we’re gathered around a very small pond.

[Craig Seeman]

So you think Avid’s steady decline is a better business model to service the Pros? If you want apocalyptic Avid may well be the exquisite band playing on the Titanic. The band is great. The ship and the passengers are elite. It’s taking on water.

The business approach to service Pros is going to change radically. It’s that or die.

[Aindreas Gallagher]

we’re all going to end up in a tumbled mess on windows at this rate craig. Its going to end up the only place to go, and their start menu just turned into windows phone. this is all going to get a lot, lot less fun from here on out. and possibly a lot more expensive if we’re completely hived off from the herd.

who realistically thinks the next (last?) version of the mac os is likely usable for video professionals?

it’s the first time I actually genuinely thought that.

the days of FCP studio are going to end up being eulogised. particularly if avid goes under now too.

editing is sliding into a hole here.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[David Lawrence]

I think the big potential winner here is Adobe.

Here’s my recipe for how they take over the professional pond:

1) Make Premiere Pro awesome. Fix the weird quirks and make configuring sequences more flexible and intuitive.

2) Have Wes Plate write a FCP7 project import plugin for PP. No XML needed, import a FCP7 project directly from the import menu in the program. Make it work 100%. If you can’t make it work 100%, create a clean way for the user to manually resolve conflicts and get 100% translation. You can do it!

3) Get Walter Murch to cut a feature with it.

4) Profit!

Seriously, if they do this they will own the FCP user base.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Aindreas Gallagher]

yep.

god please let them bat PPro 6 cleanly out of the park.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[David Roth weiss]

[David Lawrence] “Seriously, if they do this they will own the FCP user base.”

I’d say we’re only about a heartbeat away from that scenario right now David.

The only obstacle would be what Avid might have to say about it, and I for one seriously doubt Avid is really on the ropes to the extent others here seem to think they are.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

Don’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Craig Seeman]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “we’re all going to end up in a tumbled mess on windows at this rate craig. Its going to end up the only place to go, and their start menu just turned into windows phone.”

But this is because even Windows is re-evaluating the market regards what an OS should offer. The point is the entire market is changing.

To me Macs and Thunderbolt will give me maximum flexibility (with other Macs at least). Actually Asus and Acer have announced support for Thunderbolt as well. I’ll bet it’ll be on laptops first. Somebody is thinking that all this high speed I/O is in demand on laptops the most . . . because pros don’t use laptops, you think?

[Aindreas Gallagher] “the days of FCP studio are going to end up being eulogised. particularly if avid goes under now too.

editing is sliding into a hole here.”

All the NLE makers are grappling with this and certainly the Pros are as well. When Pros paid $100k for a system it didn’t need to be a large market to be profitable relative to the low cost masses.

What we have is Avid and Apple both had portions (although sometimes different portions) of the Pro market and it are reacting to the changes in the economics of the Pro market.

Adobe Premiere Pro didn’t’ have that market (but certainly After Effects was there but there are certainly higher end contenders as well in motion graphics) and they’re trying to get further in that market. If all they pick up are the FCP pieces it may be limited growth. Of course Adobe, like Apple (and unlike Avid) isn’t solely dependent on the Pro market. They’re diversified companies.

Adobe is trying to make PP the logical FCP replacement. Apple is trying to expand the market base for professional I/O, storage, etc throughout their product line while they play a bit of catchup with their NLE.

Meanwhile systems builders have to deal with a market in which OS, hardware, NLEs themselves, are undergoing such rapid change that ROI has to be fairly quick because next year may look very different than this year.

The “saving grace” is relative to the past, the costs of changing has dropped to its lowest every. It would seem the model has changed from “spend $100k and you’re OK for 5 years” to “spend $10k and be prepared to spend another $10k next year.” Of course you have to factor in things like “equipment burn in” and an annual learning curve.

I think people are upset because we went through a period of stability XPs long life on Windows, the rarely changing Avid, the steady state of FCP and incremental software and hardware improvements on Mac. We’re now going through a period of rapid change and there’s little time to evaluate the change.

So the “dependable” Avid ship has been taking on water for years now.

Adobe doing its best to explain to them why they should be using something they’ve “overlooked” for years.

Apple doing “magic tricks” with new hardware and software and then trying to explain by pulling a select few into a back room to explain the magic because they don’t seem to want to give away how the trick works in public.

And we have Windows working towards there variant of the iOS experience as well as moving to shorter OS update schedules since the 95, 98, 00 , XP run with NT in there as well.

Wow, everyone keeps moving the cheese!
No wonder everyone is a nervous wreck about our livelihoods.
It certainly is justified.

[Craig Seeman]

[David Roth Weiss] “The only obstacle would be what Avid might have to say about it, and I for one seriously doubt Avid is really on the ropes to the extent others here seem to think they are.”

It’s a slow decline. There’s a big tizzy going on about the upgrade costs for a full blown ProTools 10 HD system in some audio pro circles. Avid is really having a problem. They’re not sinking fast but it’s been a steady leak for several years now and it seems FCP to MC wasn’t much of a bump for them.

[David Roth Weiss] “I’d say we’re only about a heartbeat away from that scenario right now David. “

I think there’s still a lot of nervousness about them in Feature Film market and maybe the Broadcast market as well. They’re making gains for sure but they’ve got a long way to go. I think PP6 sales will be a much better indicator than PP5.5 cross grades

[Craig Seeman]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “god please let them bat PPro 6 cleanly out of the park.”

So we all seem to be hopping that someone does that. That’s exactly the kind of insecurity in the market right now. With FCP7 gone, no one has hit the home run yet.

The picture might be clearer after
MC6
PP6
FCPX 10.1 (or at least 10.0.5 or thereabouts).

And we have to see how Thunderbolt progresses (on both Mac and Windows).

[Richard Cardonna]

When Wes Plate closes shop and goes to work as an employee, their must be somthing to say of the state of the content business. He saw something we have not… yet
rcardonna

[Michael Gissing]

[Richard Cardonna] ” When Wes Plate closes shop and goes to work as an employee, their must be somthing to say of the state of the content business. He saw something we have not… yet
rcardonna”

Or maybe he wants a regular wage. Perhaps he has children who need an education. I am not reading much into the Duck situation other than Adobe is getting serious and picking up the fallout of the FCPX implosion. If Wes thought the industry was in ruin why would he stay with it at all?

Sure, broadcast is in a decline. But people predicted the cinema would die when TV arrived and were wrong. Now with the internet and the democratising of content distribution, there is still a market for professional story telling once the youtube hype flattens. There are one billion more potential viewers than there were 12 years ago.