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Orlando Post Pros’ NAB Recap
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[Andrew Kimery] “I’m just asking you to tell me what Adobe product was for the little guy years ago when you say Adobe cared about the little guy.”
Were Premiere and FCP not an inexpensive alternative to Avid MC and Media 100 back in the day? Premiere was 100% free more often than not back in the day but I think some legal issues stop Adobe form bundling it with just about every Video Capture card on the market. You could buy Premiere Pro and get Encore, Media Encoder and Adobe Bridge for like $699.99. You could buy Premiere Pro 1.0 and use until you opted to upgrade to 1.5 or wait until 3.0 to upgrade if you don’t need the new features or need the updates. The choice was yours. I have been using Premiere since Premiere 5.0. Not Premiere Pro 5.0. Fast/Pinnacle/Avid’s Liquid would probably be my NLE of choice if Avid did not EOL it. Don’t get me wrong I used to like Adobe’s CS paradigm. I used to give them praise.
[Andrew Kimery] “Is Premiere Elements today not a good option for the little guy? If the little guy is only concerned about price then free DR and free Media100 beat everything. They beat full price DR. They beat FCP X. They beat Adobe. They beat Avid. They beat Vegas. They beat anything that costs money (not matter how much or how little money).”
I am hip to Premiere Pro elements but you don’t see FCPX Elements or DR Elements. Also I have never said they have to have free software. I myself as well as many other think the CC paradigm could be revamped and made more affordable if you only use 2 or 3 programs.
[Andrew Kimery] “Maybe they use Adobe products at work and make tutorials for Adobe products in their free time? Maybe they make movies with their friends who use Adobe products so they do too in order to make collaboration easier? Maybe they chose it because that’s what the filmmakers they follow us? Maybe you could find actual hobbyists themselves and ask?”
Some are going to use the CC. As far as asking a hobbyist or blogger many of them will post in a video that they switched form Premiere Pro to FCPX. If FCPX is less expensive and works better on their MacBook Pro how can you blame them?
[Andrew Kimery] “[andy patterson] “Will Google Docs make MS Office Obsolete? Probably not. Can some people get by with Google Docs. Probably. ”
So MS Office can still be competitive even though it costs way more money than Google Docs? It’s almost as if a product’s value can be important than its price. I agree.”
CC does offer industry standard for graphic design but what if someone only wants Premiere Pro and AE? FCPX and Motion might fill the gap for some people. As stated by many others Adobe could offer any two programs for $9.99 a month, any five programs for $19.99 a month or any 10 Programs for $30.00 a month. For some the integration between 3 or 4 Adobe products would be worth the price. Some would still opt for the free version of DR.
[Andrew Kimery] “[andy patterson] “On the flip side the bloggers who have stopped the CC subscription always mention FCPX is less expensive and does the job. ”
So Apple should make FCP X free so they can compete with free DR?”
Do you want an answer or is that rhetorical? FCPX, Avid Media Composer, DR and Premiere Pro could all be obsolete one day and replaced by Halo Edit 1.0, the world first Hologram based Editing System. As I have stated nobody knows what the future holds. I am saying without the CC paradigm some blogger would have stuck with Premiere Pro.
$600.00 per year is $3000.00 in five years or $6000.00 in ten years. That can buy a lot of audio gear. For a business it is a non issue but most hobbyist must decide with their wallet to a certain extent. Having said that Adobe has some serious competition and even I like what I see from the competition.
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[Tim Wilson] “I say non-pros, because I think that a number of them are following a business model pioneered by Andrew Kramer here at Creative COW before he went into orbit as Video Copilot — skillful hobbyists who use their video tutorials as the springboard to what becomes a very good living. His skills (including his personal charisma) are not replicable (even if the projects, minus the charisma, are frequently copied), but the path he’s shown is true. Skills making Adobe YouTube tutorials CAN turn into a living, which we’ve not seen as broadly with other companies.”
At that point you are not talking about a hobbyist. That my friend is a business.
