A Wake-Up Call

[Ron Moody]

How about this for an idea?

Let’s call it Adobe Ubuntu Production Suite.

It’s priced the same as the Windows or OSX versions. It comes bundled with Ubuntu and installs both OS and Suite at the same time on a formatted hard drive. Adobe spec’s out the requirements, half-a-dozen video cards have optimized drivers already installed in the OS. The same is true of audio, motherboard, and hard drives.

The bundle comes with six months of support, after which you pay Adobe, which supports both the OS and the app suite. They only support the range of hardware they specify. Beyond that, you’re on your own. That simplifies support issues for them of course. I’ll bet this would be simpler to support than Vista or XP, for which an infinite variety of Video cards, sound cards, network cards, etc. are all intermixed.

The Production Suite Premium version adds premium versions of specific programs like AfterEffects along with one other perk. There are two one-gig USB thumbs configured with the barebones version of Ubuntu, along with the render engine for AfterEffects. These can be placed in ‘any’ (if bootable by USB) computer on the network to render larger projects. To clarify, you don’t download the software or OS, it runs on the thumb. In fact, you could even forgo drivers for the hard disks to ensure that the client PC’s wouldn’t be changed in any way. Additional thumbs would be available at $49.95 each. Each thumb would be copy protected so you couldn’t dup it. In effect, you could have a short term rendering farm on demand at $50 per PC, but without install and support issues. I suppose AfterEffects could check with Adobe’s registration site to ensure that the thumbs were legal the first time they were used.

I’d buy that suite! I’ll bet many would.

ron

[Rhewitt]

You’re quite right Steven. Every business is in the market to make a profit and the easiest route to profit will be the one taken by any sensible board. While it’s great that we as customers, whether professional or serious amateur, get to use some great software that helps us do our job, the company are in it only to make money.

However, their market is limited in the video field. Sure After Effects is used by broadasters around the world and that also includes many of the animation and FX houses – the reason? It is the market leading product with good reason and has a long pedigree.

Take Premier Pro, it has a pedigree of sorts but it isn’t the market leader as far as broadcast and serious professional users are concerned. By far the dominant video editor is Avid’s Media Composer and Express Pro products. It started as a MAC product because at the time it was the most suitable platform. It’s available again on the Mac Intel platform in addition to the dominant Windows base.

Avid is a major player in the film and broadcast world due in part to their class leading product but also by its long, long pedigree. Media Composer was produced to enable film editors to work in a non-linear process, dramatically reducing the time to complete editing and saving a packet in the process. The big production houses saw the benefit and bought into it big time. History of a reliable, stable, cost-saving product is what made Avid’s name. 98 of the most recent 100 feature films released were edited with Avid’s products. The high-end systems that use hardware in addition to software to speed the realtime edit process cost money. Again it’s a limited market but like any company it has to recover development and professional support costs AND make a profit.

Due largely to the way Premier Pro handles audio (stereo or stereo), it has not been taken up by those companies with big budgets and the ability to give a product a truely professional name. Stereo audio is an output format only and always has been. It is now too late for Adobe to get this product into a higher-end market because after several iterations of the product, it still does not handle audio in the way that the market needs.

Now take Final Cut, it runs on a variant of Linux – a good move on the part of Apple as it allows a distinction between a Windows PC and a MAC – great for marketing. They control the hardware, again a good move for compatability. They control the price and for ANY company that has this level of control you pay a premium price. Final Cut is being used by many serious and professional editors. Why? Because it is being marketed as a lower price entry point into professional editing. It doesn’t have a long pedigree yet. The BBC have dabled with it, infact some documentaries are being produced using it. But, and a big but at that, it has failed to date in the broadcast market because it is not designed as a true workgroup product. Sure you can stick a large SAN in front of it but reports back from those that have tried this method have realised that it just doesn’t work properly. You cannot share media in the way that the broadcasters need – media is locked whenever it is being accessed. All other broadcast grade systems allow access to the media in both read AND write simultaneously. The whole point of non-linear editing systems designed for multiple users is the sharing of media in realtime and by many people at the same time.

Final Cut will most likely stay in the market that most Premier Pro users sit in. That is the competition for Adobe and it is a Linux derivative.

So Adobe needs to take stock. They have a real competitor on the editing front on a platform they haven’t supported for a long while. Only now are the Adobe apps coming back to the MAC after the move to the Intel platform.

Is it native code for the MAC? I would hope so after the disaster of the first couple of releases of GoLive, which were an appaling port from a MAC code base to Win32.

If Adobe see their Prem Pro competition as being Final Cut then that is what they’ll go for especially as they can once again develop a common code base and port in either direction.

Will Adobe fully grasp the Linux platform. I very much doubt it – Linux on a PC has far too many variables to support reliably. As for a set and controlled platform? Yes and that is the Intel MAC.

[George Socka]

Interesting argument, but I think it is missing the trees for the forest. Its not just the Adobe software. Premiere does not operate in a vacuum. You need drivers – video cards, capture cards, sound cards, cameras, monitors, disk arrays. You need supporting applications – effects programs, things like Particle Illusion, Smart Sound, DVD authoring, 3D. Codecs. You need the latest QuickTime, and God forbid, Windows Media Player. Plugins for Photoshop and Premiere. DV Rack. Scopes. The list goes on and on. And each new device needs to be delivered for all of the flavours of Linux , BSD etc. I would bet that you will see a rock solid support for an 8 core processor from Microsoft long before it is stable anywhere else. And the cost of windows at say $100 per computer is trivial compared to the cost of just the Adobe suite alone, let alone all of the rest.

