[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Raudonis] ”
[Scott Thomas] “To me, this sounds like a rumor circulated by Avid to make themselves appear to be a more sound choice.
” Bingo!”

Before I came to the Cow, I worked at Avid, and I strongly disagree.

You’d think from reading the Cow that FCP was “the beginning of the end” for Avid, but it’s simply not true. Indie post has not been a primary target for Avid’s growth.

Avid have been skyrocketing in digital newsrooms and IT-based infrastructures, with little real competition. Their future was nothing but bright if they could get their supply side together, and they were moving in the right direction.

FCP staying with Apple would be far better for Avid, because Apple would never have added the pieces that strike at Avid’s heart: IT-based ingest, massively scalable collaboration tools, hardware transcoding, enterprise-scale distribution and live-to-air playout servers.

FCP staying at Apple helped keep Avid safe in the areas that matter the most to Avid. Good software, but no collaboration tools, and no meaningful hardware to back it up.

On the other hand, Thomson already has all of the heavy iron and collaboration tools that Apple never will, but no serious front-end software.

If Thomson can successfully integrate FCP, Thomson finally presents a seriously challenge on every current path of Avid’s growth.

I believe Avid will see this as the worst thing to happen to them in a very long time. Bad, bad news indeed, with likely a negative impact on their stock.

It’s likely that Avid still has tricks up their sleeve — like discreet, they keep going, no matter how many people declare them dead. But there’s no way Avid would have started this rumor. They don’t want it to be true.

On the other hand, it will be great news for Thomson, and for FCP. I talked about this in a post just above this one, responding to that part of the thread.

I could be wrong. But that’s how I see it from my perspective as a former Avid employee. Bad news indeed.

[Tim Wilson]

First, I think folks missed the point of the Canopus purchase. Edius is moderatly interesting, but that’s all. They took it because it came for free.

Take a look at the entire Canopus product line, and you’ll see that if Thomson didn’t buy them, Grass Valley would have. (Ooops.) Canopus’s long suit has always been transcoding, scan converters, video capture to archive, realtime MPEG, distribution, playout servers….

….all things that Thomson was lacking….and all the things that FCP has lacked in order to be even POTENTIALLY a player in heavy iron broadcast, sports, news, etc.

Which is why the purchase by Thomson is the only story that makes sense. It provides the REAL content front end that Edius was never meant to be…although Edius is still interesting in ways that are too far off topic even for this thread.

The point is that the combination of Canopus and Pro Apps gives Thomson a breadth that finally challenges Avid in ways that FCP never could.

(Not that there aren’t plenty of OTHER ways that FCP has come after Avid from day one. Just not in any of Avid’s longest suits.)

I’ve been holding back the rumor for a while because I wasn’t sure it was worth repeating…yet…and seems now that it is.

Word has been bouncing around for a while that the purchase was maybe even completed a few months back, for the price of $400 million. The announcement will come in April, goes the story.

This is one of those deals where I have this from 3 separate sources, but for all I know, they’re hearing it from the same place in sequence…which means 1 source. But all of them (or the one) are highly credible to me.

Doesn’t mean any of this is true of course. But we’ll find out soon enough.

Final note about Final Cut in heavy iron broadcast: Mac has never, and I mean EVER, had a prayer of meaningful participation in anything but content creation, well outside the mainstream. That could change very quickly indeed….

…or Thomson could return Final Cut to its original cross-platform roots at Macromedia.

Media 100 wanted to buy Final Cut to run it as a Windows-only front-end for their now discontinued 844/x. The first Macromedia Final Cut demo most of us saw in 1998 was on Windows. And the alpha disk I got was cross platform. (See below.)

FWIW, I can’t imagine that Thomson would go any further than cross-platforming. Even if it was willing to do without the money that Mac users provide, leaving Mac would let Avid off the mat.

Thomson has no interest in letting Avid off the mat. This is full-contact competition.

