Message about STORM

[Richard Shackleton]

Like the rest of you, we were very intrigued to see REDCINE-X PRO. We love the look of it and see it as proof of RED's commitment to its professional users. STORM is a professional tool for RED users and now that REDCINE-X PRO has emerged, justifying investment in developing STORM becomes harder and harder against free software of this breadth. We say this with a heavy heart, because we're fond of what we've done.

The current release - STORM 1.0v4 - is the end of the STORM roadmap for us.

STORM will remain available to purchase until the end of September after which we will maintain the software until the end of October 2012.

We have also been busy on a secret project based on STORM technology which we'll be revealing at IBC in Amsterdam this weekend, so come and see us if you're attending.

Richard

[Gino Papineau]

Sad :(

[Kaku Ito]

Oh no, I just bought it and keep on crashing and now it is going to end.

[Hans von Sonntag]

We have also been busy on a secret project based on STORM technology which we'll be revealing at IBC in Amsterdam this weekend, so come and see us if you're attending.

Richard

The king is dead. Long live the king!

Curious what you will show us there. Won't make to IBC this year unfortunately, but I'm sure you will keep us posted.

----

I purchased Storm and have been using it quite a time. Although it's still it in infancy I found it useful. With some little tweaks here and there (XMLs that Autodesk finishing tools can read for instance) it could have been my tool of choice preparing RED footage for my Smoke.

Well, things not always turn out as planned.

Warm Regards,

Hans

[J Davis]

very sad to read this

[Paulo Emílio]

Maybe storm will be transformed to a new edit tool.....

[Foundry Support]

Oh no, I just bought it and keep on crashing and now it is going to end.

Hi Kaku,

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing this problem. Would you be able to send the crash report to support@thefoundry.co.uk so we can take a look at it? Also include the steps needed to reproduce this issue.

Storm will still be supported for another year so we will still be monitoring this forum for any issues the arise.

Kind regards,
Storm Support

[Dermot]

Hopefully Son of Storm is a timeline based conform solution that wraps up Storm with Nuke, and has a Baselight plug-in, and and Nuke X option... oh and runs on something other than an nearly obsolite dongle (read macpro)

And priced to compete with smac (15k+ 15K dongle) or DS (10K + roll yer own machine)

Linux?
W7?

Hopeing for the return of a Cyborg2K with a decade of development ;-)

d

[Zach Gray]

Wow. That's really sad. I actually feel a bit at a loss, like when you accidentally hit an animal that runs out in the street. There was nothing you could have done to miss it, and it doesn't really affect you that much, but you know there was a kids somewhere who really loved him.

I wasn't a storm user, but I love your products.

I think it would be amazing if you guys entered the NLE space. FCPX isn't targeted properly, and other programs have such a long complicated history that they can be a bit messy.

Here's to the future.

[Daniel Reichenbach]

As expected, good luck with your new approach.

[Dave Blackham]

What Zac said.

Im upset for you guys, build an editor Im sure we would buy. You software is good.

[Bob Minervini]

was to be expected... RCX was already doubling on a lot of what Storm was...hope the new tool is up to it, I'm still supporting UK (-;

[Mark L. Pederson]

Like the rest of you, we were very intrigued to see REDCINE-X PRO. We love the look of it and see it as proof of RED's commitment to its professional users. STORM is a professional tool for RED users and now that REDCINE-X PRO has emerged, justifying investment in developing STORM becomes harder and harder against free software of this breadth. We say this with a heavy heart, because we're fond of what we've done.

The current release - STORM 1.0v4 - is the end of the STORM roadmap for us.

STORM will remain available to purchase until the end of September after which we will maintain the software until the end of October 2012.

We have also been busy on a secret project based on STORM technology which we'll be revealing at IBC in Amsterdam this weekend, so come and see us if you're attending.

Richard

Richard, my heart is a little heavy too - but you are making the right choice IMO. RCX continues to improve and clearly RED isn't slowing down.

The work done has created the foundation for your other project - which I know will be a smash hit at IBC :)

[Gene Crucean]

I was actually really hoping that you guys were going to eventually turn it into a full blown NLE to compete with FCP, premiere, avid, etc.

Sad news for sure, but I do agree with the decision :(

[Emery Wells]

I was actually really hoping that you guys were going to eventually turn it into a full blown NLE to compete with FCP, premiere, avid, etc.

Sad news for sure, but I do agree with the decision :(

Come Friday, no one will be missing Storm.