[Gene Colburn — email address bounces notices]

Wow Interesting thread. Linux rocks, but…but….but… for all threads above. The real wake up call is FCPS2. Adobe and Avid are kinda sucking hind here. Edius is interesting for news cutters.

Apple has done the elegance thing once again with Surround Sound mixing, Colour, and Motion. (Major upgrades) Granted, the Suround Sound looks better than it actually is, but at least its there.

Adobe is onto something if CS3..or 4 can begin to close the gap with cross platform and mixed media issues as they have with AE, PS, AI, Acrobat etc.. I don’t know if that will happen with Premiere. In the mean time there are things I will miss in CS3, and I am big on Adobe.

Avid… all I can say is the train left the station, and they forgot to buy their ticket. There’s little an FC or CS3 suite, can’t match, or beat.

Forget it if your thinking we can do it on Linux. And if you bloat up Linux it slows also. I keep hoping Apple might just start selling software, and get out of the hardware business. After all there ain’t a whole heck of a lot of difference in the hardware. And Vista can hide where the sun don’t shine.
Sorry – its late, and I think I just want to make some money and retire, and forget about the rest of the story.

[Rhewitt]

Avid… all I can say is the train left the station, and they forgot to buy their ticket. There’s little an FC or CS3 suite, can’t match, or beat.

Wow, really?

Then why is the majority of the world editing on Avid systems against FC and PPro.

The big differentiator is Avid produces a system solution for standalone and workgroups. Premier Pro is stand alone only and always will be. It is not designed to share media in a workgroup environment. FC is a standalone application with the option to store media in a central location – that doesn’t mean it is designed for sharing or workgroup use.

What Avid have produced is a product based on the original Media Composer concept that is available in many versions ranging from the top end hardware accelerated Nitris through hardware accelerated standalone or true workgroup Media Composer and down to software and/or hardware assisted versions for Broadcast Newsrooms and right down to a fully FREE, non-time limited version. Regardless of which version you buy into, the interface and workflow is the same for all. It is a true broadcast grade, professional system.

Try mixing media formats on the same timeline and see which system runs in realtime (including software only versions) with the original media. Err, nope… FC has to render in advance and PPro has to convert to AVI. All Avid systems can even do a mix/dissolve on the timeine between formats without any additional rendering in realtime.

We should perhaps drop Avid from this thread. Premier Pro is the competitor that has to challenge the improvements in FC2.

Edius is an interesting product with some stations taking it on. It’s an evolving product but has little market outside of Asia.

Am I biased? Well, no, I edit at home with PPro but have come up with so many fundamental problems (audio being the biggest issue) with this app that I have recently moved my home system to Media Composer. It wasn’t cheap but it just works without any of the issues I’ve had with PPro. I might also add I’ve edited with Avid systems in a broadcast environment for a long time and tried three iterations of Premier in an effort to find a cheaper, though less capable, solution to save money. In the end I could have bought Media Composer and the hardware it runs on for around the same price I’ve paid Adobe over the years.

I’ll still be sticking with After Effects and Photoshop so I’m not knocking Adobe. It’s just a case of using the most suitable tool for the job.

[Vince Becquiot]

Gene,

I’m sure you are aware of the fact that premiere has had Surround mixing available for several years now right?

Good marketing and hype doesn’t make a better product.

Vince

[Gene Colburn — email address bounces notices]

[RHewitt] ”
We should perhaps drop Avid from this thread. Premier Pro is the competitor that has to challenge the improvements in FC2.”

Yeah,I did not mean to short change Avids current following or capability. I just did not see much at Avid NAB to rave about. I have rebuilt a couple of Symphonies and one DS for clients. I know their capability and media management, but I was pointing out the fact, that the gap is closing. I am seeing clients here abandon it for cheaper solutions.

[Gene Colburn — email address bounces notices]

[Vincent Becquiot] ”

I’m sure you are aware of the fact that premiere has had Surround mixing available for several years now right?”

Yes, I know but next to FCPS2 ss mixer panel, it’s needing some attention.

[Rhewitt]

Sure, some clients are abandoning the Avid product line. For some the workgroup features are overkill, some just need a simple, cheaper, standalone edit station but there are quite a few now having to explain to their Financial Directors why the FC system they just bought doesn’t now do what they had wanted it to do.

NAB for Avid showed the new releases of existing products and integration with third party providers in addition to the launch of Media Network 5.0. These products were aimed at the higher professional and broadcast markets as a complete end-to-end solution and there are very few systems available that can achieve this. Apple is no where near this stage yet but it is a very good standalone editor with the capability of external storage and this is competition for some of the Avid Editing client systems.

ISIS is the preferred newer workgroup storage system for Avid’s editing systems and to date no-one has the capacity of the storage or bandwidth to compete with this. With a SAN (read Apple) storage server, the bigger it gets, the slower it gets and the bandwidth reduces. With ISIS the bigger it gets, the faster it gets and the wider the bandwidth.

Once Apple come up with a real shared storage system and can provide global support for the product, then the challenge will be on and I’m sure Avid are planning way beyond this.

But hey, I mentioned Avid again!! Sorry.