[Tim Wilson] “Seriously! The idea that hobbyists are cheap is absolutely nonsense.”
I agree that idea is nonsense but who said they were cheap? There are video hobbyist with $2500.00 Custom Less Paul’s and $2500.00 Fender guitars but that does not mean they are going to buy top of the line editing software if something for free will work just fine for their needs. On the flip side some folks will spend $3500.00 on Avid MC, Pro Tools etc and buy a $300.00 Epiphone guitar. It is not about being cheap but how the money is spent.
[Tim Wilson] “Andrew, these prices have been set for YEARS: Resolve free since 2009, FCPX since 2011, CC since 2013, etc etc.”
DR was not what it is now back in 2009. A lot has changed.
[Tim Wilson] “Speaking of which, I encourage anyone who wants to equate hobbyists and “cheap” to spend time with some hobbyist photographers. The money hobbyists are spending is staggering. Easily dwarfs what many pros here are spending on video gear.”
I think that is your bad. I don’t recall anyone saying hobbyist are cheap. Having said that I think you might be considering Marques Brownlee, and iJustine hobbyists. They are professional bloggers. Are there video hobbyist not making money that spend a lot of money on AV gear. Of course. No one has said other wise.
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[Oliver Peters] “There’s a Fortune magazine article (6/15 issue) coming out about Adobe. Apparently subscription numbers, income, and stock prices are all up”
Too bad that hasn’t worked for Avid.
It’s an interesting company and theory. To spread out the revenue (so as not to depend on just editing software) other companies lean on hardware, cameras, storage, etc. Adobe just makes more software and has figured a price that makes it all work. Plus they are going hard at enterprise and educational accounts (like VCU, where I teach). The challenge they have at an educational (and I assume corporate/enterprise level is showing a value for all parts of the university. Why should the business school consider the CC over the MC (marketing cloud)? Why would the folks in the Nursing School care about the CC? What happens to student work after they leave their educational account upon graduation? Can I get Adobe Stock as a standalone contract for my school (Dennis, can you help here?)? I was at yet another Adobe presentation 4 weeks ago and they had no good answers for these questions. rather some vague “we’ll certainly have to look into that…” type of replies. If I am Apple, I sense an opportunity here…if they really care.
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “[Oliver Peters] “There’s a Fortune magazine article (6/15 issue) coming out about Adobe. Apparently subscription numbers, income, and stock prices are all up”
Too bad that hasn’t worked for Avid. “
The big reason why is that adding subscription software to the mix wasn’t fundamentally transformative. The majority of Avid’s customers have been renting everything — not just the Avid software, but the computers, storage, monitors, the whole kit and kaboodle. It’s the Hollywood way, where you rent everything: cameras, lenses, lights, dollies, cranes, locations.
Yeah, this started changing a bit with Adrenaline in 2003, but even most of those got sold into the rental ecosystem, and I’d guess that dang near all of the software-only versions of Media Composer have been going to people who either rented or bought previous systems. And I personally met thousands of editors over my years there, and I could maybe fill a few tables of Texas Hold ‘Em with people who didn’t have service policies.
Avid’s move to “service contract or no upgrades” had FAR more to do with preventing another Sarbanes-Oxley bollixing (where they’d provided what THEY thought was a free upgrade, but the DOJ said no, you should have charged for it; now you get to restate a debit for what you SHOULD have charged against everyone who wasn’t under a service contract) than creating a new revenue stream.
The larger issue is that Adobe doesn’t have anything to teach Avid, because they’re not in the same business. In most practical ways, they’re not even in the same industry anymore.
The company most like Avid is actually Blackmagic, which was revealed more clearly than ever around NAB. During the show, Dan May was very plain that the company is now built around Resolve. Once you understand that, a whole lot of other things make sense, including Grant’s revelation that the reason they got into the camera business was to revolutionize the quality of images that you could affordably feed into Resolve!
