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Example- PPro losing markets to Final Cut & AVID
This was posted last week a couple of places
BBC to Migrate Factual and Learning Documentary Department to 75% Final Cut Pro, 25% AVID by 2007
https://www.nmr.com/page.php?page=1000650&set=1 -
25 Replies
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Interesting article. What is really interesting is that BBC is primarily moving to FCP rather than Avid.
Regarding Premiere Pro, well I guess only time can tell. There have certainly been a lot of improvements from the Premiere 6.x days.
Aanarav Sareen
Adobe Certified Expert, Premiere Pro
https://www.asvideoproductions.com/video -
Much as I love Premier Pro, it’s not the tool of choice in the UK broadcast sector.
What the broadcasters are looking for is an end to end solution. For ITV that was Avid – used from ingest/edit through to on-air playout. For the BBC (News) that was Quantel.
Documentaries is a different matter and it’s not unusual for editors to work on laptops to do rough cuts. Many used Avid when it was Mac based and it’s not suprising that the editors using Macs would want to go down the FCP track.
At the end of the day compatibility, experience with existing systems and cost all come into play. Premier Pro in the UK fits largely into the corporate market place and Adobe appear to stand little chance now of moving into the broadcast world.
As a side note: Until Adobe realise that broadcasters and professionals use single audio tracks and not stereo pairs, they will struggle to compete with Avid.
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In many ways, of course, parts of the UK broadcast sector have been perhaps “trailing-edge” when it comes to video production technology. Way behind the US on High Definition, and a little slow to bring in cheap, fast filming and editing kit as it emerges. Recent decisions, though, have seen major doc series commissioned on DVCAM format – and now the beeb’s migration to a more computer-savvy editing model with FCP. Interesting days.
Surely we’re grown up enough to be more interested in the programmes and what they have to say and show, if anything, than on which box they were made on? Shakespeare was rubbish, he didn’t use Final Draft …?
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Interesting days indeed.
One of the main reasons for the lag in broadcast technology in te UK is the cramped airwaves. For such a small country there is an enormous amount of radio spectrum in use. Just think how close our airbases are together!
As channel space has become available the technology has been quickly implemented – Freeview digital channels for example. The majority of UK viewers use terestrial services unlike the cable and sat in the US and many other countries around the world, which compounds the airspace issues.
Hi-Definition is a case in point. It requires far greater bandwidth for normal terestrial broadcast and the space isn’t currently available. HD sat services start early next year and as the analogue transmitters are slowly switched off, the channel space will become available.
Things can only get better. Slowly but surely!
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[Richard Milner] “This was posted last week a couple of places
BBC to Migrate Factual and Learning Documentary Department to 75% Final Cut Pro, 25% AVID by 2007
” target=”_blank”>https://www.nmr.com/page.php?page=1000650&set=1″Well, of course NMR is a Final Cut reseller…though I see it was sourced from somewhere else…
I have no idea how you get that Re: line…PPro would have to “have” some of these markets to “lose” them wouldn’t they?
This article is really a story on how FCP continues to advance against Avid…PPro continues to be a bit of a non-starter for network-level television work from a list/networked workflow/media handling perspective.
I think this kind of stuff keeps coming up from those who are frustrated because they’d LIKE to use PPro for this type of work because of its actual merits, but keep hitting the wall on the deal-breaker features, or users who are using it effectively and are primarily concerned with PPro’s standing in these higher profile markets as evidence the product will continue or may not continue to exist…
Adobe would certainly like to see PPro cut some TV shows…but they sell a lot of units whether or not that happens. From a marketing perspective, I suspect Adobe’s intent is probably to keep working on PPro to get it to a level where it can be used for higher profile projects so it can get beyond this somewhat deserved but undeniably persistent impression that PPro is for someone who is a “lesser professional.”
Whether or not anyone realizes it, I think PPro has the most configuration options for HD of any software package…BlueFish444, AJA, DeckLink, CineForm Aspect HD and ProspectHD, Matrox Axio…they’ve at least got that end of things covered.
