Dear Avid…

[Mark Raudonis]

[Neil Hurwitz] “Where FCP got it’s big boost was when Avid came out with
it’s Adrenaline System and there were Thousands of Meridian system owners out there that Said
“What the F-ck I just lost 85% of my investment
I’m NOT doing that again””

Even more important than the financial impact was the fact that the first Adrenalines off the assembly line simply DIDN’T WORK (as promised). I can fill up a book with details if anyone is interested. Up until this point AVID had a reputation for bulletproof reliability. Adrenaline sank that reputation like a boat anchor.

So… many people concluded, there was NOTHING to lose by switching to FCP. It was cheaper, and performance wise, NO WORSE than Adrenaline. Shortly thereafter, FCP updates leveled the playing field as far as features. Some would say FCP “exceeded” the feature set of AVID, but that’s just my opinion.

mark

[Craig Seeman]

Reading all the posts in this thread, I’d have to say I’d generally agree with them.

I don’t think Avid is reading this thread with glee. You did a good job shooting them down. In fact the lesson learned is business model and maybe you’re not aware if either Avid’s or Apple’s.

Apple is about building ecosystems so their consumer sales (many of which seem to move in to Professional support areas whether business or technical) is not a deterrent for professional product development. Even if the gross dollar sales of FCPX and MacPros are small compared to iPhones and iPads, there is an internal relationship. Apple wants both vertical and horizontal markets. Having control over the content creation tools ensures control over the consumer consumption tools.

Avid, as Neil points out, may well be looking at a different ecosystem in which the NLE is also a small component but in a very different direction (automation).

While both companies make NLEs, their business models are radically different so their objectives are different.

The ecosystem YOUR BUSINESS thrives in should guide your purchase decision. My own very personal hunch is that more of us thrive in Apple’s ecosystem. It connects with more pieces for both me and my clients . . . even when my clients are Windows based.

[Bret Williams]

I remember once telling an Avid group when it was prudent to use AE in a project vs creating effects in Avid. My short list was true nesting (for sake of advanced animations), animated text (like animated tracking), resolution independence (for ken burns stuff), and compositing modes (like overlay, add, etc to get cool blended looks vs basic opacity). Shortly after I realized my 1.x copy of final cut did all that already. Avid didn’t.

So 1.x may have been missing some pro stuff Avid had, but FCP WAS definitely more advanced in many ways and in the huge corporate world where we weren’t doing multicam, broadcast, or film lists, it was a perfect fit. Let’s also not forget how long it was til Avid had FireWire. DVCam was quickly replacing betacam, and my FCP 1.x loaded an exact digital copy onto an internal ATA. Avid loaded DVCam into the system via analog or SDI and recompressed it to 2:1, or uncompressed, creating a lesser quality file at 5 times the file size.

Cost was a great reason to go FCP, but there were a lot of other good reasons too.