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Working Over the weekend…
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[Oliver Peters] “Not in the sense that the tools are cheaper so the budgets are as well. Rather that there are so many more media outlets available that any given destination will yield fewer eyeballs. The total pie has about the same amount of money. We are simply being offered smaller slices as a trickle-down of what producers can expect. The biggest component in most budgets is labor and not gear.”
But don’t you wind up in a similar place though?
If you’re correct (and you may be) than Avid should focus on a $100,000 NLE to serve the niche and they’d do well. There certainly are products that serve that niche but certain tool such as NLEs and even Workstations have become commoditized.I keep bringing up Avid since they seem like the most obvious example since they’ve cut their NLE prices and have moved away from proprietary cards. I don’t think they’d have done it if the Broadcast/Feature Film niche were enough for them to survive . . . or do you believe that was a mistake. Should they have just ceded the “mid tier” to FCP and held prices and find other ways to expand sales (more expensive hardware and software items)?
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[Craig Seeman] “But don’t you wind up in a similar place though?”
Probably so.
[Craig Seeman] “If you’re correct (and you may be) than Avid should focus on a $100,000 NLE to serve the niche and they’d do well.”
I don’t believe that’s what I’m arguing, but so far it does seem to have worked for Quantel and Autodesk. At least partially. Quantel survived due to a leveraged buy-out by employees and venture capital coupled with their unexpected success in the DI space. Autodesk Media & Ent is really backstopped by income from AutoCAD, 3D animation and video gaming.
[Craig Seeman] “I keep bringing up Avid since they seem like the most obvious example since they’ve cut their NLE prices and have moved away from proprietary cards.”
Avid has actually been progressively cutting prices for 10 years. The third-party hardware has been a two-year evolution at this point.
[Craig Seeman] ” I don’t think they’d have done it if the Broadcast/Feature Film niche were enough for them to survive . . . “
Yes, they would have because of the competitive pressures in those spaces as well.
[Craig Seeman] “Should they have just ceded the “mid tier” to FCP and held prices and find other ways to expand sales (more expensive hardware and software items)?”
That would have been difficult for them to do because of the size and make-up of the company. Likewise, Apple would have never have sold FCP at the prices they did, were that a primary and majority stream of income for Apple.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Autodesk Media & Ent is really backstopped by income from AutoCAD, 3D animation and video gaming.”
That certainly speaks to the importance of diversified “risk.”
Adobe and Apple each have diversity although for very different reasons and business models.
Avid doesn’t because nearly all their revenue is a couple of hardware products for the niche. It’s too early to tell whether the Pro Tools HD complaints impact their bottom line but it certainly can open doors to the competitors.[Oliver Peters] “Avid has actually been progressively cutting prices for 10 years. The third-party hardware has been a two-year evolution at this point.”
But is this a business model that will turn them around? I doubt it.
[Oliver Peters] “Yes, they would have because of the competitive pressures in those spaces as well.”
But that’s my point. No one can sell to a niche at near commodity prices as a successful business model. Either one focuses on the “Pro” niche with high prices or one comes up with a different business model. Avid doesn’t even seem close to doing that. 5 losing years is not a good sign. The loss is smaller this year, they layoffs are fewer, but that may just be that the bloodletting doesn’t have much more blood left to lose.
[Oliver Peters] “That would have been difficult for them to do because of the size and make-up of the company. Likewise, Apple would have never have sold FCP at the prices they did, were that a primary and majority stream of income for Apple.”
The end result is Avid had to do what they did . . . but came up with no alternative business model. With all the “excitement” I see on this and other lists about MC6 I think there’s a bit of “ostriching” going on regarding the financial shape of the company. Throw in the complaints about Pro Tools hardware upgrade pricing and their future keeps getting bleaker (IMHO).
All this, to me, has to do with how valuable that “Pro” niche really is or isn’t. It’s very tough for a company to target that space primarily and survive. It can and is being done, just not by Avid.
