Can Avid afford to become a footnote in the history of Editing software..

Apparently not.

Recently I hear (On the Quiet) of Avid selling a post production company 2 x Avid DS system for the price of one, plus an editing station for…..  And get this.. $50,000.

Basically for the price of the hardware.  2 x 8(cpu) way systems with adrenalin and Raid systems.  And an extra PC for the edit station.

Now that’s desperate.

1. Flash is a back door to iPhone Applications in which Apple will not get the 30% cut in sales.

2. Apple wants to break the strangle hold Adobe Flash video has on the web.

Item 1 is a no brainer.  The excuses quoted by Apple for no flash support are thin, in my opinion, and only really advantage them by cutting out Adobe.

Item 2 is a little more pervasive.  Adobe has recently released DRM products giving it similar capabilities as iTunes.  Both companies are head to head in becoming a key player in online digital video. Lets look into it deeper.

The idea behind iTunes is well known.  A Portal into all your digital media needs.  Right now it dominates the Music side.  But video wise, its not doing so well but arguably is the leader.

What Apple needs is to offer the digital video distribution market a full package. For example.  Video from the iTunes store is on your mobile device (iPod), your TV (AppleTV) and the Web (Quicktime X).

This would then allow them to sell video content that will play everywhere you want it on Apple technology.  This then opens the doorway to the DRM utopia.  Buy once, play everywhere…  But with DRM working everywhere too.

As you can imagine, this is “A dream come true” of the current incumbent distribution companies trying to stay relevant with current business modems in a changing world.  Apple would be in a position to offer them the closest thing to it.  iTunes would truly become the “One Ring” of the online digital video industry. (Note: there are issues with this I will cover later)

They have the first two, and are working on the last.  Topple Adobe Flash as the media player of choice on the Internet and the have checkmate.

Quicktime X is on its way. Here it comes, the Adobe Flash killer (for video).  Apple will use the iTunes user base to get it out fast. (Same as the safari web browser which downloaded to all iTunes users be default).

Quicktime X is unlikely to be a Full flash competitor (Animation, vector graphics etc.)  It will simply answer the video side of the equation with an implementation that works with Javascript.  For example, integrates into the AJAXian side of the Internet.

Quicktime X may not have all the visual interactivity that Flash offers, but this is not needed. AJAX interfaces can look nice and be very effective.  It also has some tricks up its sleeve.

Final Cut Studio, the tool of choice for making online video is an Apple tool and very much offers you easy creation of content for all your online digital needs.  Of course, these tools will completely integrate into the Quicktime X story pushing you to use it.

Before I go further, let me state that I am not a big supporter of DRM.  Tho I do believe that DRM used in the right way can improve your return of investment.  DRM, in general, however has proven itself to be ineffective, a waist of money to the producer and a poor experience to the consumer. See the history of Music and DRM.  Video is a different story, and I do believe DRM may be able to be used as was tear based distribution models (Cinema, Cable, Rental Store, DVD).

Let me also state that the issue here is not that DRM will or will not be used in the future.  The real issue it to convince the incumbent players to embrace the future.  Many of us believe that DRM will fail no mater what.  It is the perception that DRM will save them that lets them move forward.  And this is the game Apple is playing.

As you can see, the picture I have painted is a master peace and what you would come to expect from Steve Jobs.  Now to the fly in the soup.

Open Source Software (OSS).

Recently FireFox beta 3.1 released a version of the browser with the HTML 5 video support.  This version now also incorporates the open source video codecs Theora for Video and ogg vorbis for audio.  See this. What we have here is a technology that is likely what Quicktime X is going to be.  Its all open source supported and free to use.

Apple, if it plans to become a Flash video killer, needs as little dilution of the market as posible.  These types of developments are not likely to stop Apple, but are likely to muddy the water and slow it down.

Another example of this muddy water is this.

"Nokia has filed a submission with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
objecting to the use of Ogg Theora as the baseline video standard for
the Web. Ogg is an open encoding scheme (On2, the company that
developed it, gave it and a free, perpetual unlimited license to its
patents to the nonprofit Xiph foundation), but Nokia called it
"proprietary" and argued for the inclusion of standards that can be
used in conjunction with DRM, because "from our viewpoint, any
DRM-incompatible video related mechanism is a non-starter with the content industry (Hollywood). There
is in our opinion no need to make DRM support mandatory, though." .....

Here is an example of how muddy the waters are likely to get.

Conclusion

Apple has a good plan here.  Exactly how relevant it will be into the future is unknown.  But moving the industry into the future of digital media, under any reasoning is fine by me. Apple may become the “One Ring” of digital media for a time.  But due to the technologies available, it is likely to fragment and become competitive over time.

This is the wrong question to ask as its not really an issue to Avid.  Still these developments are all good news for Avid and Avid users.

The main issue readers should understand is that Apple with Final Cut Pro, and Avid have two completely different industry focuses.  Final Cut Pro has taken over the general editing portion of the industry, but Avid is still the better choice when you are looking at integrated top grade tools for large media companies.

I use to own a production company and facility for many years.  We had the first Softimage-DS in Australasia.  The first HD editing system in Australia (A HD-DS), and one of the limited Beta Tester for the Softimage HD-DS systems.

We where very anti Avid/Mac for many years.  Then Avid purchased Softimage-DS.  No escape. (please note, OS9 based Macs where junk. This is apparent as Avid moved from Mac to PC as the main focus for there hi end software.  OSX is a different story.  I would have one f them any day.)

During this time we used all but Avid systems.  Avid, in Australia, was very poorly supported and was hugely over priced. This has of course all changed. During these many years of using many different editing systems, one main issue kept surfacing.  Reliability and stability, not just in operating system, but in application.

Avid, if anything, knows the hi-end very well.  They understand reliability and stability.  You do not see them doing UPDATES every few months to the software. Typically, they release a version., then release a few revisions.  And that is it.  No ongoing updates.  You are best to keep the system on the reference OS and application level from then on.

Stability was paramount.

This culture is not very strong in the FCP world.  Those who utilise FCP well, understand and implement this philosophy themselves.  One must be very self disciplined. One must have completely dedicated editing systems with little to no contamination.  Hard core facilities I have seen do not even allow Internet access on Editing systems.

Still, these changes Avid have announced are very necessary. Avid may be considered the hi-end professionals tool, but if everyone is learning on FCP.  There foundations, over time, will simply erode away.  This new philosophy is designed to keep this foundation reasonably strong. The $250 price tag for education version is the best sign of this.

So, as a general editor, what does this mean? Well this is a complex question and is usually based on your requirements.  But I would give a general position as follows.  If I was to pick up an editing system for a long from job tomorrow and had to pick a more reliable solution, I would pick Avid.  HOWEVER, if I had more time to learn my tool set and iron out bugs under Apple, due to the better bang per buck. (You get top notch extras like Motion, Color and sound tools as well) I would tend to side with FCP.  If I was a facility, I would have both and use the one more suitable for the job.  Especially now, with the new face of Avid.

If I was a News room or connected to any type of larger media network.  Avid is a very good choice as it will integrate better into the back end system.  Systems where Avid do have some of the best of the best solutions.

Avid may have built its company on editing, but these days, editing is only one of the supporting legs of a much larger solutions Avid offers in a Market Apple will never enter.

Rob acknowledged the departure of Sony from production storage technologies.  For example, Sony has not tried to compete with Computer industry storage technology like the express card.  To tell the truth, its simply not worth it for them trying to compete with the low margins the computer industry work on.

This is a big departure from Sony’s history of driving sales by introducing different tape formats every 2-5 years to encourage user to re-purchase equipment.  This has worked well for them over the years with a variety of betacam formats. (SP, Digital, SX, HD, HD-SR)  As a facility owners, it has been the bane of my life. (See a previous post in which I traveled to NAB to have a big talk to the VTR engineers on how they should build a them.)

Tape for acquisition does have some small advantages but at the end of the day.  All independent film makers that come to me for advise.  The first comment they says is. “I want a tapeless workflow”. They see tape spooling and ingestion as a complete wast of time/money.  Recorded to a data file as filmed is exactly what has to happen as some stage so the non-linear editing system can use it.  As they are usually shooting on the cheap, media security and reliability is not seen to be as important.

