“It’s difficult to see what turnaround can be engineered at the 21-year-old company,” Barron’s reports. “Avid’s grip on the video-editing and post-production technology field has been loosened dramatically by Apple, which swooped in with low-priced offerings that have increasingly gained adoption among independent film makers and editors.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s products have also increasingly gained adoption among major, mainstream film makers and editors, than you very much.
Barron’s continues, “‘It’s as if a good friend is expiring,’ says Jon Alpert, an Emmy award-winning documentary film maker, who used Avid computers to produce shows for HBO such as 2006’s Baghdad ER… Describing himself as an early adopter of Avid, Jon Alpert has since switched to using Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Systems that would cost $80,000 to put together from Avid can be had for a few thousand dollars with Apple’s Macs and its ever-expanding array of products.”
“‘It is really, increasingly, financial suicide to consider using Avid,’ when the same work can be done with Apple gear, he says,” Barron’s reports. “Alpert’s color-correction expert, who ‘swore he’d never switch to Apple,’ this year made the transition to Apple’s program, dubbed ‘Color,‘ with relative ease and is now ‘quite happy.’ Worse, film and TV’s next generation is growing up on Apple’s cheaper platform.”
Barron’s reports, “Avid still has fans, but the devotion gap, if you will, has narrowed substantially with Apple. A recent survey conducted by Piper’s Olson of 112 post-production video specialists found 45% using Avid machines and 41% using Apple, with the latter having jumped from 32% just a year ago.”
Full article here.
@ quad Core
“Horse & Buggy Manufacturerers”
Your right about the buggy makers, but as for horses… although the demand for horses may be down from the historical hight point, horse manufacturers rarely go out of business.
Captain Obvious might think it’s a major squeeze but if it wasn’t for general malaise in the ranks it could be corporal punishment.
Both Avid and ProTools thought they could lock you into their software by forcing you to buy expensive, proprietary hardware. Unfortunately, computers got faster—and cheaper—than their overpriced hardware.
I just hope Sibelius doesn’t get the shaft. I use it all the time, and Logic is NOT a serious alternative to Sibelius. They are entirely different beasts.
Something intersting that i i never thought id see a major studio advertising that they use macs. But i love the travel channel and they have this training thing you can do now and the requirements are
Laptop minimum required specs: Must be a Mac and have Mac OSX 10.4.9 or newer and Final Cut Pro version 5.1.4 or newer or Final Cut Express HD version 3.5 or newer
More and more i see macs everywhere.
@Ampar….
yeah, but privately I’m rooting for FCP.
Luckily Windows will not suffer Avid’s fate as there will be no dwindling “devotion gap” for Microsoft. Combine Redmond’s legendary customer focus with products like Surface, Windows 7 and future Zune innovations and you pretty much guarantee the long standing excitement and enthusiasm will continue forever. How MAC maintains 3 or 4 lemmings is beyond me.
Your potential. Our passion.™
I wonder what’ll go next? After Avid. After RIM. After MicroSoil.
That was first class, Jim.
“How MAC maintains 3 or 4 lemmings is beyond me.”
Apple provides plenty of iGrasses.
Add Quantel, sort of…they make ‘more’ stuff now.
But Paintbox, Harry, & Henry were awesome in their time, when speed was a result of hardwre driven systems.
That was then, this is now.
There’s a small part of me that would hate to see Avid disappear… but only because I believe competition in the marketplace is a good thing.
The larger part is glad to see Avid dying…. mainly because of the boning they gave us small independents.
I was an early adopter, and an early deserter.
Once they were very customer oriented. That disappeared around the time they took the company public and got in bed with Microsoft.
BTW – I have an old Avid on a PowerMac 9600 in the garage. Anyone interested?
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kerry wrote to Spinaltap: Logic already includes software notation that competes well against Sibelius — some reviewers prefer it to Sibelius. And Logic blows away Sibelius in other aspects of music composition.
Yeah, I know..
I use both Logic and Sibelius – but you can’t use Garritan Personal Orchestra in Logic.
quad Core
Add to your list
– Ford
– GM
– Exxon Mobile
I think it is important to note that Microsoft invested heavily on Avid during the late 90′, on a failed attempt to undermine QuickTime. Microsoft’s influence on Avid was so great, that Avid stopped QuickTime support on their entire product line. This move forced Apple to jump in and acquire Final Cut from Macromedia. The ironic part of the story is that Macromedia could not release FC because of licensing restrictions it had with Microsoft, precisely about not supporting QuickTime. We all know what happened next.
Using Avid on a PC (on which I learned in kawlij) was tortuous at best… Using FCP on a Mac was akin to using a laser to cut down a redwood while Avid was like using a spoon.
I actually edited an Avid assignment/project using FCP (a 20 minute, multi-cam, multi-take exercise) in two short sessions (about 2 hours) while all but one other student struggled for 2 – 3 hours per day for at least a week to get it done with some polish. It took more time to convert the files to quicktime and back to Avid’s format than to actually edit it in FCP.
I may be cutting my income in half by not doing Avid right now but after I passed that class I swore I would never use it again. Clunky with a capital F***. Also, the PCs crashed four weeks in a row on me and wiped out all of my work – even the media files. And they did not exist in the attic.
I do use Protools though it is far clunkier and way less user friendly than STP or Logic (although I just started using the latter). STP still has a ways to go to catch up to PT it seems in surround sound and other areas. But I can’t wait to see what Apple comes out with in the future for sound.