So I say FCP stays on Mac until the sun goes nova, just that it would be interesting to add Windows back into the mix where it was in the beginning. I can’t imagine that the code’s not still there. It sure doesn’t seem to me that FCP has made any architectural changes from when it was at Macromedia, just formats and frame rates. Lord knows Pro Res for Win would be a snap.

Even if the Thomson rumor turns out not to be true, it SHOULD be true. 🙂 Seriously, it’s the only move that makes any sense at all for either Apple or Thomson.

Besides, I hope its true so I can tell you the rest of the story. 🙂

Love,
Tim Wilson
Creative COW

PS. Here’s the picture of my Alpha 5 disk, if you haven’t seen it before.

[Tim Wilson]

[Timothy J. Allen] “All told this decision doesn’t reflect on the health of Avid or Apple as it does for the health of the NAB convention.”

This is what we’ve been saying for months. NAB is less and less relevant to ANYONE, and certainly to our end of the industry, not at all.

(The exception remains that it’s a grand opportunity for face to face interaction with online pals. It also remains important for the heavy iron crowd who’ve been the bedrock of NAB the organization, rather than the expo.)

In fact, I threw up the “dead, bankrupt, lying” subject line to show the absurdity of any aspect of second-guessing either company. They’ve both been explicit, that they’ve backed out because NAB has nothing to offer them.

Timothy, you’re right about Apple, they’ve done all that they need to do at NAB.

For Avid, their best customers don’t go to NAB. In TV, they’re preparing for sweeps (both news and advertising), as well as working actively on season-ending reality shows, final stages of posting summer series, and prepping (and in some cases already shooting) fall series. April is a crazy time to think about taking a break.

In movies, the summer blockbuster season begins May 1, and in earnest by Memorial Day. Taking a break in April is unthinkable.

These are just a few reasons why Avid’s customers have been demanding for years that the news come to THEM — they can’t go see it, period. Not an option.

The bottom line for both: nothing to accomplish at NAB. No need to second-guess them to divine their motives. They’ve said that NAB isn’t useful for them.

Maybe because I’ve been at it too long and grateful to get out, but I’m head-slappingly mystified that anyone can imagine ANYTHING but that they’re skipping out for the reasons they say they are – variations on the theme that NAB has outlived its usefulness.

We here at the Cow couldn’t agree more, which is why we’ve been saying it so loudly for so long.

As for A&A, I’ll be shocked if either ever has a booth again.

Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
Get your free subscription to the Cow Magazine!
Join my LinkedIn network

[Tim Wilson]

Not picking on you, TK, but you’ve laid out the only issues I think are worth exploring.

An interesting discussion for another thread (please, on another thread), I’m going to disagree that layoffs at Avid are bad news — they need to do more, for the same reason that some people (not your or Walter) need to lose weight, for the same benefits: longevity, mobility, health…and good looks.

Leaving out money then, Apple is out of touch with its customers, getting out of post, and lying about its reasons for not having a booth. That’s what everyone said about Avid.

Let’s add that Apple is squirrelly. Avid made their announcement in the cold light of day, to every news outlet on the planet. Apple didn’t make an announcement. They snuck a sentence into the industry’s least significant, smallest circ mag.

BTW, Avid’s VP and GM showed up in the Cow to take heat. Let me know when Apple shows up here. I’ll bake a bundt cake. We’ll have ice cream.

Even though Apple’s not going to show up here, the only reason to scratch one’s head and try to figure out what Apple REALLY means is that you think they’re lying…and dead and out of touch and leaving post.

Or you can believe that both have nothing to gain by having a booth. Read Apple’s lips, just as Apple read Avid’s:

En. Ay. Bee. Is. A. Waste. Of. Time. And. Money.

Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
Get your free subscription to the Cow Magazine!
Join my LinkedIn network

[Tim Wilson]

I don’t believe you can use the RTX with a Mac.

However, there were 2 cards introduced at MacWorld.

I think the one you’re looking for is from Ambric. It accelerates effects previews, as well as rendering for both effects rendering and MPEG encoding for DVD. Here’s the announcement, with some extra details.

