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Avid says No to NAB 2008
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[ronsuss] “Avid does indeed need to streamline and focus and the decision to not be at NAB may allow them to do just that. None the less it is fueling rumors and speculation about the future of Avid in general and lets face it, everyone gets a good ten year run in this industry and if you don’t keep up with the demands of your clients and the changes in technology you go away, no matter how entrenched you are in the industry.”
Most of the people discussing this and crying out “The End IS Near!” are not Avid customers. Of those that are “Avid” customers, they seem to be largely those who own either Xpress or Liquid — hardly Avid’s “core” market.
If Avid had never released Xpress or acquired Liquid, they be be hardly much different than they are right now, as Avid’s real business is far from either Xpress or Liquid.
That is not to insult either product or the users of them, it is just that I’d rather buy into where a company is firmly entrenched rather than where they are merely scratching the surface of a market.
Example?
Why yes, I do have one as a matter of fact…
Back when I bought my first Media 100 v1.2 back in 1994, Avid had a product called Avid Media Suite Pro.
Many of my friends that I knew back then who were aware of the nonlinear systems and had been working with Toasters and other systems, recommended that I put my money on Avid. They told me I should get a Media Suite Pro.
But I had been in the aerospace industry for a while and knew of Data Translation (who originated the Media 100) and so I told my friends that these people at DT were the ones that taught the CIA how to compress, acquire and broadcast images from satellites out in the Clark Orbital Belt. I gambled that Media 100 would have the suds — and they did, for years. At the time that Avid users were arguing that you couldn’t online with a nonlinear system and that “…that is why companies have invented EDL software, dummy” — me and all my Media 100 friends like Nick Griffin, Tim Wilson and others were working with a system that could online.
It was where Media 100 put all their focus. It was all they did at the time. We got all their attention — well, until they lost focus years later, thinking that they could become iMovie or something.
Our “money-spent equals” who gambled on the entry-level Avids at the time? They fared not so well, as Avid didn’t pay much attention to Media Suite Pro users. (I converted many of them to Media 100 users and made quite a business for a while out of consulting with these users.)
Do people weight their options rightly? Not really, as it happened again.
Later Avid acquired Plum and took the Plum editor into Avid and made it into a short-lived product called Avid MCXpress, as I recall. In a company that was largely almost entirely Windows at the time, a few intrepid souls began buying MCXpress for Windows. Smartest move these buyers ever made? Probably not. It wasn’t long and MCXpress was gone and Avid was trying to upgrade these users from a $10,000 to $15,000 system to Avid’s real products, that were $100,000 and up. Did many bite? I don’t know of one that I ever knew.
For a short while, I used an Avid Xpress Elite that ran on Mac — the Windows version of this one was much better — and liked it for a while. But Avid, once again, didn’t pay their lower-end tools a lot of attention.
I had gambled that as the market grew, Avid would realize that with greater numbers they could make a lot of money at the more entry-level of their systems base. But I lost that gamble as both Avid and Autodesk/Discreet realized that chasing $1,000 systems didn’t make much sense for them.
The $1,000 strategy works for many companies but not for companies that are geared the way that Avid, Discreet and others are geared.
If I were to consult with Avid again today, I would recommend that they take hard looks at how best to use Pinnacle as their lower-end. Move Liquid back to Pinnacle. Make it the rocket-engine of that line, not the bastard step-child to the Avid line.
Take a lesson from SGI — who scrapped plans to release video monitor boards that would have trounced ATI and nVidia in the market — SGI said that they didn’t want to compete between themselves. So they didn’t.
The lesson?
A multi-billion dollar industry happened in which they had no part. But one which they could have owned.
Instead, SGI has faded into obscurity and is a shadow of its one-time glory and prominence in the market.
There are two lessons in this post:
- As a user, make sure that you buy into a company’s core business as it will get their real attention. (Step-children only rarely get the real inheritance and affection.)
- As a company, don’t be afraid to gamble your teams against one another. (If SGI had done so, they would likely be driving all of our monitors right now and sitting on a wad of cash, instead of watching most all they had float away in the changing winds of the market.)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net
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[Bob Cole] “That can’t be a true story. Or… is it?
