This might seem like bad news, but the existing support was really quite poor. Don't get me wrong --- I'm not saying that this is great news --- but they had to try *something*.

Is this a good idea? I can see that from a 'bean counter' view (finance). But is it a good idea from the customer base? No. Support was always spotty at best before. Now, to charge for that support is terrible. There will be a lot of people looking for other options in NLE's. Is Avid trying to kill the Pinnacle line all together? If they are, they are on the way to being successful. Pinnacle made more money than Avid before the purchase. Now, I wonder, with Avid spreading itself in so many different directions, that the company is hurting in a bad way financially. I would like to know if the Pinnacle brand is making money for Avid.

I got my copy last spring of AVID studio and it came with a disc labeled Avid Service Code.There was no explanation for it until now.When does this go into effect?Is this required for any support or just real human contact?As far as service goes both sides of Avid are about the same,although people complain it doesn't seem to stop them from using it.Frankly I am surprised at how much can be done at this level of scale.I have an idea of the tech. involved and this is not word processing.Video processing is up there with rocket science and weather prediction.Yeah it's frustrating sometimes when it takes a few days to work through something,but on my budget I never dreamed I could even think about making a living from this.

Hello Graham,

It's already on effect since 12 January 2012...
It's required for "real human contact" = phone line or online support through email. Tchat is no more existing. Other free solutions exist, as mentionned in our article.

To everybody: I updated the article with most recent information I get from AVID.

DV FX

Ok, I am very happy because i was evaluating the upgrade from studio14 to studio15 or avid.
I have began years ago with studio9, 9.3, 9.4 plus ecc., 12, 14.
I have called five times via chat or e-mail the technical assistance. NEVER they gave to me the solution, they always wrote to me that my request were impossible to satisfy. It was the contrary: via Declic i solved my problems. Now I should pay for wrong answer? And more, the new release of StudioI do not satisfied me at all, there are many bugs, for the creation of dvd with menu we need a patch...and I have to pay for their lack? There are many other NLE in the world, this has been the final push to use other software with more attention to the product and to the customer.