And if Avid decides that their "target market" is Professional Post production facilities/entities with billings in excess of 300k per year and decides to leave the "you tubers" to less expensive offerings, how would THAT sit with you? 

 If THAT would still be their strategy, which it was certainly in the past, then they would be in denial of the changes in the market which would in the end result in the death of avid.

 BLKDOG. The CEO of avid writes:

We have established a new corporate strategy designed to meet the continuously evolving needs of the marketplace and enable our customers to achieve success. Part of this strategy means realigning ourselves in a way that will further integrate a range of video and audio point products into more collaborative media production solutions. It also means gaining a deeper understanding of the workflow challenges customers face everyday and helping to address them with a mix of both Avid solutions – and systems from third-party vendors.

The heart of our strategy and the focus for the immediate future come as a direct result of the many conversations I have had with customers:

·    Build competitive tools with differentiated performance, at the right price;

·    Translate customer feedback into flexible, reliable, high-quality solutions;

·    Become more "open," offering greater interoperability between Avid systems and third-party products;

·    Refresh our product lines more frequently; and

·    Better leverage the innovation from all areas within the company to advance the market competitiveness of our offerings.

I conclude that the CEO of Avid has understood the argument I'm trying to make.  I do see the changes in my job and in the market as FACT and I do see I have to deal with those changes and so does avid. At the same time the pro attitude towards my job stays the same. What is "pro" and "not pro" does change. The way avid will change and into what kind of NLE I will happely discuss with you for many years to come.

 well my typing and the copy paste function on this forum can be improved for one.....

 My only point is that Avid may have a Market Strategey different from the one you would like to see. Just wondering how you all would feel should Avid go the route of Discreet.

 There are other things I would like to see changed in avid that I have never mentioned. I am not asking avid to adapt their product to all my needs. I understand that some of my needs are not "pro" or not functional to many other users.  I do see the market changing and if I like it or not is not rellevant. I have to adapt and so does avid. I'm also not saying that I can oversee the whole market in NLE editing systems or the wishes of all avid's its customers. I do try to form a balanced opinion based on the info I get from the market I am in. 

From that point of view I do see some functionality sometimes that many, not just myself, need in this changing market. Most of those new functionalities is come down to more flexibility...

BLKDOG:

 My only point is that Avid may have a Market Strategey different from the one you would like to see. Just wondering how you all would feel should Avid go the route of Discreet.

And this may be a legitimate option.  For me it would make my life easier as it would further limit my options for NLE solutions.  Apple and Adobe would most likely be my top picks for price point/feature set.  And I don't know if that is such a bad thing.  However, the market seems to point to another direction. The evidence I see counters the older model of high-end, high-priced edit suites. In general, the feature sets of competing NLE options are very similar making price point a significant part of the choice.  So it would seem to me that price point (not feature set) would continue to degrade market share of "higher-end" systems.

 Good point. In other words: Not only does the market demand more from our NLE. Regardless of that the market wants it cheaper.... and the competition mechanism (adobe, apple) pushes the whole industry that way.

The "do more with less" strategy is the direction of the market.... I think that is true. Avid could adopt that strategy but quality and reliabilty are avid's core features till now. They should not compromise on that. If I listen to DocAvid on this forum avid has compromised too much with Media Networks 5.x and that's not good.

Avid's development and marketing department face a difficult path where they have to find the right balance....

BLKDOG:

 And if Avid decides that their "target market" is Professional Post production facilities/entities with billings in excess of 300k per year and decides to leave the "you tubers" to less expensive offerings, how would THAT sit with you? 

If Avid does in fact does do that, I need to start learning another NLE.  They cannot keep their product alive by marketing only to post facilities.  If the grads rolling out of college cut on Final Cut, that is where it will end.  Pretty soon those same expensive billing post houses will tell Avid "sorry man, but all the new editors don't use your product."

Why does everyone go spend $200 and up on an iPod when they can get an MP3 player somewhere else for half the price?  Exactly.  I'm not saying strip MC down and make a utube version, I'm saying make the utubers want MC 3.0.

 It is as inevitable as the passage of time that other NLE's no matter what brand, will supplant Avid's grip in the broadcast professional, cinema professional and consumer professional arenas of editing when the next "changing of the guard" takes place, IF they fail to achieve dominance in the educational market. This is where the next generation of Hollywood editors are going to come from and I'm convinced this is the key to the future for Avid's long term survival.

And I reiterate, I hope to be editing on Avid products for a long time to come.

jasperfdo:

If the grads rolling out of college cut on Final Cut, that is where it will end.

And yet you have products like the discreet line that have absolutely no presence in that market and are at the top of their game. Just playing devil's advocate here but, should they go that route, there are other markets than just the limited targets expressed here.

BLKDOG:

And yet you have products like the discreet line that have absolutely no presence in that market and are at the top of their game. Just playing devil's advocate here but, should they go that route, there are other markets than just the limited targets expressed here.

That's a good example.

My son is a 3D animator, trained on Max.  He still does a lot of work with it.  But he's finding more and more that he's working on Blender.  He uses it both at home and at the network head studios at which he works.  With Blender he can do a lot of multipass compositing within the app itself, he has NLE capabilities, and he can even output DNxHD media for direct use with the network's Symphony and Nitris hardware.  He can run it on Mac, Windows and Linux in various 32-bit and 64-bit incarnations.

Now Blender is a lot cheaper than 3DS Max - it's free - and when it started it was just a basic animation package.  It was rather limited in what you could achieve, and it had a very unusual user interface.  It's render engine left a lot to be desired, so much so that third party renderers were often used.  Now it's a completely different story.  More and more animators for just the price of a manual are becoming Blender animators.  If you want an example of its power, check out Big Buck Bunny on the Blender website.

In pretty much the same way FCP started out as little more than a toy in comparison to Avid.  Thanks to Apple's push into education coupled with more and more added functionality it has developed into a serious post tool.  And as jasperfdo says, "If the grads rolling out of college cut on Final Cut, that is where it will end".

jasperfdo:

If the grads rolling out of college cut on Final Cut, that is where it will end.  Pretty soon those same expensive billing post houses will tell Avid "sorry man, but all the new editors don't use your product."

I don't know about that . .I'm by no means a big expensive billing post house, but I've hired my share of new grads. If they know FCP, they have to be willing to learn Avid too - if they want to work for me. In the end they thank me for it. And I have nothing against FCP per se, it's not my personal choice, but I have 7 Avid seats and two FCP's. My point is, if someone takes a job aren't they required to utilze their employer's equipment - not the other way around?

Peace,

 I'm in the same boat Brick'. I have to hire two new editors right now. If they don't have Avid experience, their resume's go to the bottom of the pile.

As I've said in threads like this for years, I came out of school knowing how to cut 3/4" umatic. Doesn't mean the post houses where I worked were gonna go back to that just because that's what I knew.

jwrl:

Thanks to Apple's push into education coupled with more and more added functionality it has developed into a serious post tool.

Apple went to education facilities to sell them Mac's. To sweeten the deal they gave away FCP and then Motion, and then Color and then .......

i.e. the FCP push was not a push but a side effect that happened by accident.  Unfortunately one strategy Avid cannot use AND stay in business.