[Tom.Wong]

I was hoping Storm would expand out to have multi file support for every camera system, with all the bells and whistles it offered to R3D also. a unified platform for all digital shooting, file conversions, looks, lut bake ins, metadata tagging, exposure check, etc. It had so much promise, but it's right that going against RCX wasn't working. free is the best price in town and you can't argue with that, and RED makes a lot of changes very quickly and it's very hard for a 3rd party vendor to keep up with that, it makes much more sense to do that all in house. I hope the foundry takes the seeds of Storm and makes something else which is more on the lines I just spoke up, look forward to the announcements this weekend!

[Jean Déraps]

Sorry to hear about Storm. I tested it a while back (first releaase) and found it couldn't yet do what I needed it to do. I was about to ring up The Foundry to have another crack at it now that it has matured...oh well.

I can't wait til Friday then!

[Stivan Widick]

I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what you're doing with the technology you developed for Storm. Please keep us Windows users in mind. (:

[rick youck]

I'm sorry to hear that - I was really looking forward to a version that would allow me to work with multiple camera formats in the same application :(

Many of my last jobs have been both red and alexa (and often a bit of 5d thrown in) - being able to throw quick grades, and LUTs and organize any footage for dailies export - would have been great!

good luck with your new direction - i'm sure it will be great

[Bing Bailey]

will storm users get any kind of discount on this new product. we were waiting for features in v1.1 ,I'll be more reluctant to plunk down money next go round. really storm should have become a full NLE with tight integration to nuke to compete with premiere/after effects

[Roberto Lequeux]

Build a full fledged NLE and people will come. :)

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Build a full fledged NLE and people will come. :)

I think that has been said half a dozen times already ... and I tend to agree.

Now I am just thinking "out loud."

I sort of hate Premiere, but its technology is undoubtedly better than FCP 6/7.

I sort of hate how FCP X fails to play well with tools outside of the relatively small Apple ecosystem, but like its technology best of the currently available options short of astronomical prices.

(Smoke is pretty hot ... but over priced I think, MC 5 is pretty good but still fails technologically, as does Premiere which also sucks to use.)

Storm's descendant, as an increasingly full featured edit system, meant to integrate with Nuke, but also Resolve would be excellent. I'd love to see a version priced to compete with FCP X, and a version meant to be a "hero box" application priced to compete with Media Composer.

While I am asking for stuff, how about a composite application meant to compete on features and price with AE as well as integrating with Nuke and using a similar UI ... there are huge gaps in the market between Motion and AE, and between AE and Nuke. Shake is still out there, but increasingly dated.

Last thing I'd want to see is a fairly thorough comparison chart between Nuke, Nuke X, AE (and its bundled applications/plug-ins), Motion and the Autodesk products. You may have that already, but I haven't found it.

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Sorry to hear this, this kind of situation can happen to any company but it's always unfortunate.

It's clearly a new product which people have invested in only recently, and now they find it'll only be supported for a year, with no further development; as a commercial product it's dead in the water. Software pricing & economics is all about expected future value...

I've advocated for open-source before, but wouldn't this be a perfect situation where the solution is to open-source Storm and turn into a community-supported program, if it no longer makes sense as a closed-source commercial product?

Mike

[Bruce Allen]

Aw man - very sad to hear!

I tried the beta and it was a lot of fun. But it had no Avid support. That was weird. To me, Avid-users were often the folks doing larger projects, who work with Nuke people, who care about workflow and would have been ideal Storm customers.

So I sent you guys a message saying I'd buy Storm once it supported my editing platform. Then I moved on to Resolve when it was announced, because it played nicely with Avid.

Anyway... excited to hear about what's coming next.

I would love to see some kind of conform / finishing tool that helps glue together Avid, Nuke and DaVinci (bonus points if it uses a nice ACES OpenEXR pipeline). Like eyeon Generation, except not so damn expensive, smarter, and focused on Nuke.

Premiere and After Effects is fine for many folks but once you start doing lots of EXR layers, or stereo projects, it falls apart really quickly. Also, I hit snags often on the dynamic linking thing.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Angus Mackay]

Wow. That's really sad. I actually feel a bit at a loss, like when you accidentally hit an animal that runs out in the street. There was nothing you could have done to miss it, and it doesn't really affect you that much, but you know there was a kids somewhere who really loved him.

I wasn't a storm user, but I love your products.


That pretty much sums it up. What a stonking analogy.

Anyways, given the opportunities in the NLE market, I don't think you need to be Mike Seymour to see where this is headed. Looking forward to it.

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I've advocated for open-source before, but wouldn't this be a perfect situation where the solution is to open-source Storm and turn into a community-supported program, if it no longer makes sense as a closed-source commercial product?

