[Ron Lindeboom]

[Raymond Motion Pictures] “The studio’s side? The guy’s a writer having a little fun.”

Nah, really?

😉

My favorite line was the one about “give and take…” — too funny.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[Kurt] “hah, yeah but if I’m not being a dick you guys never respond…”

VERY FEW questions ever go unresponded to — but keep in mind that I never fail to get rid of people who regularly cop a ‘tude and act like jerks. Maybe your’s are frequently incomplete, unclear and so full of ‘tude no one wants to mess with them???

Just a friendly warning.

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Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[Rennie] “In short, when one system crashed the editor would signal the “legs” into action. She could jump in strutting and talking (multi talented) and intro editor #2 who was following along editor #1 so he would just pick up and continue while editor #1 would re-boot and get back up to speed. When editor #2 crashed they jumped to the fishnets then back to #1 and so on. The more often this happened those who caught on would glance around the room at one another. They finally got through their presentation and I suspect only 10% of the people new about the constant crashes. To those 10% it was obvious the whole presentation was a well scripted art of deception to cover up the crashes that were only too common in nonlinear edit systems of the time.”

I saw this demo and have to agree, Rennie, it was one of the most ludicrous presentations that I had ever seen at NAB.

There were rock solid systems in those days, too. I had one of them and loved it. In fact, I still use it today, even though many others feel the obligation to buy every upgrade that comes along.

Me, I subscribe to the “if a hammer still drives nails, it’s a good hammer” school of tool buying and usage.

For some, chasing the upgrade trail is a great thing but for others, solid is good…just ask the lady on the stage that had to tremble with every crash of that “magic thing in the big black box” that kept her on her toes at NAB.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

I think that the operative word here is “opportunism,” Julie.

Another term might be “jockeying for marketing advantage” or “make NAB chase you.”

:o)

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Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

If you are having trouble with AE’s particle tools, then you must have either Trapcode’s Particular or particleIllusion from wondertouch.

There is a reason that both of these tools are so popular and sell so well, in spite of the fact that AE has its own built-in particle tools.

Tell ’em I said they’re both crazy and cheap — if they won’t buy you what you need.

Man, I am glad they are your bosses and not mine.

:o)

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Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

This is an insane request and if they want their finished images integrated into the mix, then they should give you the elements as separate and distinctly isolated objects/elements that you can then match to look like their “roughs” — as that is all those images are, no matter how pretty they may look to themselves.

Otherwise, you are going to have a rough time — no, an impossible time — matching the chroma/luma values and the size/placement of the objects.

Tell them that I said they are crazy and need to have their heads examined for even making such a request.

Also, if you can get the objects and elements they want used … think backward.

Create the finished look you want to end up with and then “deconstruct” the look into the various levels of target element placement that they want to see.

Then just remap the thing to play backwards.

It is way easier to start with the finished look. It is far harder to guess which objects should be where, when, so that you end up with a smooth animation and the look you want in the end. That is a far rougher ride.

But the best way to work is to use their images as an inspirational starting point and/or storyboard and build the elements yourself using AE’s tools and plug-ins.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[ronsuss] “Avid does indeed need to streamline and focus and the decision to not be at NAB may allow them to do just that. None the less it is fueling rumors and speculation about the future of Avid in general and lets face it, everyone gets a good ten year run in this industry and if you don’t keep up with the demands of your clients and the changes in technology you go away, no matter how entrenched you are in the industry.”

Most of the people discussing this and crying out “The End IS Near!” are not Avid customers. Of those that are “Avid” customers, they seem to be largely those who own either Xpress or Liquid — hardly Avid’s “core” market.

If Avid had never released Xpress or acquired Liquid, they be be hardly much different than they are right now, as Avid’s real business is far from either Xpress or Liquid.

That is not to insult either product or the users of them, it is just that I’d rather buy into where a company is firmly entrenched rather than where they are merely scratching the surface of a market.

Example?

Why yes, I do have one as a matter of fact…

Back when I bought my first Media 100 v1.2 back in 1994, Avid had a product called Avid Media Suite Pro.

Many of my friends that I knew back then who were aware of the nonlinear systems and had been working with Toasters and other systems, recommended that I put my money on Avid. They told me I should get a Media Suite Pro.

But I had been in the aerospace industry for a while and knew of Data Translation (who originated the Media 100) and so I told my friends that these people at DT were the ones that taught the CIA how to compress, acquire and broadcast images from satellites out in the Clark Orbital Belt. I gambled that Media 100 would have the suds — and they did, for years. At the time that Avid users were arguing that you couldn’t online with a nonlinear system and that “…that is why companies have invented EDL software, dummy” — me and all my Media 100 friends like Nick Griffin, Tim Wilson and others were working with a system that could online.

It was where Media 100 put all their focus. It was all they did at the time. We got all their attention — well, until they lost focus years later, thinking that they could become iMovie or something.

