TCurren:

I hear and see people shifting to FCP constantly, I don't see any going the other way.

Then you aren't looking very hard Terry. I support a lot of people who go the other way and it's more every year. We had three new converts on this board just yesterday.

"... Most broadcasters and big production houses ... try to avoid this ..."

Support is a large part of my purchase recommendations.  I'm in engineering, and we feel like we have one small task ... "Instant response time & zero down time".  Well, obviously that's a tall order, but we try our best to meet it.  Using "proven" solutions, or single vendor solutions helps us reach it.

Randall L Rike:

"Instant response time & zero down time".  Well, obviously that's a tall order, but we try our best to meet it.  Using "proven" solutions, or single vendor solutions helps us reach it.

This is our path as well, especially since any upgrades must be done in bundled sets of various applications so everything integrates properly and is fully cross compatible between various versions.  3rd party apps. play a minor role in this for us.

BLKDOG:

Then you aren't looking very hard Terry. I support a lot of people who go the other way and it's more every year. We had three new converts on this board just yesterday.

Actually, I am looking hard. And it's good to hear something positive in this area for a change. :-)

Larry Rubin:

This is our path as well

And it is also mine... but I'm wondering..Is this changing....???? 

If I look a bit further then just NLE and the video industry it is obvious that mass communication and interfacing is the future... One of the best example's are the supermarket and the the house of the future...  I buy a package of milk with a standard microchip. The trolley scans it and can tell me the price. my fridge can scan it and knows its expiration date The fridge is connected to the internet and informs me on my iPhone that I need to buy new milk...

This may sound as a stupid irrelevant example but the trick is the communication standards (protocol) for these chips. The communication languages over the internet etc..

In the current video industry this is mostly related to codeq's and interfacing to hardware. There are standards but just too many... And most manufactures, like avid, develop their own creating reliable but isolated systems. Apple does not do this. It seems they believe that if they allow a large group of manufacturers to interface with their products (for free) it will increase their market position. And they are very succesfull that way!

I believe this is a simple description of the very successful marketing strategy of apple and the reason for FCP's succes. I believe that avid needs to adapt part of this strategy if it wants to survive. And to stay in the business I also need to keep following these changes. But I'm still far away from believeing that apple and its 3rd party manufacturers can do what avid can. But they are catching up fast.....  

jveekeres:

There are standards but just too many...

To be more accurate, actually in our dawning digital TV world, THERE IS NO STANDARD!  In place of the designated delivery tape standards we used to have, there are now hundreds of mutually incompatible and non-interchangeable computer file formats - a veritable nightmare for post-production.

We need one universal world wide digital file standard, just like 35 mm and 16 mm film, CD audio, LP records and audio cassettes have been - universally interchangeable. That's the key, and in my opinion the format that shows the most promise for that is MXF. Thoughts?  What do we do to convince the rest of the production world to pursue this?

 Larry you don't need to convince me... I agree completely. MXFwould be a great start as the first standard

TCurren:

jveekeres:

I do not believe avids days are numbered. I don't get those signals out of the market I can see... I see avid products more and more..

 

That is not the result in the US. I hear and see people shifting to FCP constantly, I don't see any going the other way.

 

Just yesterday I heard the the Ellen Degeneres show, which is moving lots, is going all FCP. This is not a good trend for Avid. If they have success with it, then which show will be next?

 

And this is in the town (Hollywood) that is Avid's last real stronghold (other than broadcast).

 

Just so you can compare, at one time CMX was THE standard. So was Moviola at one time.

The difference is that CMX and Moviola get burst because of a technology change, Apple does not do any technology change. They have only start a price war on NLE.

And of course, it has happen before, producers of Windows based computers has interesting in Avids survival because without Avid, the entire broadcast and video market will be a apple business.

Larry Rubin:

We need one universal world wide digital file standard, just like 35 mm and 16 mm film, CD audio, LP records and audio cassettes have been - universally interchangeable. That's the key, and in my opinion the format that shows the most promise for that is MXF. Thoughts?  What do we do to convince the rest of the production world to pursue this?

The chances of anything like this happening in the short term are slim, especially when you have every hardware supplier's engineering department convinced that they have the right product, and just as convinced that everyone else is wrong.

We had a golden opportunity to standardise television formats when HD came along.  And instead, what do we have?  We have 720 at 24F, 24p, 24pA, 24p over 50i, 24p over 60i, seemingly ad infinitum.  And that doesn't even touch on the plethora of 1080 formats.  The MXF wrapper could be the basis of a good interchange format, but unless a reliable standardised set of audio and video codecs are defined along with the wrapper definition, it still gets us no closer to a true standard.

In other words, Larry, I wouldn't hold my breath.  De facto standards will develop over time and all the pointless variants will progressively drop away.  In the meantime we're in for (and I quote the old Chinese proverb) "interesting times".

Just don't weaken.

berga:

The difference is that CMX and Moviola get burst because of a technology change, Apple does not do any technology change.

     Grass Valley was a technology change from CMX? Wow! 

     How about Sony linear editors? Yeah, you could land the space shuttle with them, but nobody wanted to learn the new convoluted menu structure. So what did Sony do? "Hey, buy the switcher and the three decks for the room, and we'll throw in the editor for free."

     Goodbye CMX.

    Flash to the present, "hey buy our editor, and we'll throw in Color, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Compressor..."

     See a thread here? Those who don't learn from history...

TCurren:

So what did Sony do? "Hey, buy the switcher and the three decks for the room, and we'll throw in the editor for free."

Panasonic at the same time were giving away 3x M2's a switcher and the editor just so they could say SOMEONE was using their gear.  

 guys....guys.... please do not miss the point. The question is not if Keynes market theory works.....if nobody wants your product make it cheaper until you end up giving it away for free. Yes when you reach that point people will start using it but as a company you obviously can't survive that way. (Unless the company also sells iPhones or betacam) So in the end users will end up without support.

The point is if an NLE system made by 2 or more vendors could have any success in the professional market. Apple gives away free info for those wanting to interface with their products. What if they would make FCP an open source project... Would that be successfully in the pro market??? What if FCP server would become an open source project??? Larry and I think that standardization is a necessity to make that work. And that is what is missing. .

Avid always had success the other way by even saying that if your BNC's were not from avid they would not give support. People bought more or less "turn key" systems from them. I as an engineer have also done this and am still doing this... but FCP is pushing the market in a different direction... 

Avid is part of the problem in this case not the solution.. Apple does this better. Point is if we the Editors and engineers would ever trust an "open source" NLE to be reliable as in case there are problems you have nowhere to go but forums....

But that's already where I get most of my problems solved with avid thx to Larry and BLKDOG....hmmmm

So which market strategy is the "right" one or "the future" do you think?

I would love to see RED announce they are going to get into the editing business with a mega killer spec for less than $10k

You want an open source NLE?

http://pipapo.org/pipawiki/Lumiera

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Video_Sequence_Editing

http://www.openmovieeditor.org/

http://kdenlive.org/

http://lives.sourceforge.net/

THX terrence for the URL's.

It was not what I asked for but I'll check them out anyway. My question was:

jveekeres:

So which market strategy is the "right" one or "the future" do you think?