I wouldn't say free to students as it would be abused, but it wouldn't be bad if they made it free to schools.

 I agree

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.

.- We also hire new grads and interns.

Actually, most of them not only are willing to learn Avid, they DO WANT DESPERATELY to learn Avid, among other things absolutely new and strange to them.

And we also have FCP.

The new grads don't impose nothing to nobody, they have a long way ahead to become professionals and this way is not always the way they want, nor the way they thought.

Do you really think a production house's owner is gonna switch to another NLE because that's what some new grad knows??

They just have to learn A LOT and adapt to the market, not the other way around.

Yeah Yeah, someday the new grads will become full fledge pros and Boutique owners.

But when they reach that moment,

Will they be thinking the same way as they thought back in school days?

Will they be using the same tools they used in school??

I learn to edit video in a PALTEX linear suite and I also did some Steenbeck.

I used Linear systems EXTENSIVELY.

Ask me now if I want to go back to a linear system.

The ones who decide what to use in a facility are the owners, the accountants, the administratosr, the "bean counters".

I had never checked prices of the student version... (long time ago for me)

It wouldn't be bad if avid made it even cheaper if not free for students when looking at market development...... would it?

If a student paid for the software they have made an emotional investment in it.

So if they cannot afford $300 for their tools then they deserve to fail college.

I would rather employ a student who worked every night in Mcdonalds to make enough money to buy Avid software than one who wants it for 'free' because 'he is worth it'.

In the old days of $M edit rooms trainees stayed late after work and learned on the kit in their own time, it showed commitment. 

Students should not dictate what the industry wants to edit on.

Also YouTube is a business failure so no point in pandering to the YouTube generation!

raspago:

The ones who decide what to use in a facility are the owners, the accountants, the administratosr, the "bean counters".

Correct... but the ones that pay the facility have the real final word.  Otherwise they go somewhere else. Not that should care about NLE used.

I agree 99% with your post. I just want to make one remark. You understand that any facility house still using PALTEX or Steenbeck will not find any customers today. Doesn't matter if the owners, the accountants, the administrators, the "bean counters like those systems more or not.....

If the ones that pay the facility houses learn that they can do the job cheaper and faster and maybe even better with the new kid using FCP and some freeware tools then what do you expect them to do? I don't believe this is the case yet but it won't be long before it is.

You're right the "new grads" don't impose nothing to nobody but we "the establisment" including avid should never believe that we determine the NLE market. If we do, by the time we realize what is changing it will already be too late. 

NICKB:

Students should not dictate what the industry wants to edit on.

Also YouTube is a business failure so no point in pandering to the YouTube generation!

 Students are not dictating what the industry wants to edit on. The market mechanism is.

You tube might be a business failure. I do not know. But if I think back when I worked lineair with a Sony BVE-2000 and video on the internet was just a dream, and the way I work now with avid and the amount of video that can be found on the net, you have to be blind and deaf to not understand where this is going with iPhone's playing video, and consumer HDV camera's giving better picture then any pro camera gave 20 years ago and RED now making the first difficult steps to replace film...

It's exactly like Larry Rubin in this thread said. Those swimming against the current will in the end fail and be washed away.

 And as an example, I knew an individual who owned a post facility that had made a very sizable investment in linear digital component editing systems in the mid 90's, and refused to incorporate Avid as anything more than a rough cut offline tool. No amount of attempts to convince him that non-linear was not only the wave of the future, it was rapidly becoming the tool of choice for virtually the entire producer's community, were ever successful. He firmly believed that there was a client base who would never be satisfied with Avid and would be coming to him for their finishing work.

Well, needless to say, within the next three years he was out of business. My personal warning to him was where that phrase comes from.

If the ones that pay the facility houses learn that they can do the job cheaper and faster and maybe even better with the new kid using FCP and some freeware tools then what do you expect them to do? I don't believe this is the case yet but it won't be long before it is.

.- If that happens, the Post Production Business will disappear as a business.

If someday you will work faster and better investing near to nothing, with a $ 100.oo NLEs and anybody with no experience could get good results, that would be the end of this business.

That's not gonna happen.

Hi end Video and Film is expensive and it will be expensive. Always.

Experience and TALENT will be always neccessary.

BTW and this is has been said here ten thousand times

The cost of a NLE is like 10% the cost of a full post facility. Maybe less.

In order to really use your inexpensive Decklink card you'll need a $ 60,000.oo  HDCAM, a $ 25,000.00+ REAL HD monitor, TONS of ultrafast Storage and some other things.

The NLE revolution has already happened and came as Final Cut Pro 3 (see my warning posts of 5 years ago).

However the price difference between FCP and Avid software is now about $1000 if this worries you i can tell you now that you will never make a good living being an editor.

I already have Avid MC, FCP studio2 and the Adobe Master Collection sitting on my Apple MAC, once Avid get MC to work with AJA or Blackmagic the revolution is complete after that it is evolution of all those products not revolution.