Our “money-spent equals” who gambled on the entry-level Avids at the time? They fared not so well, as Avid didn’t pay much attention to Media Suite Pro users. (I converted many of them to Media 100 users and made quite a business for a while out of consulting with these users.)

Do people weight their options rightly? Not really, as it happened again.

Later Avid acquired Plum and took the Plum editor into Avid and made it into a short-lived product called Avid MCXpress, as I recall. In a company that was largely almost entirely Windows at the time, a few intrepid souls began buying MCXpress for Windows. Smartest move these buyers ever made? Probably not. It wasn’t long and MCXpress was gone and Avid was trying to upgrade these users from a $10,000 to $15,000 system to Avid’s real products, that were $100,000 and up. Did many bite? I don’t know of one that I ever knew.

For a short while, I used an Avid Xpress Elite that ran on Mac — the Windows version of this one was much better — and liked it for a while. But Avid, once again, didn’t pay their lower-end tools a lot of attention.

I had gambled that as the market grew, Avid would realize that with greater numbers they could make a lot of money at the more entry-level of their systems base. But I lost that gamble as both Avid and Autodesk/Discreet realized that chasing $1,000 systems didn’t make much sense for them.

The $1,000 strategy works for many companies but not for companies that are geared the way that Avid, Discreet and others are geared.

If I were to consult with Avid again today, I would recommend that they take hard looks at how best to use Pinnacle as their lower-end. Move Liquid back to Pinnacle. Make it the rocket-engine of that line, not the bastard step-child to the Avid line.

Take a lesson from SGI — who scrapped plans to release video monitor boards that would have trounced ATI and nVidia in the market — SGI said that they didn’t want to compete between themselves. So they didn’t.

The lesson?

A multi-billion dollar industry happened in which they had no part. But one which they could have owned.

Instead, SGI has faded into obscurity and is a shadow of its one-time glory and prominence in the market.

There are two lessons in this post:

• As a user, make sure that you buy into a company’s core business as it will get their real attention. (Step-children only rarely get the real inheritance and affection.)
• As a company, don’t be afraid to gamble your teams against one another. (If SGI had done so, they would likely be driving all of our monitors right now and sitting on a wad of cash, instead of watching most all they had float away in the changing winds of the market.)

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[David Roth Weiss] “Good to see you out and about playing in the pasture again…”

I have some time as I just finished designing the new issue of Creative COW Magazine. Mister Wilson did a masterful job of getting some wonderful content and co-ordinating the stories so our obligatory paean to the great 70’s concept albums, lives on. The theme for this issue is “Commercials: History, Strategies, Design, Techniques and More.”

It will go online Monday for download and I think that it may be the best issue we have done to date. But the marketplace will decide that.

In the meantime, I better get back to one of my newer concept albums, Sufjan Stevens’ “(Come On Feel The) Illinoise.” He’s like a bit of Todd Rundgren thrown in with a bit of REM, Dan Fogelberg and a smattering of 60s things — all steeped in just the right musical spices for flavor.

And like a good commercial, Yum!

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[David Roth Weiss] “Those are the one’s presumably with the advertiser’s targets pinned on their backs… The other two groups are: 1) willing sheep, with the targets pinned on the front; and 2) the lemmings, no targets required.”

David,

As ever, you are one of the true masters of prose and metaphor.

Ever your fan,

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

Hello Graham,

I must say, we appreciate you taking the time to sign up here at the COW and to don your bullet-proof vest and come in here and address the crowd.

This kind of appearance is exactly the kind of thing that Tim and I (and others) have been arguing is far more apt to happen online or at a roadshow, than on the battlefloor of NAB.

I have met many Avid leaders in the past, David Krall, Chas Smith, et al, but it is always just a few minutes and then they are off to something else or I have to run to an appointment. It’s the nature of the beast.

But it’s different in the roadshows that I have been to, the most recent was a two day trip to San Jose to hang out with about 10 key people from Adobe to see the CS3 line before it shipped. We went to breakfast lunch and dinner together. We talked. I complained about some of the most obvious things that they had done wrong, core things that really needed to be addressed. Around the table sat some pretty savvy people and they piped in with their own versions and additions to what I was saying.

It was something the like of which I have never seen in all my years at NAB. It just doesn’t happen. Well, at least not for me.

One of the things that surprised me in your recent move, is that you were able to pull it off as quickly as you did. Tim and I had been talking that we expected that Avid would be the first major to put down their foot and say “no more” to NAB’s ever skyrocketing costs and fees. But we figured that you had at least one more year of being there. That you did it in your first year at the helm is a surprise.

So, gutsy move, Graham. :o)

Thank you for stopping by and I’m glad someone warned you to don the asbestos undies before you came, you will likely need them with some of the people who visit here at the COW.

If you have the time, Tim and I would like to record a podcast with you discussing your recent appointment, what you are up to, your goals, why no booth at NAB in 2008, etc., if you have the time. Interested?

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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