Maybe a more diverse company will buy or bail Avid out. Maybe they’ll make a radical change but that might impact Media Composer. Push everyone into a very expensive DS upgrade? So much for the $995/$1495 switchers in that case. There’s going to be hurt somewhere.
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Craig, you really weirdly focused. If I were buying stock, this is the conversation we should be having. Also, I wasn’t pushing Avid, though you seem to think so. I don’t know how we got here, but lets go point by point and put this to rest.
[Craig Seeman] “Can Avid meet your needs if they fold?”
Yes. Im my ecosystem, which is Hollywood and environs, Avid is so entrenched–and is, by far, the most use NLE–that if the company folded tomorrow, it would still be a useful system for the next five years. It is built into the infrastructure of Hollywood, far more deeply than FCP7, its closest rival. But why assume that Avid id going to fold? Could it? Certainly. These are tough times for many companies. But they are hardly out. And, there chief competitor has shot their chief competition in the head. So who knows. But, yeah, I’m fine with Avid (and FCP7) for the next five years. And, even if I’m not there are a number of other edit systems out there that do what I need better than FCP X currently does.
[Craig Seeman] “Adobe and Apple though are both healthy. They both have ecosystem approaches although Adobe is software based and Apple is tied into hardware.”
Great. No one uses FCP X or Premiere in the world I work in, so however healthy they happen to be in their ecosystems, they are dead in mine. But, I’m grateful to have Premiere there, since it offers a viable alternative to FCP7 and Media Composer. If Avid ever does upend, Premiere will be there to give us what we need. And, because Adobe isn’t tied to an island platform, I know I’ll be able to find a workstation I can use, long after OS X has become iOS XI. I know that you think that FCP X may someday be up to snuff–and it might–but a multitude of signs aren’t pointing in that direction.
[Craig Seeman] “What is offered to meet your needs is very much dependent on the company business models.
Discreet(Autodesk) Edit met needs. Many like it. They left the market.”Yeah, and it was a bad move. But WHAT is your point? Companies do things for all kinds of motives. I get that understanding what their motives are is important for investment. I mean, duh. Even this forum seems to be chiefly about coming to terms with what Apple’s intentions are. So, it is not like we are not aware of that.
[Craig Seeman] “The business model is inescapable and inextricably tied to meeting needs. Any separation is an artifice of language in my opinion.”
Right. Which is why a lot of people sincerely doubt that professional high-end NLE is any kind of certain future with Apple, with either their NLE or their hardware.
[Craig Seeman] “Companies offer what meets THEIR needs as well and if it doesn’t meet their needs they won’t offer something that meets yours.”
Certainly. But what is important for ME at the end of the day, is if FCP X meets my needs.
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[Walter Soyka] “They are creating FUD about themselves!”
[Bill Davis] “But is that a strategy, or merely an artifact of the fact that they’re keeping their eye on the game of development, rather than wasting too time explaining themselves.”
I don’t believe that communicating with your customers is ever a waste of time — especially loyal customers who built their businesses around your products, who are now looking at your most recent decisions and are wondering it you’re still committed to them and their needs.
[Bill Davis] “You could claim that not having “official spokespeople” even back then was also driving FUD – but the difference is that back then, nobody much cared about FCP. All I see is Apple doing precisely what’s worked well in the past (keeping things close to the vest and letting the work speak for itself) and that the only thing that’s changed is the massive perceived “need” in the minds of thousands of us on boards like this that being privy to their plans is the only possible key to our happiness.”
The critical difference between the launch of FCP v1 and the launch of FCPX is the two million seats of FCP Apple claimed at the Supermeet. FCP had no user base at the launch of v1, but today, it’s the key tool for who knows how many thousands of businesses and careers.
The problem with letting the work speak for itself — at least for now — is that the work is saying “I am not ready for high-end use today, but maybe I will be someday.”