All those other products, including the ones that predate Resolve (routers and such) are now presented as part of that orbit, even if people can and do buy that stuff without also buying Resolve. Resolve is nevertheless at the heart of it, even as the price becomes not just free, but they keep piling more stuff into it for the price.
The same dynamic is true at Avid, where software whose price approaches zeros is at the heart of an orbit of products might be selling without Media Composer, but unlike Blackmagic (who can sell cameras and routers to people who don’t use Resolve), there’s little about Avid’s product lineup that makes sense apart from other Avid products.
They’re obviously breaking away with NEXIS storage, explicitly messaging that it’s the best professional media production storage, regardless of platform or NLE. They’re also breaking away from this in news and sports, where I think theirs are by far the most compelling offerings in the industry. First down overlays for football broadcasts have nothing to do with editing.
Avid Audio with Pro Tools is different, with even fewer degrees of latitude. Ain’t nobody talking about free Pro Tools, and as much as I think Blackmagic’s Fairlight story is the biggest news in the industry since….well, since Resolve in 2009….I think we’re years away from seeing just how disruptive it ultimately is. Blackmagic is explicit: they’re not going after audio pros, but rather video guys who do audio, which is exactly the opposite direction of Pro Tools. Pro Tools, like Media Composer, like dang near everything else Avid does, is made for specialists.
A big answer to the question of how Grant gets away with doing what he does with Blackmagic is that he doesn’t have to answer to Wall Street, or any other global cabal of capitalist ruffians. He only has to make enough more than he spends to keep the wolves away from the door and have as much fun as he wants to have. His people are happy, his customers are happy, and the rest is nobody’s business but his. Good!
Quantel learned that lesson. They saw that they had plenty of juice left to run a business — as long as it wasn’t a publicly-traded business. So management bought the company back in 2000, and introduced iQ and Pablo in short order. The post-Snell acquisition rebranding as SAM has led to 20% YoY growth. They’re doing fine.
I think Avid is doing pretty much everything they need to be doing. Maybe the most surprising takeaway from NAB is that Avid may have the most robust, most engaged user base in our part of the industry. I’m not talking about comparing it to an iPhone event, even though it certainly compared favorably with WWDC. But within THIS industry? Seriously, did you pay attention to what was happening at the Avid Connect event? Probably not — pretty much, if you weren’t there, you probably didn’t need to — but I’ve never seen anything like it, in any industry, and I daresay none of you have either.
My point being that if they didn’t keep banging their head against the wall of quarterlies, Sarbox, and all the hoops they have to jump through to amuse the oligarchs who are running the world’s shadow governments, Avid could have as happy and robust a future as they wanted to. I’m thinking that they’re not even considering this, believing that they can have it all, and maybe they can…but I’d love to see them able to focus ALL their attention on just developing cool stuff (check) and engaging their customers (check), and be delivered from the rest of the mishegoss.
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[Tim Wilson] “I think Avid is doing pretty much everything they need to be doing. Maybe the most surprising takeaway from NAB is that Avid may have the most robust, most engaged user base in our part of the industry. I’m not talking about comparing it to an iPhone event, even though it certainly compared favorably with WWDC. But within THIS industry? Seriously, did you pay attention to what was happening at the Avid Connect event? Probably not — pretty much, if you weren’t there, you probably didn’t need to — but I’ve never seen anything like it, in any industry, and I daresay none of you have either.”
This is an interesting observation. Avid Connect had 1300 PAID attendees, who came in a couple of days early to be there. This number has been increasing each year for the 4 years that it’s been held. Compare this to the attendance at the various FCPworks sessions, which were free. I mean no offense, here, as these were good and valuable sessions. But the difference in numbers is striking. And Supermeets don’t count. They are circuses with people attending just for the show, whether they care about FCP or not. Plus, Avid’s booth presentations on the show floor were well attended the whole week, as were Adobe’s. The bottomline is that you can talk about FCPX’s 2 million seats all you want, but the visible impact on the industry – other than in a few pockets – is hard to find. In the TV, film, and even commercial world, Avid dominance is still pretty strong – especially in the major markets.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I keep hoping for a storage solution from Blackmagic.
