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.