OT-ish: This can’t be good

[Charlie Austin]

[Bob Zelin] “You know that I am a huge fan of LumaForge, although this product will not do AVID bin locking, required by most
AVID facilities.”

I’ll have to defer to Sam, but I believe they have implemented Bin Locking just recently via some sort of voodoo. 🙂

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[Tim Wilson]

[Scott Witthaus] “What is this “huge development” roll going to do right now? […] What is the goal in realistic terms?
“

The goal is to keep going, which they will either do or not do. I have no predictions about that, except to observe that people have been saying that Avid is done for most of this century, yet on Avid chugs. They’re not just talking about new stuff. They’re delivering it. On time, performing to expectations.

My specific point is also that people are saying “No no no, wait a minute — all those OTHER times I said that a new round of layoffs meant the end of Media Composer development and it didn’t happen? Forget it. THIS is the round of layoffs that means the imminent end of Avid.”

I have no way of knowing whether or not that’s true, but neither do they. But I do have historical and current evidence on my side that development continues, for Media Composer, NEXIS, and every product line I can think of. (Not that I know all of Avid’s product lines anymore. Does anyone?)

I’m going to go a step further. Given that this is the boldest we’ve seen Avid in years, and that they’re actually delivering on these ambitious plans — well, maybe, just maybe, the layoffs have been doing exactly what layoffs are intended to do: cut overhead, focus effort, and streamline efficient delivery of products to market.

[Scott Witthaus] “It’s gotta be a shitty place to work right now “

I can easily imagine a certain amount of whistling past empty desks right now, for sure. But if I were a product person, I’d also look at what’s been released in the past few months, and look at what’s coming and think, wow, I’m working on cool stuff that customers like, and is being used in some cool places. And if I was in marketing or PR, I’d be thinking, wow, I have some cool stories to tell. That’s rewarding.

Now, if C-level turmoil and lack of human resources were leading to slashed development, late, buggy releases, and customers at the gates with torches and pitchforks, that’s different.

But the question raised earlier in the thread was, how much longer will people keep using MC after the plug is pulled? My answer is at least as long as FCP 7 post-plug-pulling….and I should add as per Darren’s observation about ScriptSync etc, probably a lot longer than that….

…with a follow-up question whose answer I haven’t seen yet: what’s the evidence that THIS is the fatal blow? Or the one that leads more directly to the end of things than any previous blows?

Sure, there’s new unpleasantness. This isn’t the first time, though. I think it’s remarkable that no matter what has happened with the stock, the corner offices, moving the offices to cheaper digs, on and on and on, there haven’t been any significant deviations from a pretty cool march of fresh, timely development.

At what point do we get to call it a pattern that bad stuff happens to Avid, or that Avid does bad stuff to itself or whatever, yet they keep delivering the goods? Maybe there’s more than one ball to keep one’s eye on, but this IS one of the balls to keep an eye on. This is a different conversation when the products themselves start turning ugly.

In the meantime, what better does any of us have to do with our days than keep our eyes on both of Avid’s balls? LOL

Maybe this will be THE unpleasantness that zombies them out. At some point, pretty much every doomsday scenario comes to pass. I’m just waiting to hear from somebody whose doomsaying has a record even close to Avid’s record of delivering under dire business circumstances. So far, everyone who said that each of those other times was THE time is exactly oh-fer.

I’ll note here what can easily be discerned by the most casual look at previous posts of mine: my prognostication track record is mixed at best. If anything is going to put Avid under, it’s going to be my prediction that they’re not done yet.

[Ronny Courtens]

Hey Bob,

Sorry if I misunderstood your post, you know I value your opinion a lot.

As to Avid bin locking/project sharing on the ShareStation:

Yes, Sam and his team had come up with a solution to “kind of” support Avid project sharing, but we tested it and it did not really work to our satisfaction (I have a lot of client-friends who use Avid, though many of them are using FCP X and Media Composer side by side now). But since a few weeks a UK company called Indiestor has released a little application called Mimiq that does wat it says: it mimics Avid bin locking and project sharing on the ShareStation as if you were working off an Isis: https://indiestor.com/product/mimiq/

I have had this app tested by some Avid friends on a ShareStation running several Media Composer seats, and they said they were extremely happy with it. It’s a per-seat license but it only costs 180£/seat or approx. 1200£ for 10 seats, which is very cheap when you know how much money you can save by not needing to buy an Avid server.

– Ronny

[Scott Witthaus]

[Tim Wilson] ” Given that this is the boldest we’ve seen Avid in years, and that they’re actually delivering on these ambitious plans — well, maybe, just maybe, the layoffs have been doing exactly what layoffs are intended to do: cut overhead, focus effort, and streamline efficient delivery of products to market.”

Wow. I disagree with a lot of what you say, but respect your opinion greatly. However, I see the company in a bad place, catering to the same niche market and losing it’s identity elsewhere…and maybe Avid doesn’t care about “elsewhere”, but only it’s current niche it dominates. But what I see from outside the film or long-form broadcast market, is that Avid simply isn’t in, or is minor player in, the conversation. But that’s just my opinion and view

But here is a threat from the Avid-L that went up yesterday about more layoffs. Nothing ground-shaking but for the last post by Terry Curran, who had permission to post it:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Avid-L2/conversations/topics/129057

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter

[Claude Lyneis]

I am no expert on AVID, but this story reminds me of disruptive technologies and the disappearance of Kodak and Xerox. These were great companies, but are now shells of their former selves. Of course Kodak can still supply film stock for the biggest Hollywood films, but what else? With feature films being edited in PP and at least two on X, (just rewatched Whiskey, Foxtrot, Tango last night and it looked great), it seems that AVID is in a tough place.

My limited experience with AVID products was getting a subscription to Pro Tools for a student class. The website was a mess, the requirement to separately purchase an iLok, registration of both Pro Tools, the iLok, cross connecting them etc, took me some hours of frustration. Talk about barriers to new customers.

But as long as thirty year old editors haven’t switched from FCP7, there is hope for a long decay time constant.

[Scott Witthaus]

[Neil Sadwelkar] “But didn’t this happen in Feb? “

This story was the announcement of the plans. They layoffs came about last week.

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter

[Misha Aranyshev]

Technology didn’t kill Kodak. Kodak was one of the leaders in digital imaging. (Mis)management killed Kodak.

[Scott Thomas]

From everything I’ve read, and from talking to people who were in the industry in the 1970’s, Xerox was just as poorly managed, if not more so than Kodak. Check out “Dealers of Lightning” https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887309895

Met a guy in Vegas who worked for IBM in the 1970’s. You mention Xerox and he goes off on a tirade on how stupid they were. They did make money on the patents on the laser printer, but politics on the east coast kept them from fully benefiting.

Reminds me of Avid. I heard stories back in the day that the Tewkesbury engineers were rather protective of their domain.

[Scott Witthaus]

[Misha Aranyshev] “Technology didn’t kill Kodak. Kodak was one of the leaders in digital imaging. (Mis)management killed Kodak.”

Let”s just hope we are not saying the same thing in the future, just swapping the word Avid in for the word Kodak.

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter