Ron Lindeboom
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
[Scott Carnegie] “I am also a moderator on the Avid forums.”
Thank you for stating your bias honestly, Scott.
[Scott Carnegie] “As for the forums, the Cow put all of the Avid products into one forum, while the Avid page has several for different products, which I what I have always preferred. I started off posting in 2000 at avidpronet.com, which was eventually migrated into Avid’s site, which I continued onto. So I think this idea of criticizing Avid for “driving interest” away from the COW is not a valid argument for several reasons, one being that several folks weren’t on the COW in the first place and two being that there is nothing wrong with trying to bring your user base to your company website, it’s good marketing.”
We used to have our Avid forums broken out by products but we recently consolidated the forums to more accurately reflect the kind of “outside the Avid ecosystem marginalizing” that is more indicative of the way that outside users perceive Avid.
Like it or not, Avid is becoming increasingly more marginalized as time goes on. Where will it end? As I said to Shane, I believe that Avid’s abilities far exceed their competitor’s (because they DO listen to editors) when it comes to media management tools, project management, and other high level features that users of Apple, Adobe and Sony can only dream about.
Is this a knock on Apple, Adobe, or Sony? No, for cost-to-benefit curves, their products are pretty hard to beat. For many users their feature sets are enough. Is it enough for everyone? No. And for those whose demands are greater, there will always be Avid.
Another company that works in these rarefied airs farther up the mountain, is Autodesk. Autodesk has built a profitable company that works well with a focused and smaller segment of the market.
Avid appears to be making moves that are designed to try to bolster their presence in other areas of the market — in this case, the consumer segment served by Macworld.
Will it work? Me, I don’t think so — but you are welcome to think whatsoever you wish, Scott.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
I don’t believe that Avid will go out of business and never said such a thing. What I do believe is that Avid will become an increasingly more marginalized player in the days ahead, ending up with the niche that really understands the real differences that Avid brings to the party — differences like the monster media management capabilities that FCP and others can only dream of.
What I also question is the throwing of money at an audience like the Macworld crowd, to support a tool like Composer. I grin thinking of the kinds of questions and comments that the Avid demo people are going to get from the iMovie crowd — many of whom look at Final Cut Express as a huge step-up the foodchain. And Final Cut Studio? To many of this crowd, FCS is for performance maniacs.
My friend Tim Wilson likes to use the expression that “this ship has sailed,” a figure of speech that is especially true when thinking that Avid can go into Macworld and court and woo the low-end guys with a tool like Composer at this point in time.
Those are my thoughts,
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
[Todd Terry] “Yes, some positive changes there, but I think they will prove to be too little too late.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I sure wouldn’t bet any of my money on Avid at this point.
Do I think that tools like FCP, Vegas or the Adobe Suite are comparable to Avid? Hardly. In some cases, not even close. But the differences are in feature sets and areas that are, for most people, not great enough to justify the difference in cost.
Example of the difficulty of their marketing message (from actual current examples)? Glad you asked.
Avid is going to be at Macworld pitching Media Composer. Uh, Macworld — home of more booths for iPod covers and 3rd party earbuds than you will ever find under one roof.
Yes, I agree with Shane that for real pros the media management functions alone set Composer far ahead of FCP. But what will that mean to an audience that is largely there to discuss their iPods and their earbuds?
The cost disparity for a tool that does far less overall than a box of Final Cut Studio — for twice the price — is going to fall on dead ears, me predicts.
And in response to Mark Suszko’s remark that their pulling out of NAB a couple years back is in large part a cause of much of this, I think that it is just a very small part of it all.
Avid has always viewed their market as insular and their marketing has always been insular. Now that this self-fulfilling prophecy of dwindling presence is playing out, a move to Macworld is almost a laughable market move to try to garner market share. If I were the boss over the person that made that decision, I’d have them on the carpet discussing the stupidity of the move.
But that’s me…
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
[walter biscardi] “Even called me personally to assure me that the brand and products would still be around for purchase.”
That was THREE teams back, Walter. ;o)
They likely meant every word they were saying but when whole teams change out as radically as they have at Avid, things change with them.
Ron Lindeboom
-
We did not take away the flags, Rafael. So gremlins are afoot.
We’ll get it fixed.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Ron
-
Bob,
Good points. I’d add that maybe they should have also been involved in sites like the COW rather than trying to drive all the interest in anything to do with them, back into Avid.com. Yes, that way they control their user base but by doing what they have done, they have also made sure that anyone considering their options will find everyone else but Avid. At least in the vast majority of cases.
I remember when they hired the customer advocate from Media 100 to build interaction with their community and the first thing that she and her team did was to work to drive the traffic from sites like the COW over to Avid.com. I remember telling some of the COW’s leaders back then that this was a strategy that would backfire, as it was akin to founding a religion based on celibacy as one of its tenets of faith. If there are few new converts to the thing, it has to die out over time.
Avid is a strong company but I suspect that their place in the food chain is going to weaken and erode in the days ahead. They will survive, and will likely enjoy a decreasingly small but strong niche that serves a specific buyer well. But growth? That is not going to happen for Avid. To quote my friend Tim Wilson: that ship has sailed.
Ron Lindeboom
-
PS: While my save dialog shows FM5, I am on FM7 and I think it still uses the appendage because it’s pulling from the file that I originally created long ago in FM5. I don’t use FM8x yet and so yours may be a little different.
Ron
-
Under your “Save As…” option in the FILE menu, you should be able to “Save As A Clone.”
Here’s how…
When you go to the “Save As…” menu choice the dialog will open and where you see the arrow pointing, change that drop down dialog to read as you see in the following image…
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
I like your idea, Kelley. I think we’ll have to add it to the supported types very shortly. Thanks for the suggestion.
Ron Lindeboom
-
[David Roth Weiss] “As John Lennon said, “give peace a chance.””
No, he said: “She come up flat top, she come groovin’ up slowly. She got spinal traction, she shoot Coca Cola — she say, one and one and one is three — one thing I can tell you is you got to be free.”
Or something like that…
And Paul never wrote words like that.
Ah, but as John also smirked: “Girls, Paul’s the ‘cute one.'”
I think both of these quotes require translation following a caffeinated precursor.
Oh, and not many posts are being moved anyway and it’s been going for days, now. (Just to make my reply relevant — though I prefer talking about The Beatles over coffee.)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry