Talking for Avid

Posted By Max Burgess on September 20, 2010 08:55 am | Permalink
I had the honor to do a presentation for Avid at IBC this year and travelled to Amsterdam with a head full of facts and quips as well as the anticipation (and nerves) of a 14 year old boy who's band was about to play in front of school assembly for the first time. LIttle did I know that my performance for Avid, talking about the new features of Media Composer 5, would be in front of 600+ Final Cut Pro fanatics at the Final Cut Pro Users Group Supermeet 2010. Now substitute the hall full of school children for hall full of Simon Cowells (Hello Mr Anderson - Matrix style!)

I might be exaggerating a little bit, The user group guys were a great bunch and as a Final Cut and Avid editor it wasn't the horror show I was expecting. My Avid co-presenter Michael Krulik did a great job of getting them laughing and thankfully there were no Avid crashes!

So, I hear you ask, why was Avid presenting at the Supermeet? Avid have done a great job at listening to the customers in the last couple of years and implementing some of the requests that have come from that. With Avid Media Access or AMA they are able to offer features that Final Cut users have always used in an argument on the merit of FCP over Avid.

Media Composer can now accommodate an editor which ever way he likes to store and use their media. The smart tool is another example of features that have been available in FCP (as well as Avid DS) but have now found their way to Media Composer?

Will this turn more Final Cut Pro editors to Avid? Maybe? With competitive pricing for the software, educational establishments now have more options and with the more students leaving school with Media Composer in their bag of experience, that can only be good for Avid.

More interestingly is what Apple's plan for Final Cut Pro is? Like many of their products since the astronomical success of the iPhone and the iOS, Final Cut pro news has been a little thin on the ground. They have made no secret of this, even stating that the full operating system OSX would see less major updates as has been the custom in the last 5 years, and why should they? It wouldn't take an accountant to realize they make far more money from the iPhone.

It seems Avid has now picked up the ball they dropped a while back, and with Media Composer firmly seated back on the Mac platform I wonder how much we really need Final Cut Pro, after all Apple bought it because the relationship between them and Avid got so bad that Media Composer became a windows only application. It is hard for me to be objective, I am a Media Composer editor before I am a Final Cut Pro editor, but I just feel the future looks brighter with a company dedicated to Television and film solutions rather than a company dedicated to mobile phones.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.