Muse died so why was Xara silent

[Cloud]

This is a post after a LONG time but for the past few days I have been thinking about xara web designer. I have not used it in a few years as I moved onto adobe muse, which was amazing upto a year or so ago but then they started getting lazy in it's development, not just features but basic compatibility issues. Anyway the short of it is adobe muse is no longer in active development and adobe really butchered the end of life process for it and pretty much destroyed people's faith in them and many developers out there simply stopped susbscribing to creative cloud.

Now I come to the reason for this post and it's really a question and astonishment at once. When news of muse's demise happened a couple of months back muse users (of which there are tens of thousands) started to look for an alternative, even though the software is still working and will do so until there is a major change in browsers and muse sites start to fall apart. Anyway when this happened many, many companies which offer web design software started posting youtube videos, making posts in muse forums, on facebook groups, twitter, adverts etc etc. to push their own web design solutions, and at the forefront of that is webflow, they have pretty much taken 75% of muse users and are now laughing all the way to the bank.

So where was Xara when all this was happening, I have some sense of loyalty to xara as web designer helped me to diversify my business away from printing to web design, so I'm shocked that this has not been picked up, expecially as both web designer and muse were so close in terms of how one designs a website, they cater to non-coders and now because of their active marketing webflow have turned 70% of muse users (remember there are tens of thousands out there) onto a solution which works completely differently and has a steep learning curve. I have yet to see anywhere xara reaching out to muse users or heard of anyone pushing it in forums or social media.

We were luckly and moved to wordpress a while back and are moving any muse sites onto wordpress. It's just sad that xara have missed out on this amazing opportunity.

[browj2]

Interesting. Magix is supposed to be doing most of the marketing, I believe, and dropped the ball, somewhat. Yes, there should have been proactive marketing from both Xara and Magix on this, targeting Muse users. Maybe they were too busy with Xara Cloud.

However, something was done, but maybe with not enough hype. Magix put up several software products on Humble Bundle. This created a lot of noise, as for 20$, you could get both Xara P&GD and XWDP, along with PhotoStory Deluxe plus its Bonus Content, Vegas Pro Edit 14, Video Sound Cleaning Lab and Vintage Effects Suite. The update service for both Xara products would last until October. I don't know how many people took advantage of this, but there were a lot (I vaguely recall the counter being around the 100k mark). I gave away P&GD to a friend, PhotoStory to another, but no friends wanted WDP. Word of the Humble Bundle offerings was passed around on many forums, but I don't know about web design forums. This should have been done, if not directly by Xara/Magix, but indirectly by us users supporting our favourite programs. It would be interesting to see how many new Xara users this brought in.

Another story, early this year, a popular Digital Audio Workstation program, SONAR, was dropped by Gibson. Magix, probably knowingly, put a big discount on Samplitude Pro X3 Suite, put out the word, but it was mostly users posting about the discount on forums popular with SONAR users. The result was a huge gain in Samplitude users. There was a new sticky thread on the Samplitude forum welcoming new users and asking them to indicate from where they came. There were many, many posts in just a couple of months and almost all new users came from Sonar. Still, users complain about the lack of marketing and market penetration of Magix Samplitude, and rightly so. However, I have noticed a much more concentrated and coordinated marketing effort by Magix over the last year. But, they do have to watch out for opportunities, like the one with Muse, and take advantage of them.

I have raised one marketing issue with both Magix and Xara concerning Xara, and that is the integration of Xara P&GD and DPX with the Magix video editors. Many users of video programs want to be able to draw on the video, add their own overlays including drawings, graphics and annotations, and masks, both static and animated. All it takes is having one of these Xara programs installed. Xara is integrated with the video editors, but Magix and Xara have not been promoting this feature. They should.

[gwpriester]

Hey Cloud.

This falls under the category, we never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

[behzad]

Cloud welcome back to Xara

[xtom]

Xara had there head in the clouds. Still do.

[haakoo]

Low hanging clouds I presume.
Also called mist and trying to navigate without a compass,heading where?
They haven't got the foggiest idea

[onlye]

Interesting. Magix is supposed to be doing most of the marketing, I believe, and dropped the ball, somewhat. Yes, there should have been proactive marketing from both Xara and Magix on this, targeting Muse users. Maybe they were too busy with Xara Cloud.

...

I have raised one marketing issue with both Magix and Xara concerning Xara, and that is the integration of Xara P&GD and DPX with the Magix video editors. Many users of video programs want to be able to draw on the video, add their own overlays including drawings, graphics and annotations, and masks, both static and animated. All it takes is having one of these Xara programs installed. Xara is integrated with the video editors, but Magix and Xara have not been promoting this feature. They should.

John,

I use Magix MEP and have XDP. How do they "work together". I use XDP to create and edit images, save them and then import into MEP videos. Is there mo' better integration that I don't know about?

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes Eric, John has done an excellent video on integration of the two. Perhaps he'll post a link as I can't find it right now.

[browj2]

John,

I use Magix MEP and have XDP. How do they "work together". I use XDP to create and edit images, save them and then import into MEP videos. Is there mo' better integration that I don't know about?

Hi,

Here is a link to a recent tutorial that I did on creating masks for MEP/VPX directly from MEP/VPX using Xara:

https://youtu.be/rFnM5YdPEGk

and here is another, more appropriate showing how to open Xara from MEP, create or draw whatever, animated or static, and it comes back onto the timeline. I am in the process of redoing this one properly.

https://youtu.be/Xj106sCkXnc

There are instructions in the MEP and VPX manuals to do this. Search for Xara in the help file. Here is an excerpt:

"Create overlay graphic/animation
Create vector graphics or animations in an external editor such as Xara Designer Pro in order to use them as overlay objects in MAGIX Movie Edit Pro. A typical use scenario would be to draw an object in order to darken certain portions of the video, such as a black bar to cover a person's eyes. Overlay objects aren't bound to the source material by grouping. They can me moved and edited as you please."

I am also in the process of doing a tutorial on the various ways that Xara is used with or by MEP and VPX, including Xara 3DMaker. I did a tutorial recently on MEP and VPX with 3D Maker.
https://youtu.be/eapOcYhS--o

[onlye]

Hi,

Here is a link to a recent tutorial that I did on creating masks for MEP/VPX directly from MEP/VPX using Xara:

https://youtu.be/rFnM5YdPEGk

and here is another, more appropriate showing how to open Xara from MEP, create or draw whatever, animated or static, and it comes back onto the timeline. I am in the process of redoing this one properly.

https://youtu.be/Xj106sCkXnc

There are instructions in the MEP and VPX manuals to do this. Search for Xara in the help file. Here is an excerpt:

"Create overlay graphic/animation
Create vector graphics or animations in an external editor such as Xara Designer Pro in order to use them as overlay objects in MAGIX Movie Edit Pro. A typical use scenario would be to draw an object in order to darken certain portions of the video, such as a black bar to cover a person's eyes. Overlay objects aren't bound to the source material by grouping. They can me moved and edited as you please."

I am also in the process of doing a tutorial on the various ways that Xara is used with or by MEP and VPX, including Xara 3DMaker. I did a tutorial recently on MEP and VPX with 3D Maker.
https://youtu.be/eapOcYhS--o

Wow, Thanks!