niche user base. It was hard to find anyone who used the DS in any real capacity but when you did they were very loyal users and would usually defend the DS and its toolset to the end. Strangely, my market of Nashville, Tennessee ended up being what I can only imagine was one of the biggest DS markets in the country (perhaps the world) thanks to Marshall Graphics, a reseller who installed a lot of DS systems. While I never agreed with them on the idea that the DS was a good creative offline tool (in fact I don’t think I ever met any editor who liked the idea of the DS as an offline tool) it was very capable for online and effects and you’ve more than likely seen some great DS work on your television set. read more...