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PremiumBeat: With Premiere Pro and FCPX on the Rise, Where Did Avid Go Wrong?
Short but interesting article pointing out Avid’s mistakes. Of course one may argue that Avid has no interest in competing in markets outside of Hollywood anymore but the article notes PremierePro and even FCPX’s move into that market (albeit still in finger counted on hands numbers).
PremiumBeat: With Premiere Pro and FCPX on the Rise, Where Did Avid Go Wrong?
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/decline-of-avid-editing-software/ -
25 Replies
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Very poorly conceived and researched article. One big part of it is based on people who GOOGLED certain NLEs, not used them. That is no indicator of who’s using what, where.
I am not saying Avid isn’t in trouble…isn’t without issues. It most certainly is. But the things laid out in the article are not it. Parts are, but it only scratches the surface, and just goes off the road in places. IMHO.
Big part of Avid’s issues are the need to placate the old guard who don’t want any changes…at all. And they are pretty vocal. And that’s a thorn in Avid’s side, for sure…
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Shane Ross] “Big part of Avid’s issues are the need to placate the old guard who don’t want any changes…at all. And they are pretty vocal. And that’s a thorn in Avid’s side, for sure…
“This has indeed been the biggest issue for Avid through the years. However, it’s also why Avid still exists, and why it’s not going away any time soon.
Innovation by Avid’s development teams is typically rejected by longterm users, while it’s expected and embraced everywhere else. It’s pretty tough to grow a new audience when you’ve got little new to show.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los AngelesDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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Which begs the question, what happens when the old guard retires at a higher rate than they are replaced?
If the replacement rate were greater, Avid MC would be expanding even if slowly. Perhaps Avid is willing to let MC die by attrition. -
This article leaves much to be desired. And about MC|First? I asked about that on the Avid Community Forums and Avid people “think” it might be in beta, but “not to quote” them on that. Research please!
Then again, I remember debating over an article about Avid a year ago, where the author pointed out Avid’s problems, its outlandish forward-looking statements, and predicted the stock would sink to $6. Many folks here called it a “hatchet-job” and the author had an axe to grind. As of now, Avid is at $5.89.
Not sayin’, but just sayin’…
Question: is Premiere and AE in the same boat as Avid? Any big (and needed, IMHO) changes to the interface will set the “new old guard” howling? Just asking. 😉
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “Question: is Premiere and AE in the same boat as Avid? Any big (and needed, IMHO) changes to the interface will set the “new old guard” howling?”
AE yes, Ppro no, for the simple reason that many Ppro users are fairly new to the system and spend much of their time trying to make it act like something else. Ppro has been changing constantly over the past 5 years and nobody is screaming yet. On the other hand AE users are very heavily invested in it’s form and will balk at any but evolutionary change.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Craig Seeman] “Which begs the question, what happens when the old guard retires at a higher rate than they are replaced?”
Avid has certain tools that nobody else has and charges more for them. Until someone comes up with something better than Isis and ScriptSync, tools that are absolutely essential in some workflows, Avid will have a place in the market. Companies who need those tools will pay for it, because it makes them money. They will train people to use those tools and will find no shortage of willing workers because their niche, while small, is very glamorous. Nobody goes to film school dreaming of making a corporate video.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
First, me too on everything Herb said. LOL Especially this:
[Herb Sevush] “Ppro has been changing constantly over the past 5 years and nobody is screaming yet. On the other hand AE users are very heavily invested in it’s form and will balk at any but evolutionary change.”
The example typically given is MC, but I completely agree: AE users are every bit as resistant to UI changes in particular.
[Craig Seeman] “Avid MC would be expanding even if slowly. “
There’s no data to suggest it’s not. Quite the contrary, there’s data to suggest that Avid is regaining customers that were previously lost to FCP, a story which our own Mark Raudonis can tell.
The larger problem with the story is that all the assumptions are wrong, and the few data he cites go in a different direction than his story.
To use one small example among several, he mentions Hail, Caesar! — yep, cut on Premiere, but the Coens had been using Final Cut Pro for years. Apple lost those customers, not Avid.
So let’s ask the question, what did APPLE do wrong that has allowed Adobe Premiere to gain a foothold so quickly?
Anybody here have any suggestions about what Apple might have done wrong? LOL
I say ironically of course, because I boldly predicted in this very forum that FCPX would increase Apple’s footprint 10x by the end of the first year. I am clearly an idiot. LOL But I felt that strongly about its potential, and it didn’t come close to coming to pass. It may not have increased ANYTHING.
In fact, when this dude cited “some” of the major features made with FCPX and Premiere — NO. He didn’t cite SOME. He cited damn near ALL of them.
AGAIN SPEAKING STRICTLY OF MAJOR HOLLYWOOD,
AGAIN SPEAKING STRICTLY OF MAJOR HOLLYWOOD,
ACE’s membership had shown Media Composer usage trending UP before the introduction of FCPX, which makes me sorry that they don’t do the gear summary anymore….but the usage of MC in MAJOR HOLLYWOOD had been running right around 90% for years.
So let’s see: last year there were 500-ish major studio and “major” indie releases — how many more than 50 non-MC features do you think there were? Really?
Where then is the evidence that Avid is slipping AT ALL?