Well ... I think they plan on using Storm's code as a basis for a new product. Storm may also include a lot of proprietary goodness that is part of other established product lines ... for example it may contain image processing code from Nuke.

Can't give away the crown jewels, can they?

That said, if Storm is really going to be an abandoned project with no future ... I would really love to see an open source version of the software - providing that such a product wouldn't limit.hurt Foundry's other products/endeavours.

[Gunleik Groven]

Hm.

Conform in and out of any thinkable situation with naming conventions for VFX workflows and you have a huge customerbase...

[Ben Rojas]

Whatever you transform it into, I hope you don't leave your customers hanging in the wind and upgrade us to whatever it is. 400 bucks isn't a lot, but it's still hard earned money for many! :mad:

[Paul Provost]

Well they announced heiro today. Evolved from storm. Interresting direction as conform can be a b?!?!ch.

[KETCH ROSSi]

Like the rest of you, we were very intrigued to see REDCINE-X PRO. We love the look of it and see it as proof of RED's commitment to its professional users. STORM is a professional tool for RED users and now that REDCINE-X PRO has emerged, justifying investment in developing STORM becomes harder and harder against free software of this breadth. We say this with a heavy heart, because we're fond of what we've done.

The current release - STORM 1.0v4 - is the end of the STORM roadmap for us.

STORM will remain available to purchase until the end of September after which we will maintain the software until the end of October 2012.

We have also been busy on a secret project based on STORM technology which we'll be revealing at IBC in Amsterdam this weekend, so come and see us if you're attending.

Richard


Okay Richard, sorry to hear this, but even I, which I am not an Editor, knew this was coming, unless Storm was to either completely Evolve, or change completely course of action.

Question now is... What for all of those, like my self, which believed in your Company and Product, and Purchased STORM on April 26th 2011... Will we get a Credit towards the purchase of other Software?

Thanks.

[Johnny Friday]

Yep.....hard to compete. BUT, shows us that RED will stop at NOTHING to make products better......pushing everyone further. I too am sad Storm is leaving and understand they can't compete. But give us the best and continue---thanks!

[Bing Bailey]

You know what we need now. a finishing app. its the only piece of the puzzle thats still really expensive.

[Mark L. Pederson]

You know what we need now. a finishing app. its the only piece of the puzzle thats still really expensive.

Did you miss the memo about Adobe acquiring Iridas?

CS6 is gonna blow your mind.

[Bing Bailey]

No I saw that , but it depends on how they integrate it. thats a big ? right now and how long until they do. wonder if Avid will buy scratch or baselight

[keith morton]

Will we get a Credit towards the purchase of other Software?

Thanks.

Yeah Richard, that would be nice

[jake blackstone]

wonder if Avid will buy scratch or baselight

FilmLight had the best year ever. They are firing on all cylinders and they have no need to be acquired.
Nucoda from Image Systems would be much better fit, as DVision and Avid always enjoyed very close relationship. But Assimilate would be a good choice as well.

[jake blackstone]

Did you miss the memo about Adobe acquiring Iridas?

CS6 is gonna blow your mind.

Didn't you say the same thing about Storm?:-)

[Paul Nordin]

No I saw that , but it depends on how they integrate it. thats a big ? right now and how long until they do. wonder if Avid will buy scratch or baselight

When Adobe bought Macromedia (Dreamweaver), it took Adobe about 2 full product release cycles to fully integrate it into their web-development suite. Not saying that Iridas will be the same or longer, but a good reference point.

[shashbugu]

The Change we have asked for is about to really happen. CS6 is really going to be the boutique software suite to compete against. I obviously like everyone else has no insider information, but for Adobe to publicly talk about CS6 and the features we requested is truly an indicator of a company that actually listens. For a mass market company to actually care enough to cater to the needs of high-end users is extremely rare. Iridas technology was the best bet for Adobe to get into the finishing app business. lets be clear speedgrade is no Baselight, smoke, Nuke, lustre or Quantel, true. But for most of the requirements we filmmakers need on a daily basis for finishing Iridas is the go to company for those. Besides lets be frank most of us can't call ourselves effects artists or colorists. I was one of the first people to buy Davinci Resolve, but i seldom use it because I'm a timeline based user Iridas, storm, Smoke, AE etc are for me, where as specialists always swear by nodal Apps. Its a shame Storm was discontinued, but it was probably a very smart business move, obviously because it functions in the market as Redcine-X Pro.

[Tom Gough]

I'm really sorry to see Storm go, especially after all The Foundry's great enthusiasm and dialog here on REDuser.