“I’m not familiar with the demo you are referring to but I have seen very similar things going on at road show demos. To mention brands might sway off the topic of this thread too much so I’ll avoid revealing that. In this scenario the product was a low end version designed to compete with the rapidly advancing fcp systems just new to the market. The booth was set up with 2 systems and 2 editor/hosts who could have been clones(they both new the system and it’s short comings equally well) and the added bonus, an attractive MC style host in fishnets. In short, when one system crashed the editor would signal the “legs” into action. She could jump in strutting and talking (multi talented) and intro editor #2 who was following along editor #1 so he would just pick up and continue while editor #1 would re-boot and get back up to speed. When editor #2 crashed they jumped to the fishnets then back to #1 and so on. The more often this happened those who caught on would glance around the room at one another. They finally got through their presentation and I suspect only 10% of the people new about the constant crashes. To those 10% it was obvious the whole presentation was a well scripted art of deception to cover up the crashes that were only too common in nonlinear edit systems of the time. We would have been more interested in the product if they hadn’t tried to hide things.
Another time I was at one and someone in the crowd called out “can fcp do that?” NO WAY came the reply you couldn’t do this in fcp! I was not brazen enough to shout otherwise from the back of the room so I just bit my tongue.
Conversely, another experience was at nab while watching a demo for Newtek toaster just after it had gotten up and running on windows nt. The demonstrator just was alone on a 2×6′ table and he finally just looked at me and said “it’s really a powerfully system but we haven’t got all the bugs out yet” as it crashed again. I’ve always kept a positive feeling in my memory for newtek since that time.“in the 90’s people are going to try to sell you things that you should ought not to buy” – Frank Zappa
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I’ve been reading with interest about all the speculation as to why AVID has pulled from NAB. In checking the NAB Exhibitor list and the floor map, I was also suprised to see that APPLE is nowhere listed. Hmmm, what goes here?
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I think that the operative word here is “opportunism,” Julie.
Another term might be “jockeying for marketing advantage” or “make NAB chase you.”
:o)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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[Rennie] “In short, when one system crashed the editor would signal the “legs” into action. She could jump in strutting and talking (multi talented) and intro editor #2 who was following along editor #1 so he would just pick up and continue while editor #1 would re-boot and get back up to speed. When editor #2 crashed they jumped to the fishnets then back to #1 and so on. The more often this happened those who caught on would glance around the room at one another. They finally got through their presentation and I suspect only 10% of the people new about the constant crashes. To those 10% it was obvious the whole presentation was a well scripted art of deception to cover up the crashes that were only too common in nonlinear edit systems of the time.”
I saw this demo and have to agree, Rennie, it was one of the most ludicrous presentations that I had ever seen at NAB.
There were rock solid systems in those days, too. I had one of them and loved it. In fact, I still use it today, even though many others feel the obligation to buy every upgrade that comes along.
Me, I subscribe to the “if a hammer still drives nails, it’s a good hammer” school of tool buying and usage.
For some, chasing the upgrade trail is a great thing but for others, solid is good…just ask the lady on the stage that had to tremble with every crash of that “magic thing in the big black box” that kept her on her toes at NAB.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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[Julie Hill] “I’ve been reading with interest about all the speculation as to why AVID has pulled from NAB. In checking the NAB Exhibitor list and the floor map, I was also suprised to see that APPLE is nowhere listed. Hmmm, what goes here?”
No surprise there. Those maps are never finalized until the last moment. I’m thinking it has something to do with that 80 foot by 80 foot floor (or larger) space that’s suddenly available right up front…..
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
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[Ron Lindeboom] “I saw this demo”
Very funny. But so far, nobody remembers the alleged voice-actuated editing system run by the person behind the curtain, right?
Darn. I was hoping that this one was real. I think about it every time the Wizard of Oz runs on tv, which is about monthly.
It would be refreshing for someone to get up there and say, “Here’s the technology, it is absolutely the latest stuff, and very buggy, but you didn’t fly all the way here to see last year’s stuff, so enjoy the show and hold your breath because sometime in the next ten minutes we’re gonna crash.”
To be the devil’s advocate about big trade shows, when you’re in the mood for them, they are actually kind of fun. But the big slick shows are boring. I like the funky little booths with the dreamers. My favorite in 2006 was the little helicopter with the even smaller DV camera in it for your low-budget aerials.
Bob C
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That is true that nothing is ever finalized until the day of the show and even then it’s still subject to change. However I was surprised that Apple wasn’t on the exhibitor list itself when it had been from booth selection around April 2007 until about two weeks ago.
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[Julie Hill] “However I was surprised that Apple wasn’t on the exhibitor list itself when it had been from booth selection around April 2007 until about two weeks ago.”
You mean about the same time Avid announced (most like to NAB first) that they were pulling off the showroom floor…….
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
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I had checked the floor map shortly before I left for HD Expo in Burbank around November 5th. It was while I was away at GV Expo in DC last week that I heard about AVID. So, curiously I looked at the NAB site and saw no mention of Apple either. Which, I thought was a tad strange since they had been there earlier (on the exhibitor list and on the map-which does change constantly but not at a constant rate).
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