Splice Now

I’ve spent the last couple of days browsing through some of the post-NAB dialog on Avid-L2, the venerable Avid mail list and discussion group (now located in Yahoo Groups). Many of the people on the list have been active in the Avid community since the beginning, and their responses to this year’s NAB were pretty discouraging. Comments included:

• “Avid hasn’t really upgraded the toolset in years.”
• “While the basic edit functions are stable and reliable, the user experience remains lacking.”
• “Avid is about Interplay and Unity and enterprise level solutions and not about editing systems.”
• “Apple hasn’t told themselves that there’s no room to grow in the NLE market, and that’s why they steal customers from Avid every day.”
• “If Avid is serious about staying in the NLE business for the long haul and taking a leadership position, it’s time for it to show editors something — anything — new and innovative.”
• “I remember when the crowds at NAB around Avid’s booth were so large that security would have to try to clear the aisles. That’s sort of what the Apple booth was like.”
• “It’s time for Avid to learn to innovate and lead again.”

Personally, I’m not quite so negative. Avid did introduce some new things — ScriptSync comes to mind, along with DNxHD 36. And the importance of a fast, portable Media Composer should not be underestimated. But I am also frustrated by how old and creaky some parts of the application feel.

Some people think that editing tools are now a commodity. I don’t agree. There’s plenty left to do. Here are just a few examples:

• A Live Interface. I’m tired of being able to do absolutely nothing while video plays, or while exporting a Quicktime, or rendering an effect. A live interface will make everything else seem antiquated.
• Background Saves. Heck, we had this in the Montage, and Pro Tools has it now.
• Automatic Version Control. All I do all day is manage versions. The machine should help.
• Better Mixing Capabilities. We need to be able to cut and paste keyframes and move them in groups. We need to be able to mix with sparse keyframes. We need waveforms that don’t extract a performance penalty. We need 5.1 capabilities and track nesting.
• A New Titler. The Title Tool is almost 15 years old. It’s been showing it’s age for a decade.
• Search Across Bins. How long have we been asking for this?
• Improvements to Segment Mode. FCP is in segment mode all the time. I prefer Avid’s approach most of the time, but with a few improvements it would be possible to have the best of both worlds.

Give us just a few things like this and I wager we’d all get pretty excited again.

Technorati Tags: avid, edit, film, final cut pro, video

This entry was posted on April 26, 2007 at 9:27 am and is filed under Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Avid Wish List & Bugs, Final Cut. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.