Splice Now

Tell me again — what is Xpress Pro doing for Avid? Sure, when Media Composer meant Adrenaline, Xpress Pro gave Avid something that ran on the desktop. But now that Media Composer can run fine without extra hardware, Xpress just exists to support Media Composer’s high price. That might have looked ingenious to Avid management a year ago, but today it’s wasting resources and confusing editors.

Xpress is nobody’s first choice. The only reason you use it is because it’s cheaper. That breeds a subtle resentment. If you’re familiar with Media Composer, and you do a show with Xpress, you have to go through a week figuring out how to outsmart it and work around its limitations. The fact that you can do this makes you unconsciously lose respect for Avid. If you are a new user, your value proposition is this: either buy the full version of Final Cut, no limits, with all its applications, or get the stripped-down version of Media Composer — for $300 more! What kind of weird motivation makes you buy MC? “Well, it’s used by professionals. I better get it. Even though the pros use the pro version, I’ll be fine with the amateur version.” Nobody thinks that way. You get angry at Avid for its lack of respect for what you do — and you love Apple for liberating you.

But the worst part of this is that Xpress, by its very existence, is sucking resources from Media Composer and weakening Avid’s ability to compete. It requires its own engineers, support staff, testers, its own marketing, packaging, distribution, it’s own part of their website. Somebody has to figure out what features to take out of Media Composer to create Xpress and what features to put into Xpress to make it compete with Final Cut. It’s an impossible proposition.

Collectively, Avid has lots of great engineers — but they work on so many different products that their creativity is dissipated. How many editing applications does the company make? Xpress Pro, Media Composer, Symphony Nitris, DS, Pinnacle, Liquid and Newscutter. Many run on both Mac and PC.

Avid is making a valiant effort to support its margins by keeping the editing world segmented. Apple is breaking down those barriers by offering a Swiss Army Knife at a low price. Long term, Avid cannot win at this game. All the energy involved in differentiating its products is subtracted from the core issue: innovation and leadership. The first and easiest move is to get rid of Xpress — and lower the price of Media Composer.

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