Now the little niggling workflow issues…
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net -
What do you mean about the audio? Do you want it to work with broken out pairs by default not by jerking with the splitting the track?
Don
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Absolutely.
Stereo tracks should only ever be used for output. If you need a stereo track it’s easy enough to lock two individual tracks together. The vast majority of the world’s professional and broadcast editors work this way.
As has been said many times in this forum, Adobe do not understand the way editors work and this is just one of the reasons they haven’t made a dent in the UK and european market for broadcasters. They also cannot provide the level of customer support demanded by the professional market and this is why Avid and Quantel have made such big in-roads. Not to mention the university education market here, which is dominated by Avid. The students can use Avid FreeDV at home for no charge and it works in exactly the same way as the pro line of applications. Adobe’s nearest option is Premier Elements – it’s not free and it’s aimed directly at the consumer.
Don’t ge me wrong, I love Premier Pro and will continue to use it for my own use and often sing its praises to friends and colleagues but when you can get the version used by the broadcasters and professionals for free…
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Couldn’t agree more Tim.
Adobe dominate the broadcast and professional markets with After Effects (Photoshop too). Many broadcasters have dropped Quantel’s HAl in favour of After Effects. It’s massively cheaper and more powerful in the right hands. The fact that its format independent is a huge boon as is its dual platform capability.
Adobe have the creative potential to do to Premier Pro what they have done for After Effects but I think they have left it far to late to compete. Better that they get the workflow issues sorted and drop the ‘Pro’ moniker – it’s a bit dated in marketing terms.
There is still a big enough market for it in the serious amateur and corporate market sector.
I just wish they’d listen rather than pick and choose the bits they think people want.
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[R. Hewitt] “Adobe have the creative potential to do to Premier Pro what they have done for After Effects but I think they have left it far to late to compete. Better that they get the workflow issues sorted and drop the ‘Pro’ moniker – it’s a bit dated in marketing terms.
There is still a big enough market for it in the serious amateur and corporate market sector.
I just wish they’d listen rather than pick and choose the bits they think people want.”
I suppose it all depends on your perspective. As an editor the various media management and split audio…etc, etc limitations and workarounds are a pain, but the level of integration with other Adobe products is a real enabler on the other side of the issue…
It depends on which audience you’re focusing on I suppose. I just talked to someone the other day who is looking for a dedicated MPEG compression solution because his Avid takes about 4X actual duration to compress out to MPEG. An off-the-shelf 3GHz P4 can compress at faster than real-time with Canopus ProCoder.
…as ill-suited as PPro’s editing mechanics may be for primetime television, Avid’s limited integration capabilities make many of its products a comparitive workflow hobble (for everything BUT editing) for a production boutique operation.
By the time PPro has all the capabilities to handle the assets and audio the way television editors need, I suppose Avid will have it’s own integrated compositing capability and accelerated transcoder/compressor.
(crack)….(creak)…
ssshhh…quiet…can you hear the market fragmenting?….
🙂
TimK,
Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net -
That’s exactly right Tim.
If only Adobe had started earlier and with a professional workflow in mind, they may have been sitting right there where Avid is right now.
Integration is an absolute boon for Adobe as are the hardware accelerators and encoders. Software MPEG encoding will always be slower than dedicated hardware but the software will probably continue to have the edge in it’s ability to do higher quality, multi-pass encoding. And it can be easily updated.
Realtime MPEG encoding in hardware is a requirement for the majority of digital TV transmissions and the poor results and limited bandwidths used by the broadcasters are sadly the way we’re going in a bandwidth starved UK.
It’s frustrating when Adobe are so close to getting the product ‘just right’ in a professional sense when they don’t provide a genuine open channel of communication to those of us out here – feature request aside. I got the same frustration with Adobe GoLive, which I eventually ditched. Premier on the other hand will be a product I’ll continue to use primarily for the good integration it provides & the support of my Matrox RTX100 card.
C’mon Adobe, you’ll nearly there.
Richard.
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