I was wondering though... What if you took some of the already developed features from Storm and created an advanced Camera Report/Contact Sheet program with the ability to create custom PDF, CSV, XML reports for various departments - no transcoding or rendering of R3Ds - just reports and contact sheets?

You could add your own custom fields, logos, RMDs, import checksum data (from R3D/AL3XA Data Manager), import call sheets, schedules, etc... - basically create one report to rule them all! ;)

I already use Clipfinder to generate my reports with some custom XML/SXL combos which is brilliant but I'm not sure if Hans-Georg Daun (http://www.daun.ch/hamingja/) is developing it any further hence this idea!

I saw Mark L. Pederson's preview (http://offhollywoodny.com/buzz/logsheets-in-storm-v1-1-preview/) of the Logsheets/reports in Storm which looked awesome - so here's to hoping ;-)

All the best,

[Jody Neckles]

Gotta say how disappointed I am with the Foundry on giving up like that. Wasn't Storm supposed to support other camera formats in v2????? The excuse of competing against a 'breath' of features in RCX Pro is a poor one. Support more formats in an addition to R3D (charge for them too!) and build a product that is stable and usable on set and then you have something to sell.

Storm never lived up to the HYPE that surrounded it and I will certainly be asking for my money back as it never became a usable product.

[charles lim yi yong]

Okay Richard, sorry to hear this, but even I, which I am not an Editor, knew this was coming, unless Storm was to either completely Evolve, or change completely course of action.

Question now is... What for all of those, like my self, which believed in your Company and Product, and Purchased STORM on April 26th 2011... Will we get a Credit towards the purchase of other Software?

Thanks.

I am in the same boat also .

[Richard Shackleton]

To anyone who would like to talk about their investment in Storm and how The Foundry can best support you, please contact me directly off-list (richard at thefoundry.co.uk).

Thanks,

Richard

[Gunleik Groven]

Listen guys... Storm was IMHO missing the ball a bit from get-go (ok to say that now, as it is discontinued)

What is really needed is an app to move xml's between apps that are really good at what they do.

Hiero might be that app, for all I know. I know I for one really hope so!

Storm was up against an impossible task, as it didn't even try to support a full RED project out the door. No reading of QT's or exr's or dpx's. Just plain old r3d's. And many apps do exactly that.

They also never got the conform bit unique.

Storm just became a "everything else" app, and thus didn't have much to contribute with.
The effects section was also not very good or focused.

let's rather celebrate that Foundry is focusing on what they do extremely well:

High end and pro tools.

I really look foreward to run Hiero through its paces.

In the meantime:
Rejoice as to how RCX-Pro develops.

It's a bit of magic from the horses mout.

[Peter Majtan]

Listen guys... Storm was IMHO missing the ball a bit from get-go (ok to say that now, as it is discontinued)

What is really needed is an app to move xml's between apps that are really good at what they do.

Hiero might be that app, for all I know. I know I for one really hope so!

Storm was up against an impossible task, as it didn't even try to support a full RED project out the door. No reading of QT's or exr's or dpx's. Just plain old r3d's. And many apps do exactly that.

They also never got the conform bit unique.

Storm just became a "everything else" app, and thus didn't have much to contribute with.
The effects section was also not very good or focused.

let's rather celebrate that Foundry is focusing on what they do extremely well:

High end and pro tools.

I really look foreward to run Hiero through its paces.

In the meantime:
Rejoice as to how RCX-Pro develops.

It's a bit of magic from the horses mout.

I know I am quite late to comment on this, but better later then never...

To say that this is a little harsh is me being polite...

With all due respect Gunleik, until RCX PRO came out - there was nothing out there with this crucial combinations of abilities. RCX PRO also killed ClipFinder - and with Storm now EOL there really is not any location-focused DIT tool to quickly review, organize and annotate your clips, not to mention all the other functions...
And the effects section? I am still looking at ANY software that allows me to quickly and non-destructivelly switch between default, camera and user adjustments and slide-blend any effect applied. How many times have you adjusted and tweaked dozens of parameters to get that particular look only to have the client asking: "I like that, but can we go somewhere half-way between this and the previous one?" Simple slide move and 2 seconds later I asked: "like this you mean?"... Not even RCX PRO can do that...

Having been part of the STORM concept from the day zero - I feel personally really sad it has came to this. I hope RCX PRO will add some DIT functions soon in regards to organizing your media, sorting out by meta-data and tagging (The STORM bits I miss the most) and reporting functionality (what I miss the most from ClipFinder)...

[Michael Epple]

What is the fate of MNMB? I'm not so happy with the HDRX tools and motion blending. I was looking here to see what people were doing with HDRX images in post with Storm.