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[Oliver Peters] “Avid Connect had 1300 PAID attendees, who came in a couple of days early to be there. This number has been increasing each year for the 4 years that it’s been held. Compare this to the attendance at the various FCPworks sessions, which were free. I mean no offense, here, as these were good and valuable sessions. But the difference in numbers is striking. And Supermeets don’t count. They are circuses with people attending just for the show, whether they care about FCP or not.”
Agreed on all counts (since you were agreeing with me ????).
I’m a big fan of the FCPWORKS sessions, but you’re right, not comparable in scope, and the Supermeets haven’t been all-Apple for ages. Not only have Adobe and Blackmagic had huge roles, Blackmagic has given out the big prizes, and many of the headliners (say, Dody Dorn, ACE this year) have either not been associated with ANY particular NLE, or primarily use Avid. Last year’s headliners were Resolve, Rob Legato (who does a LOT of things not even vaguely related to editing, including Second Unit direction and miniatures, but he’s also been heavily on the road promoting Adobe Premiere Pro), and HP’s Jeff Wood.
It’s almost like, combine the FCPWORKS sessions with the Supermeets, have them go for the entire weekend before the show, and charge a lot more money. It could totally be done. I’d never want to say for a second that Avid has the ONLY engaged user base or anything like it.
But I’m saying that you can’t understand the fundamental landscape of the industry without taking into account how energized Avid’s customers are right now. They’re not just bullish. They’re stampeding, in a good way. Avid is getting the basics right, and customers are responding.
Wall Street isn’t, which is why I’m saying f*** ’em. All any business really needs to do is make more than it spends while offering products that their customers want. Everything else is a distraction. It’s hard to turn away from what looks like easy money, but Avid is among many companies learning that it’s harder than it looks. ????
Blackmagic (and again, to a lesser but growing extent, Quantel/SAM) has shown the advantages of focused intent, even if that focus can also be expressed as proliferating offerings. There’s unity of intent, all around image quality.
(This is a teensy sidebar, but can you imagine how much more annoying Grant’s life would be if he had to justify his profit margins to Wall Street? I bet Grant can ???? which he’s never going to go public. ???? I swear, pretty much every problem of Avid’s would go away if they’d just get out of the market. Other than the stock, they really don’t have any big problems, not in practice.)
[Richard Herd] “I keep hoping for a storage solution from Blackmagic.”
Nothing to do with image quality. ????
More broadly, Grant has said that he wants to solve Big Problems.
The first big one was an affordable way to get high quality video into a computer (Decklink). Then, how to manage that video around the facility (Grant being a TV and large post guy, leading to routers).
Then how to affordably improve the images (Resolve, Cintel, Teranex).
Then how to acquire even better images affordably (cameras).
Distribute both in-house and online (switchers, TV studio support, Web Presenter, duplicators, etc).
Bring top-tier DAW capabilities to video guys (Fairlight).`
BIG problems.
Cheap, reliable shared storage is a problem that’s already solved. What’s the breakthrough in sharability, affordability, or performance that Blackmagic could create that’s better than what, say, LumaForge or Avid NEXIS (or QNAP or G-Tech) is already doing? My guess is, nothing. The breakthroughs have broken through. Blackmagic has never been interested in putting a badge on something for the sake of owning every product in the pipeline.
The one exception is play-out servers, but it looks to me like Blackmagic will skip all that and focus on OTT. Good move.
Monitors are almost interesting to me for them. Blackmagic has obviously done some great stuff with monitoring and viewfinders…but a better, more affordable monitor than what LG or Dell is doing now (did you see their stuff at NAB, or the InfoComm announcements? Yowza!), or pushing out past Flanders, HP, et al? Add to this my guess that the move to iMac Pro is going to put a bit of a chill on that market, and I don’t see them going much further down this road than they already are.
I’ve got a whole riff on what I DO see from them that I’ll save for another time, but for now, that’s what I’d point people to. Grant’s vision of solving Big Problems. I don’t see any Big Problems regarding affordable, flexible shared storage that need solving.
