Look at how long it took to iron out some fundamental flaws in Nuendo 7. Look at the time it took to deal with certain issues in v8. Still some very strange things going on in 8.3.15 supposedly.
The question is if it is more beneficial for those who can afford to pay for Nuendo and stay up to date (professionals mainly) to have video editing capability rather than have those issues fixed. I think that’s the fundamental question here. And what you need to ask yourself is; What are the odds that even if new bugs aren’t introduced at a higher rate because video editing was added bugs that are ‘normal’ will take longer to fix?
I’ll take bug fixes and improvements and enhancements of post-production specific features over added video stuff any day.
I think you should listen to all the people that chimed in here. I don’t wish to sound dismissive because I don’t really know you personally, but you’re talking to people with literally decades of experience in post production. Like Tumppi said; when something becomes possible clients start asking for it. Let me just give you at least some perspective:
When I started out all my work was done in Pro Tools. The system ran on a beige mac and included a Digidesign sync box that connected to a machine room where Beta decks were located. In the beginning picture was played back from tape in realtime. After a while we started digitizing video from tape (realtime), but we still laid back to tape (realtime again). The point here is that there was virtually zero time to mess with picture edits because changing something meant re-edit in the Avid, export new OMF, create new DigiBeta tape, physically get that tape to audio post, and at that point it’s hours later. If you’re in television this was a no-no. Locked mostly meant locked in those days.
Now fast forward to a few years ago when I started getting requests to send out audio-to-picture for review. No biggie. PT allows me to bounce to video. But then there was bouncing to shorter sections. And eventually people started asking if I could tweak edits that became problematic (i.e. lip-sync issues etc) and finally “Can we adjust color here?”.
So, the question is really a deeper one here; how much different type work do you really want to do in post? Highly skilled professional or “Jack of all trades master of none”? Which ultimately pays most? Which is ultimately most rewarding.
– AND: Are you prepared to not only be responsible for audio being to spec, but also video?
My guess is that you’re actually right about things converging and that there’s a benefit to it to decent size of the market, but the question is if it’s better to add stuff to Nuendo or simply learn how to operate Resolve alongside Nuendo instead. I for one would rather become good at Resolve and very good at Nuendo than having to deal with upcoming issues with video features… and ‘yes’, I’m absolutely being a pessimist about that.
Pop-quiz: It’s February 2019 and we’re on Nuendo v8 - Can we export audio mixdown to picture yet?
The answer should tell you all you need to know about the potential issues of extensive video features.