Again noting that he’s talking about SHARE, not about DOLLARS. Any chimp knows why Avid’s DOLLARS are slipping: their core product dropped from $20,000 to $5000 in a 3 year span, then drops down to a thousand bucks a few years later. The number of video-professional-focused storage vendors is going UP, not down.
Back to the article itself….
Shane’s observation that Google searches are irrelevant is also dead on. When’s Apple’s peak? Spring of 2011. I WONDER WHY. How much of that Google traffic turned into money for Apple? It turns out, damn little.
Which suits Apple fine. That’s no longer the game they’re playing.
That chart doesn’t tell you ANYTHING about the exact nature of the searches (presumably a good number of them containing words I can’t repeat here), or how people felt about what they found.
Otherwise, we’d be looking at that chart and saying, Wow, Apple is the only company going down, and they’re going down A LOT.
I’m not going to jump the rails and use that same stupid graph to SUPPORT my view, but look at what it’s saying about MC over the past 10 years: damn near flat.
Which is EXACTLY what I’m saying. YES, the industry is experiencing explosive growth. We have a front row seat at the COW. I believe that we’ve done as much as anyone (and frankly, more than most) to facilitate it.
So it’s easy for it to LOOK like Avid is falling behind…something…and they clearly ARE falling behind…some things…but NONE of them are the ones this guy identifies in the article! He really did get almost every single thing wrong.
Oh wait a minute. Let’s check that chart again. Over the last 10 years, Adobe is WAY off their peak. Apple is WAY off THEIR peak. Avid is the ONLY company that’s at a higher level than in 2005!!!! Barely, but there’s no way you can draw a conclusion based on that chart that Avid’s overall interest has slipped the tiniest hair. It simply hasn’t. Not the tiniest hair.
Shoddy, shoddy analysis. Clearly not even looking at what he’s typing. A sad waste of electrons.
There’s also some bad business analysis there. I feel for my friends and family members who’ve been laid off. It’s excruciating. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But layoffs may NOT ONLY be a sign that the ship is sinking, but they CAN be a sign that the ship is righting itself. “You know what? Our business has changed. We don’t need as many people as we used to.”
Not that I’m saying that’s the case with Avid. I don’t know. But I don’t get the feeling that this guy does either. If he does know, he sure hasn’t put it in that article.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff around this topic, hence this forum, and hence me yapping on it when I’m not drowning in NAB stuff. (We’re going to send out a newsletter a bit later today collecting our NAB stories so far. We typically get 700 or so a year. I think we’ve got over 2000 already.)
I think the BIGGEST thing he’s missed is the extent to which Adobe has gotten things right. Yeah yeah subscription ransomware thievery customer disregard blah blah blah. Take your pick. Doesn’t matter. They’ve got more customers than ever, are making more money than ever, have products that keeps getting better on top of some of the industry’s most aggressive development….not to say that they don’t need to do better…but really, who doesn’t….
…and to underscore, I remain bullish both on Final Cut AND Avid too…
…which highlights the last of his problems that I’ll point out for now. He’s acting like it’s a zero sum game, that just because I’m using one particular NLE now, I’ll never ever ever use another again EVER.
Ficarra and Requa have mentioned in interviews that after WTF, their next project was a TV pilot cut on Avid. It reminded them of everything they don’t like about MC, and highlighted everything they love about X…and yet, MC made sense, so they used it.
And yes, I bet they’ll go back to X the first chance they get, but the COW is packed to the rafter with people using more than one NLE, while truly also being packed with people who’ll never budge off their current choice…which, uhm, wasn’t their current choice 6 or 7 years ago. LOL Or 2 years ago. LOL
My point being that it’s easy to treat a snapshot as indicative of The Big Picture, but it’s rarely true. And when the snapshot is as far out of focus as this one is, it’s NEVER true.
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Maybe this will help Avid:
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Herb Sevush] “Until someone comes up with something better than Isis and ScriptSync,”
Last I heard, Phrase Find and Script Sync are not available to Avid. Seems Nexidia and Avid have been negotiating for 2 years on a deal to being it back. Which brings to another problem Avid has; it’s senior team seems more interested in re-organization (or “transformation” as Louie puts it) and squeezing out cashflow than they seem to be in what the user base actually needs. Oh, and paying themselves a ton of money as noted on the L:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Avid-L2/conversations/topics/127866
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Shane Ross] “And that’s a thorn in Avid’s side, for sure…”
For sure. One wonders what might have been if Avid had had the “testicular fortitude” to drop a badly aging, nearly 20-year-old platform and reinvent their NLE – kinda like Apple did, but without the arrogant and bungled introduction.
I find it frustrating that most of Avid’s new features, especially when it comes to modern frame sizes and tapeless workflow, feel bolted on, rather than integrated and well implemented. (Will AMA ever be anything more than a kludge?)
Yes, I know the ISIS (and Unity before it) shared workflow is great. But, honestly, there are so many things about the actual editing process in Avid that feel SO cumbersome after all these years. And even more so the basic media and file management stuff. I always feel this strong sense of “back in my day, we walked 5 miles to school in the rain, and we liked it!” oozing from the keyboard.
On the other hand, v8 has some good, long-needed improvements.
On the other other hand (3 hands – yikes!), so many facilities are working on badly outdated versions, because “why fix it if it ain’t broke,” it almost doesn’t matter .
(slinks back to his FCPX system and crosses himself…)
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