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[Tim Wilson] “Cheap, reliable shared storage is a problem that’s already solved.”
There’s not much in that supply chain of shared storage that Grant could make more cheaply. The biggest chunk is drives, which he isn’t going to make. Everyone buys from about 4 options. After that it’s the chassis and server card, which numerous Asian manufacturers have already brought out at pretty low cost.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “There’s not much in that supply chain of shared storage that Grant could make more cheaply. The biggest chunk is drives, which he isn’t going to make. Everyone buys from about 4 options. After that it’s the chassis and server card, which numerous Asian manufacturers have already brought out at pretty low cost.
“Agreed, but I want to also note that cheap isn’t the only problem he’s tried to solve, by any means. The sharing aspect is also something that’s considerably more difficult than the drives themselves, and that too has been solved by a number of companies. Integrated ones like Avid have actually figured out how to do this at a far more compelling price point than was previously imaginable while also scaling up vastly higher, and there are cheap software-only solutions that ride on top of the storage of your choice, plus everything in between. There’s hardly anyplace to even theoretically slot another solution into that ecosystem.
Again, that’s the exact opposite of what Grant has done. There were huge opportunities for video IO, especially at the pricepoint he established. Colorgrading was on the rise, with Apple clearly punching a hole in the pre-BMD Resolve ecosystem with Color, but Grant blew it up even bigger by solving a number of related problems, including control surfaces and an attention span on the developer’s part. ????
Cinema cameras were on the rise, but affordably only being driven by DSLRs before Canon went all-in on actual video-oriented products, which was by no means a given was ever going to happen before Grant threw down.
DAW obviously going boldly where nobody ever imagined, via Fairlight. It’s still stupefying to me that Grant did this. Anyone who hasn’t read Marco Solorio’s take on this needs to — and if you have, read it again. ???? This is MASSIVE.
We also haven’t yet seen the productized version of ATEM switchers with Ultimatte brains built in, but you know it’s coming as the broadcast story gets built out. Bob Zelin’s fantastic NAB review pointed to several other gaps in Blackmagic’s story (notably, lens control), and I’m excited to see those filling in….
…but nowhere in here do disks and sharing figure as industry-wide problems to be solved. In fact, I’d say that the extent to which it’s a buyer’s market with so many cheap but really, really good solutions is part of the reason why it’s so brutal to be in the storage business. You can have fun if you’re as nimble as LumaForge or as focused as Avid, but a mid-sized company swinging for the fences is exactly the wrong size, trying exactly the wrong thing, to be entering this market right now.
Needless to say, when Blackmagic releases their new shared storage — four seats free with four seats of Resolve for $995 — you can add it to the list of things I’m wrong about. ????
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[Oliver Peters] “Compare this to the attendance at the various FCPworks sessions, which were free. I mean no offense, here, as these were good and valuable sessions. But the difference in numbers is striking. A”
Dude, keep your Apples out of my Oranges.
Adobe spends MILLIONS on CC product marketing. Apple barely spends peanuts on X. Yet somehow, given that, X has SOLD to beyond parity in global seats.
Look, the Supermeet hasn’t been an “Apple” thing in years. The last 5 years you can hardly find a Mac at a presentation there. Last year Steve Martin and Mark Spencer did ONE presentation – and this year Thomas Grove Carter did ONE presentation. That’s IT.
Everything you saw about X at NAB was private, not Corporate dollars talking – the whole thing is is pretty astonishingly grass roots. Heck we didn’t even KNOW we would be doing the LumaForge stuff until about 4 weeks prior to NAB!
I bet Adobe and AVID started working (and spending) for NAB 2018 a few days after we got back from last year.
You remove ALL that money for the big south hall booths, the monster banners wrapping the halls promoting stuff, and ARMIES of booth monkeys (a term of true endearment!) and our Apples start to look a little more like your Oranges.
It’s a very different dynamic.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
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