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Too Many Versions

July 6, 2006

Before NAB this year, my top frustration with Avid was how many versions of the software there were to choose from. We had Meridien and Adrenaline, Mac and PC, Xpress and DS and three kinds of hardware. This formed a matrix of choices that were damn near incomprehensible to normal mortals, not to mention many of Avid’s support people. And this does not include the entire Liquid product line or the Pinnacle products. All these versions sap the company’s resources and frustrate customers who keep looking over the fence at how simple the Final Cut folks have it.

Post NAB, Avid’s line is simpler and I applaud the move to a single piece of software, supporting multiple hardware configurations and with the same feature set on Mac and PC.

But there are still too many choices. From one perspective, the company has actually added an application, namely Media Composer Software, which now competes with Xpress Pro. In gearing up for the film I’ll be starting next week, I spent way too many hours trying to understand the difference between Xpress Pro, MCsoftware (or whatever it’s called) Mojo and Adrenaline. In the end, I’m choosing to go with Xpress Pro not because I’m sure it’s going to work, but because this is what my employer already owns. We’ll sort out its limitations as I start working.

Avid wants customers to look at their competitive offerings and decide that choosing Media Composer is a no-brainer. But the choice is still too complicated.

Categories: Avid

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Starting Up

July 6, 2006

Over the years, I’ve used all kinds of editing systems, from film to the early tape-based non-linear systems, to Avid on ABVB, Meridien and Adrenaline.

In the last month or so, I took a two-day Final Cut Pro refresher class, and almost back to back, spent two days playing with a late beta of Avid Adrenaline HD v2.5. So I’ve got a pretty up to date sense of what both manufacturers are offering. I’ve also been advising a friend about buying a system for cutting $3 million feature films in hi def. And, starting next week, I’ll be cutting a feature using Avid’s Express Pro. All in all, this seems like a great time to start this blog. The key technology trends are laid out in front of us:

Low cost, software only editing systems grow up.
The internet comes into its own as a distribution medium for video.
HD starts to look like the preferred format for “offline” work.
Avid and Final Cut continue to compete with each other.

I find these trends interesting on their own, but the bigger picture is how they affect people — both media professionals and average people at home. I plan to talk about all of that in these pages.

Categories: Uncategorized

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