[Walter Soyka] “Why wouldn’t a cross-platform workflow be smart in any market?”
[Bill Davis] “I actually don’t think so in a lot of cases. In some ways I think it’s like an individual trying to be both a guitar and a banjo player. You can become “competent” at both. But to really excel, I think most musicians typically concentrate on one instrument. There are exceptions, and I suppose it’s a bit based on whether you want to see the editor as a “technician” (operating a variety of tools) or an “artist” (attempting to achieve absolute mastery of one). Both views are rational. Pick one, I guess.”
There are a few things I see wrong with this analogy. The first is your premise that an artist is one who masters a single tool. I can’t buy into your distinction between “technician” and “artist” based on number of and proficiency with tools.
The second is the notion that mastering a single tool is a good thing for our jobs. Go back 2 to 5 years and think about how people stopped billing themselves as “Avid editors” and instead referred to themselves as “editors” to avoid artificially limiting their prospects. Knowing an NLE inside and out is only valuable if you’re also actually a good editor.
The third is the notion that the work products of musicians and editors are comparable. For musicians, the performance is the product. I assume you’d agree that the vast majority of FCP edit sessions are unsupervised — and are therefore the edited piece itself, not the process that made it, is the product.
The fourth is that is “artist” is even the right word to use to describe most of our jobs.
We usually compare editors with craftspeople. We use analogies that compare editorial with people who make furniture, or people working in the trades. People who must possess both a degree of artistry and technical skill. People who are able to use whatever tools are most appropriate to create a new, finished work from raw, unfinished materials.
We would never argue that a master carpenter or cabinet maker would be better for choosing only to master the use of a hammer at the exclusion of all other woodworking tools.
So it is with knowing multiple NLE applications or working on multiple platforms. We add no value as tool-users or button-pushers; we add value by knowing how to get the finished product from the raw materials, through the use of whatever tools are best suited to any particular job.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “We would never argue that a master carpenter or cabinet maker would be better for choosing only to master the use of a hammer at the exclusion of all other woodworking tools.
“You know, I’m worried about those master carpenters and cabinet makers because just about anybody in the world can now buy a cheep hammer, and that is going to put them all out of work. But, they are the country-club set and high priests of the craftsman world, so they probably deserve it.
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Sorry, I got distracted.
I stumbled across a Katie Couric Special interview on ABC with Beyonce Knowles.
What stopped me was hearing Beyonce say: “I’ve learned to use Final Cut Pro so I can edit my own projects.”
Yeah, nothing’s changing out there.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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My dental hygienist was asking me about all the final cut pro “controversy”. She had heard about it and has no interest in editing.
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[Bill Davis] “Sorry, I got distracted.
I stumbled across a Katie Couric Special interview on ABC with Beyonce Knowles.
What stopped me was hearing Beyonce say: “I’ve learned to use Final Cut Pro so I can edit my own projects.”
Yeah, nothing’s changing out there.”
Bill, you are such a card!
A) There is nothing new about a performer/celebrity using Final Cut or Avid to work on their projects. Actually, that’s been going on since well before NLEs, back with Convergence systems. Of course, usually it is offline. Many actors do go on to be fine directors and sometimes editors, as well. Nothing new there.
B) Beyonce claims to have been using FCP for at least 9 months, so if you do the math, you’ll know which version of FCP she is talking about. It ain’t X. She also says that she likes someone else to do the physical editing, but she can if she has to.
C) I say claims because there seems to be some serious allegations flying around about her credibility on the matter. You might enjoy this:
https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/54237356.html
I have no idea who is right or wrong here, other than you being right, of course, that “nothing’s changing out there.”
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“There’s actually someone in Seattle not using Windows?”
Yup, the bigger post houses here are (were) as Mac centric as anywhere else… I know of a few smaller operations that fought to get Macs in their environments… now I wonder what moving away from FCPX will mean for them.
Shawn
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