BTW, it turns out that there were a BUNCH of cool announcements at MacWorld – it’s just that none of them came from Apple. I did a speedy roundup of the ones I’ve found so far at my Cow blog. Scroll down a little for the 3 entries called MacWorld News Not to Lose.

Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
Get your free subscription to the Cow Magazine!
Join my LinkedIn network

[Tim Wilson]

Wow, I’d never seen Jing before. Looks very cool!

Snapz Pro is the original heavyweight screen capture app on Mac, but the promising upstart is iShowU. All the Mac tutorials on the site and all the Mac-oriented DVDs in our library use one of these.

I haven’t tried either, but both are held in very high esteem.

[Tim Wilson]

Besides, Robert, we can’t survive if the pages load too slow for you to keep visiting either. 🙂

Glad to hear it’s working better now.

Thanks,
Tim

[Tim Wilson]

Don’t forget that we have an NAB forum. It’s especially important to get that on everybody’s radar NOW, because I expect everyone who goes to post their impressions there. 🙂

And seriously, even though this one is under control, and thoughtfully labeled OT, it deserves more discussion than we can let it have here. We have a forum for it. It’s quiet now, but let’s work on lighting it up. It’s kind of like a party — the more people there, the more fun everyone has.

See ya over there.

Thanks for understanding,

Tim

Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
Get your free subscription to the Cow Magazine!
Join my LinkedIn network

[Tim Wilson]

Until I can track Bob down myself, my understanding is that he’s found shooting 23.98 for 29.97 delivery causes more problems for most people than it solves.

But I’m sure he’ll be happy to weigh in.

tw

[Tim Wilson]

Thus spake Boomie: The trade magazines have been moving towards a more “advertorial” stance for some time now. In fact, Studio’s recent “Tripod” issue read like a giant advertorial issue, with it even extending onto the cover. It was the first time that I can recall seeing advertorial actually showing up on the cover of a magazine.

Yeah, I was shocked to see that their COVER story was bought and paid for. I really never have never seen anything like it. At least they were ethical enough to let you KNOW they’re for sale. Good on ’em.

This isn’t the first time though, not by any stretch. Last month had a 7-page advertorial section on plug-ins. Other examples abound.

The irony in both cases is that there wasn’t actually news in either of these advertorials, which could at least justify their value to readers. No such luck. They’re only valuable to the people cashing the checks.

Taking an honest look at Videography and Dick, I’m shocked that they kept him around as long as they did. It’s surely a tribute to their respect for him, but he hasn’t been speaking to Vidy’s core mission for a while. They’re clearly moving into pure technology (which is where they first made their mark, isn’t it?), flavored with the same mundane, PR-driven content that looks like nearly everyone else.

A look at the most recent issue’s other columnists: one discusses DI using Avid DS Nitris with PostWorks, the other discusses subtitling for the Metropolitan Opera’s live HD broadcast in the wider context of internationalizing broadcast standards. None of these have anything to do with the genuinely useful tips that pack people into Dick’s sessions at WEVA and MCA-I.

I intend zero disrespect to anybody I just mentioned. For example, Dick mentions those sessions at his website, as those folks mention Dick. I’m just saying that looking honestly at both the websites for Dick and Videography shows why, to somebody like me who hasn’t even thought about Vidy in a long time until this came up, this looks like an inevitable parting of the ways. Videography hasn’t been about production techniques in a long time.

Of course, the Cow magazine isn’t either. But our pages aren’t for sale, and our stories are written by people actually doing the things they’re talking about.

Ron’s right — and I’m not just saying that because he’s the boss. He WISHES I’d agree with him because he’s the boss. 🙂 But a magazine as beleaguered as Videography has to pick a course and stick to it. If you think they’re making the wrong choices, that’s fine, and you should by all means talk to them about it. But that’s different than asking them to split their focus.

Which kind of, almost, brings it back to being a business topic. 🙂