In general, however, I see solid state recorders that attach the the side of a camera and have uncompressed HDSDI/HDMI interfaces as the imminent future of Production.

Then once finished, creation of digital files distributed over the internet for display in Cinema or cable and TV networks around the world.

One problem still exists and appears to be overlooked. Long term archival of source material.

We have two solutions.  Optical Storage or good old TAPE.

Firstly, Archival on Hard Drives is not recommended but very common.  Drives do not last well if left on a shelf  for long periods without spin up.  And when they fail, you loose it all.

The latest Sony HDCAM SR upgrade, tho expensive, looks like one of the better solutions.  Its a proven long term storage media that can store enormous amounts of data on a tape which can also be spooled and viewed without needing to pull the data of the tape. (This includes viewing common image sequences in file formats such as DPX, TIF as a data backup on the tape.)

I really hope they bring this type of technology to lower cost but obviously slower to transfer tape drives.

OR

Optical storage such as Blu-Ray.  The first issue here is that Blu-Ray has had little written about its longevity.  Still, this issue alone will give Blu-Ray the success and longevity may have expressed will die out as Internet Distribution will greatly reduce the Movie on Optical disk market.  In my opinion, Blu-Ray is only a stop gap.  We will need faster and more capacity optical media with archival ratings.  This may be a revision of Blu-Ray or a completely new technology.  We still have the need and it will grow for the video producer as we use higher resolutions and less compression (4k images, more colour depth)

[Update, This Week In Media ep 85  featured my Blog post.  Based on Alex’s comments here is a follow up post.
Alex Lindsay, Ok, we get it. You don’t use tapes.

The host, Philip in the previous week, described how “Color” the new Tool in “Final Cut Studio” was near useless to the average user of Final Cut Studio.

In this podcast, it appear he came under fire for these comments. And he was back peddling a little..

I would like to let all my cannons fly in his direction over this topic, and as a person who has worked in the industry, point out some of my observations.

It is true that being a “Colorist” is quite a boutique position. Now, to understand a colorist and its black magic, one should look at how this position has become such a “black magic art”.

Typically, apart from films, colour graders are usually working on high budget commercials. So real time feed back and a form of “performance” developed around the job.

I say this as, working in post production houses, you learn that, the agency producers, spending other peoples money, prefer to do it in style. As such, to get the work, the more impressive and expensive it is… generally the better. This is, to me, where the myth of needing the balls and knobs comes from. As much as it is helpful, it is more performance and “black Magic” to wow the person who decided where the money gets spent. (Usually not the same person who is spending the money).

In my opinion, an experienced mouse user can be reasonable proficient at using a tool like color. Sure, it may be a few percent slower, but its more then a few percent cheaper and versatile.

Philip went on about how you need, not only a good color actuate monitor, but walls painted this color, lights that, etc. Sure, all these items help the process. But like anyone using a tools that is not exactly right for the job, these issues can be taken into consideration. And usually a very good result can still be archived. (Still, at the least, you need a monitor/display which is designed for doing color grading.)

Now lets look at some of the other tasks color is designed for…
Color is more then just a single shot grader. Its designed to grade a film. Color match different shots, applying looks across sections of content to make them look right. It does this very well, and this is a big part of grading. And really, having a color accurate monitor is not even important to this task.

And finally, I would like to debunk the myth that color grading is a profession that takes years of work etc. Colorists are hard to find as, its hard for some one to get time on a multi million dollar balls and wheels setup to train how to use them. Apple Color will be bundled with Final Cut, giving the “would be color grader” all the time they need to learn the tools.

Grading, more then anything is “Talent” based. Like we are finding some amazingly talented editors springing up all around us as the tools become redilly available to everyone. So will we find Colorists. And they will probably even start moving away from the knobs and wheels. They learn on a mouse, they stick to a mouse. The mouse interface is standardised. Knobs and wheels.. Are always setup to the colorists liking. And as you can sit at any FCP station and grade… It become all to hard to bother with knobs and wheels.. I’ll just use the mouse..