Studio Suite 9 at IBC

Posted By Mark L. Pederson on September 17, 2009 12:00 am | Permalink
Left out of the IBC Exhibitors Guide and in the wrong hall for their potential customers - ALTER MEDIA quietly showed their new version of Studio Suite - Studio Suite 9, due in just a few weeks.

Studio Suite is "leading studio management software, meeting the fast paced demands of thousands of users in post-production, digital intermediate, recording, mastering, game, and rental facilities, and more, in over forty countries."

I looked at solutions over the past few years - and it amazed to me that affordable, enterprise software for post boutiques is almost non-existant. A couple industry leaders offering Windows only modular software at about $40K to get into the game. I started asking small and mid-sized post houses what they were using and the answers is almost always - FileMaker Pro, Quickbooks and some sort of "custom" solution. I finally got a demo of the last version of Studio Suite and purchased Version 8 last year.

We got side-tracked from deploying Studio Suite with construction of our new facility but started building the data-base of equipment for our camera rental department, and testing features. Originally, Studio Suite wasn't designed to be "rental software" - it was designed to manage a facility - book rooms, push tasks, etc. but we wanted to have a solution to cover our entire business, which is a mix of production, post and equipment rentals. As we got closer to deploying the solution, we contacted AlterMedia with our feedback and desire to potentially customize Studio Suite to handle equipment rentals in a more efficient manner. After I described what we wanted to Joel Stoner, founder and owner of AlterMedia, he told us everything we wanted would be in Version 9. I got a sneak peak of Version 9 at NAB this year - and was so impressed and excited with the improvements that I decided to wait until 9 was released to deploy the software.

At the end of the IBC show this year, I finally caught up with Joel in the booth and got a complete tour of the new features, including a very handy "read only" iPhone application. A new, improved calendar, and extensive retail features are fantastic. You can use barcode to put an item on hold, add it to a quote or invoice, and also scan the item back into inventory. New flexible QuickBooks integration let's you export directly to QuickBooks: PC, Enterprise, and Mac editions.

Version 9 is due out in just a few short weeks - and it's extremely impressive.

AlterMedia's website has videos and details on features.