Some of you are fighting the wrong war!

As a big fan of what FCP has done for leveling  the field for access to pro editing kit and having been worried for a long time about Avid's response over the past few years my feeling now is that i am more worried about the future of Final Cut Pro.

 Apple moves to becoming an Itunes ipod and iphone company, a shift i detect which may have a negative impact on FCP's development.

So i am far more optimistic  for Avids future than Final Cut these days.

NICKB:

 Apple moves to becoming an Itunes ipod and iphone company, a shift i detect which may have a negative impact on FCP's development.

So i am far more optimistic  for Avids future than Final Cut these days.

Nick, this is one of the few statements you have made on Avid and FCP I have agreed whole-heartedly with you. 

There were even romours circling around that Apple was trying to sell off the FCS division earlier this year in favor of selling iGadgets.  I heard it never went through because they were asking too much money for it.  Since it drives very little profit, nobody was interested in paying the lofty price.

However the price difference between FCP and Avid software is now about $1000 if this worries you i can tell you now that you will never make a good living being an editor.

.- No, it doesn't worries me at all.

Maybe the NLEs are already dirty cheap (apparently, that's not enough for some, they want a MC for $ 69.99)

But that kind of "massification" and "democratization" seems only to affect computer related stuff.

A Digibeta is still around  $ 40.000 brand new, let alone an HDCAM deck..

A single 575 Watts HMI is still several thousand dollars, after all these years.

Professional monitors are more expensive than ever, thanks to HD.

And, more important,  there is no "auto good edit",  "auto perfect trim", "auto good taste and pace" and "auto solve any issue" commands on any NLE YET.

And I doubt will ever be such things.

There were even romours circling around that Apple was trying to sell off the FCS division earlier this year in favor of selling iGadgets.  I heard it never went through because they were asking too much money for it.  Since it drives very little profit, nobody was interested in paying the lofty price.

.- Eventually they'll do it, you can bet your life.

And I'm almost sure that FCP is in grand part subsidized by Iphones.

How could you explain an $ 25,000 software like "Color" for free?

 Apple moves to becoming an Itunes ipod and iphone company, a shift i detect which may have a negative impact on FCP's development.

.- FCP (the editor) has changed very little since version 4, if not version since version 3.

The "suite" is a just conglomerate of "buyout" software.

And the integration between them is from little to inexistent.

I'm suspect the FCS 3 will have superficial and aesthetic changes, as usual. Maybe they'll throw another software.

I would not underestimate FCS 3. I would assume it would at least be 64 bit - dare I say a complete rewrite of the underlying code (it would need to be for FCP). My guess is that Apple is targeting 2 important weakness of FCP - playback engine and media management. FCP is not threaded well at all. With a  well threaded engine, 'edit 2K /4K in RT' campaign can really beat up Avid (although 99% of the NLE world cannot afford 2k in any shape or form, let alone 4K). With FC Server finally out, better media management is inevitable. Avid and editors dismissed FCP 2/3. Editors quickly reacted and learned the new software. Avid, being a large company, was unfortunately too slow. FCP took a big bite of their audience by the time 'New Thinking' and DX came around. They got the ship going the right direction now but there is a lot of NAB left in FCP.

raspago:

Hi end Video and Film is expensive and it will be expensive. Always.

Experience and TALENT will be always neccessary.

 Indeed. I agree ... I do not believe the post production will disappear. But I believe prices of the post productions facility machinery will drop as the process of digital technology progresses., i.e. more storage space for less money, more speed for less money, better picture quality for less money. This process is taking place for years now.

I'm saying that the workflows are changing due to the appearance of new technology, FCP RED.. The progress of technology is making the process of cinema/video production cheaper and more easy. In this market the players not keeping up with this progress will in the end fall out.

So talent is and will always be needed and get well rewarded. Nothing changing there. But the talent will have more time to focus on the creative process of making cinema/tv then that it needs to focus on technical issues like converting, importing, exporting.

We are still far away from our kids being able at home to make a better product then a pro facility house. But the gap is getting smaller. I'm in no way suggesting is will ever get "cheap" soon but what costed lets say 10 million I can now get for 3 and in 2 years for 1 and what do you konw the product I buy for 1 million can do more, faster, cheaper and more reliable.

I just don't want avid to fall out of this progress. They make great products and I would like to keep using them. We can all see the changes avid is making in it's product line and pricing...so they are following this trend.

So again like the title of the thread says. You've started a good thing...but more!

 I fully agree with raspago.

Twenty years ago, I teaching economics at one of Swedens major universities. The department of business administration was mostly a apple department and lots of the computerized educations was on apple.

Does that mean the major swedish business such as Ericson and Volvo is apple shops today? No, the newly educated "bean counters" had to learn using Dos and Windows.

I think this will also happen when the "FCP-kids" goes to SVT, the swedish national broadcaster, or other major players in the market, with their Unity systems and Media Composers.

With the new prices of MC, the accounants will not descide which NLE you are investing in.