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Is this what Avid used to be like?
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[Oliver Peters] “As a company that made money based on turnkey systems, they have had a tough time adjusting to a software-only business model, because that’s not where the money lies.”
They actually made the transition to software only fairly well. I chose Avid Xpress Pro over Final Cut in 2002 because I found it more solid. Their real problem came with the transition to HD – they got too greedy. While FCP users could easily switch to HD by buying a $1000 card, Avid required it’s users to upgrade to Media Composer and purchase an Avid Adrenaline (which never worked right) that totaled about $10,000.
At the time I thought they were crazy and said so, said they should merge all software products, said they should allow third party hardware or at least price their hardware competitively. Everyone on the Avid forums, including the end users, said I was completely wrong. At that point I gave up on Avid and switched to FCP. Of course a few years later they did exactly as I suggested. Had Avid accurately judged the market earlier, they’d probably be in a better position now.
Sometimes there is a small window for companies to make the right decisions.
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[Brett Sherman] “Their real problem came with the transition to HD – they got too greedy. While FCP users could easily switch to HD by buying a $1000 card, Avid required it’s users to upgrade to Media Composer and purchase an Avid Adrenaline (which never worked right) that totaled about $10,000”
While I agree with the gist and general sentiment, the time frame and numbers are a bit off. I only mention that for accuracy and not a criticism.
FCP was able to do HD with Pinnacle Cinewave, which was a $25K hardware I/O system. Figure $50K-$75K turnkey with a G4, monitors and fast enough storage, since it could only do uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit. This was at FCP 1.2 and later. 2001-ish. At that time, Avid’s HD solution was only Avid DS in the $300K range (with storage). Other than the FCP/Cinewave combo (which was a dog performance-wise), other HD solutions at that time were Flame/Inferno, Quantel and linear suites. There was no $1K HD card. You are probably thinking of the Decklink 601 SD cards.
About the time Apple came out with FCP 4.5 (HD) they had added the built-in DVCPRO HD codec, so you could do HD cheaply, but only via Firewire and not cards. At about that same time, Avid had the software-only Avid Xpress HD (version 5). This would also do DVCPRO HD via Firewire, but only on PCs.
Avid Media Composer Adrenaline was introduced at the same NAB as the original AJA Io for FCP. These were all SD systems. The Io at $2K and the Adrenaline at $25K. Avid offered the later upgrade capability to add a DNxHD encode/decode card that installed into the Adrenaline chassis. This was a $10K extra, but the codec was in hardware for real-time i/o. It was later that you could do HD on FCP using Kona or Decklink cards.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Well for everyone bitching about $600 a year to use EVERY app Adobe has, I think we paid something like $2400 per year per Adrenaline and 2 or 3 times that for our DS just for support – which was really pretty poor at the time.
Complaining about having to pay $50 bucks a month for software is silly – if your billing just $50 per hour in your business you’ve paid for all your software needs the 1st hour of each month!
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
Good point, Lance. Even in these tough times, I managed to get the dough together to buy the CS6 Master Collection. A single on-site training session from AVID was at least ten times the cost of a month’s Cloud subscription. I think that it was more the shock of the change than the cost that got people up in arms – also the lack of detail. But yeah, if you’re even a relatively successful pro (please, no more pro/no-pro argument), complaining about the Cloud price is crying hunger with a loaf of bread under each arm…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Not to mention none of us (unless you’re a beta tester) has really run the next version of Premiere – there’s a good chance, from what I’ve seen, that’s it’s a great NLE and a bargain!
Even though I don’t currently use Premiere for day to day editing I do need and use Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects regularly and would have no problem cutting in Premiere if it finally meets my needs. I think the last 5.5 to 6 upgrade for current users was $599 to 799 depending on when you purchased – by using the upgrade special I ended up paying $29 month since last August – far less than buying the boxed set.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
Are you planning to pay that 599.00 for the boxed version upgrade of CS6? Adobe has said they will keep CS6 compatible for a few years, but I don’t think 5.5 will get the same love. Even if you love the cloud, might be nice to have CS6 around for a few years.
JT
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