Your right Richard. But at the very least maybe he can at least get Avid to work better with 3rd parties, maybe attract some capital investment, and generally infuse some genuine excitement for users again.

BTW, I've been editing on Final Cut 6 the last 3 weeks here for a NASA contractor. Overall, the titling is very limiting almost toy-like and doing title stacks is almost impossible. I even posted on the FCP section here and nobody had any definite solutions. basically there isn't a "Save As" function for the titler. The Avid titler is way better even though it is much older. Much more flexible. And even though we're running on a brand new quadcore with 8Gig of memory, moving from FCp to Motion, (used Primatte for greenscreen), it is terriibly slow, (A 35 minute render) much much slower than Media Composer using Spectramatte. Overall, it was easy to edit with, but slow and it crashed a few times. So, while FCp geneally did most things that Avid does, it is still not up to deadline intensive demanding editing in my opinion. I think that the FCP world of editors are mostly one man shops. But it is different when you've got someine breathing down your neck in an edit.

After editing on FCP, I have found new respect for what i have in Avid.

Cheers, Stay cool in the bay area and Merry Christmas.

You can drag the title generator to your effects panel, name that, and stick it in a bin if need be. To have it stick around with your project file (instead of the Mac), drag those generator presets onto a new clip on a new sequence.

You can also duplicate items by option dragging (let go of option after you drag).

I don't use Avid myself, but it seems like Avid has done a lot of work to have their product compatible with 3rd parties.

They created the OMF and AAF standards. And the nice thing about those standards is that they work (well AAF not all the time, but there are situations where it does work well). And it's not like they are forcing Avid users to do their audio in Pro Tools... OMF works in most other audio applications.

Avid's DNxHD codec is also cross-platform compatible... unlike Apple uncompressed, DVCPRO100/50, Prores, etc.

Avid has worked really well with third party (software) apps, but has been slow to integrate new hardware boards and CAMERA formats. Still waiting for them to support Canon's 24f format. JVC has some issues with them still I think.

I'm not sure what the shake up in top management will mean. I'm not really sure what AVID's overall goal is. Consolidate and hold the top eschelon? Not good when you cede the 'middle' level of small shops and indy operations to FCP. Their aqusition of Liquid was a good move for the 'lower level'... but just spread the name out over different NLE constructs.

I've been saying for two years now, merge MC and AXP into one product. Open the ability to work with AJA/KONA/Blackmagic and go head to head in price with FCP. (That might cripple 'mojo' sales... not sure.) MC is a MUCH better app, and definitely primes the middle market to move up.

Season's greeting to all!

I'm going to Western Kentucky University for TV production right now. I have only run across one student who prefers avid over other NLEs. Most prefer, as many others have mentioned, Final Cut. A few, including me, prefer Adobe Premiere. At the moment, I don't see most of the people I go to school with wanting to learn Avid when we haven't seen it do anything better than Final Cut or Premiere. If our instructors would show us what it can do better we would be more likely to want to learn it.

Eric,

Try cutting FILM on something other than Avid. Yeah, 'who cuts film anymore?' You might ask, "It's all going to be HD anyway." I suspect youre film(TV) department isn't shooting a lot of film.

All the NLE's do 'the same thing'. In as much as they all allow you to cut and paste clips into a timeline, and add transistions and effects. Sure, they are all 'the same' in that respect. But how they go about it, how they 'manage media' how the interact and interface with LARGE SYSTEMS that might be cutting in four or five edit suites simultaneously with the same files sharing on the same network (Think in terms of huge feature films).

Have you ever been in a SYmphony Suite? Seen what it can do in realtime? Media Composer with Adrenaline is blazing. And the interface is virtually identical to Avid XpressPro.

Frankly on a 'small scale', there isn't a lot to compare. It's when you ramp it up to cutting and conformiing feature film negatives, working with huge files on networks and broadcast scenarios where Avid shines. It's why AVID is still number one in feature films and broadcast.

No, I have never seen a SYmphony Suite. Also my school unfortuanatly does not do much with film other than one class in which we only have to shoot a total of about 6 minutes each(although a friend and I ordered a little over 2000 feet so we can play around with it more) I guess I should have mentioned in my first post that my school does use Avid and we all had to take a class on it(and no, it was not an in depth class on it either, just cutting and using some cheesy effects)

By cutting film do you mean physically cutting it with a knife or are you talking about a "digital cut" Can avid edit movies if they are scanned with a scanner at 12megapixles and keep the same quality on the output?

I'm very ignorant as to why people say Avid is the best for high end things. I really just want to be more informed. I guess I should start a new thread in the Avid forum.

You did tell me one thing I didn't know about, the editing of the same file on multiple computers. Although I'm not really sure how this is different than pulling files from a big networked drive on other programs.

Again, sorry for getting off the real topic. I would just like more information, know of any websites or anything?

Well I have to say I've done a 180 on this. I think Avid made the right choice, esp. with Apple also deciding to bow out.

it would take you years to scan 2000 feet of film at 12mp. I dont even know if that's possible.

when you get the film developed you need to get it telecined to a mini dv tape or a hard drive so you can cut the movie on an NLE.
hope that helps

Agreed, and these moves make me wonder which big company will be next. Again, I think this is more about the state of NAB's viability than it is about Apple or Avid.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....933&highlight=

Case in point, Avid had already returned to profitability and increased it operating cash from 27 some odd million to over $200 million in a very short amount of time. I think NAB viability is still there for broadcasters, there's still a lot of radio and television breakouts, FCC and regulatory sessions. But, NAB will in the future shrink in size.

I've got to say, visiting AVID's booth last year was the most frustrating part of the entire show for me.

My son watched the presentation about 30 Rock post production, and was impressed by the great chroma keys. When trying to find out what chroma key products they offered it was as if the floor staff were a bunch of know nothings and gate keepers. People kept pointing us to their $100k finishing system, and the people demoing the finishing system didn't know anything about it and couldn't demo anything.

Mind you, we weren't shopping for a $100k anything. But we must have spoken with five or six people and weren't able to find any answers about anything as fundamental as chroma key software - and this after their big stage demo showed all the cool, seamless chroma keys that Avid does for 30 Rock.

The message wasn't "you can't afford it." The message was "we have no clue."

Personally, I won't miss them.