I have been meeting a lot of film school and broadcast students lately and they are exhibiting a frightening trend. THEY ALL LEARNED FCP ONLY IN SCHOOL.

I know Avid still holds the market share on NLE saturation, but what happens when the next generation of film makers and content producers only know FCP.


Here are my top 5 suggestions to beat FCP and all other NLEs to dominate the market



Eleminate AXP and make Price Media Composer soft at 1900.00

Offer amazing pricing incentives for educational institutions - Bring back avid xpress dv for schools and give it away to them - only to teachers who are Avid certified instructors/users.

I know this one will hurt, but STOP MAKING YOUR OWN HARDWARE

Change the AVX infrastructure so that plug ins that work in AE, DISCREET, and APPLE will all work in avid. Make an Open plug in architecture

Integrate all your tools - Pro tools LE or a new LE LE edition should come bundeled with all avid software. Leverage Softimage's power into a great compositing/ 3d app THAT COMES BUNDELD

This is a freebie - BUY AUTODESK


I know this is all crazy talk from an avid fan. But this is the crazy request forum....


I think it is great tha Avid has this....BUT THEY HAVE TO LISTEN TO IT.

Panasonic blew Canon out of the water in the small format DV cams market by LISTENING T THE CRAZY POSTS FROM USERS....


Good Luck

Well, Avid has done one thing on your list--they offer, hands down, the best pricing for learning institutions.  Forget Xpress DV--it's no longer being sold and is too limited, so anyone learning it will be learning on grossly outdated software.  Universities, high schools...pretty much all types of schools...can buy Media Composer for $295.  The cost has now been transferred to buying an approved system, and I'm almost certain that Dell and HP (both on the approved list) will offer a discount to schools as well, especially if they're buying in bulk to put together editing classes.  I'm willing to bet that a school can put together a media composer suite much cheaper than they can a FCP or even Premiere Pro suite, if you consider what you get for the money.

Otheriwse, I agree with everything you've written!  With the recent release of FCS 2 and Adobe's CS3, Avid really needs to step up and make some major improvements and get very aggressive with their marketing.  C'mon Avid, let's see some movement here!

 

Michael.

Thanks for the correction. That academic pricing is MUCH BETTER than I had been told. It does however, bring up a frightening thought. If Avid is cheaper for Education why do they buy FCP. I think You are in a dangerous situation will people will pay MORE MONEY to teach their students the non-industry standard.

come on Avid show us some magic...

Why will they pay more? 

My opinion...Apple has a silver tongue.  I bet they wine and dine the schools, show them the old razzle dazzle, and they can sing their own praises louder than their biggest fan.  Don't get me wrong--there's nothing wrong with that.  If you want to sell your systems you have to have confidence in yourself, you have to push your strengths and avoid your weaknesses (without lying or being unethical!), but most of all you absolutely much be proactive and initiate contact with pontential clients.  You can't rely on people finding out what you offer--bring it to them.

I don't know how Avid's corporate offices work.  I don't know if they have a dedicated sales force specifically for schools, another for broadcast, another for post houses.  They might only have a few people who are supposed to cover all these division.  I don't know how Apple works, but it's obvious they're better at pushing their product.  They also have the benefit of being the latest industry buzz.  Surf the internet for five minutes and you'll think FCP has solved all editing problems ever and is being used to edit everything that was produced since Cold Mountain.  That's not true, but it's what the rumor is now and most people couldn't be bothered to search for the truth.

That's my opinion.  I really would like to see Avid take a more progressive approach.  There are two four year Universities in my town--one teaches on FCP, the other on Premiere.  I guarantee neither even knows about Avid, or at least knows that Avid is affordable.  Another two year University teaches FCP express.  Every intern we get has no Avid experience--half have never even heard of it.  What do we do?  We put them on the Edius systems--it's the closest in functionality to FCP and Premiere so they pick it up quickly because we don't have the time to teach them a system they won't use again until they graduate, if even then. 

 

Michael

I appreciate your feedback. Its nice to know someone else is hearing the same things. I have often noticed a stigma from young up-and-comers that Avid is only for antiquated VIDEO guys who are to old to learn something new, or bottomless pocket studio execx who buy Avid tools just because they can.


Avid is hands down the best solution. I am afraid they will have to play catch-up. They have done it before. They were way to late to the market with a software only NLE, but they made great advances.

I'm a senior at a preforming arts school in New Jersey, majoring in TV/Film. The thing I noticed is everybody in my school is, Mac this, and Mac that. Personally, I find it to be the worst OS on the market (very limiting, but hey, if you don't know how to use the Windows OS properly, I guess you shouldn't have many options.). I'm an Avid guy myself, because it's far superior to FCP, AXP may be comparable, but as soon as you step up to MC things are entirely different. I've used FCP before, and personally, it was the worst experience I had with any editing system....and I used to use a Pinnacle $100 system with a Dazzle Card, before it was bought by Avid. I'm sticking with Avid for years to come...

Atleast we get choices at our school.... we have Premiere, FCP and Avid Express Pro; in three different editing suites. So I know all three fairly well, but prefer Premiere and AXP over FCP.

I believe that within 20 years avid may completely re-invent the way editing is done, by creating a wireless and holographic editing system. This system would also feature one or more ways to edit content shot in with a 360 degree viewing range allowing a viewer to sit in the middle of true 3D enviroment.

Damn.... well there goes my idea.

Maybe they'll incorporate this ...

http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

Randall L Rike:

Maybe they'll incorporate this ...

http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

hmm, interesting; that could be useful for chess, checkers, ect. of the future. Couldn't lose pieces, cause they'd be virtual.

We've got to get to the moon yet...

Huh?  We've been there!

Avid have a big battle to get the schools back! Pricing for education on Avid is awesome, but Apple's marketing clout is huge. Many people in scools just won't look past anything other than Apple, especially thanks to their Apple sponsored 'Fact finding missions' all over the world. Cisco do the same in the education area, and I have been to some of these lunches in schools where companies like apple, Cisco etc. all give some great perks to the executives in th Universities. If you add to this the laziness of many lecturers who could not be bothered to learn more than one application, and youare left with an army of students coming out of school with no Avid experience at all. Universities should produce editors, not software operatos, and I believe the key for students is to be flexible in the workplace, ie. know both Avid MC and FCP. I have had young people come to me asking for work and I ask them what they know, and they will say 'FCP'. It is cutting these people out of some good jobs, because they can't be flexible...

When the CEO of a Uni gets blown on Apple's check book, it is the students that suffer...

Huh?  We've been there!

 Then why are we still here Pinky?

There`s also the fact that for some students/recent graduates, using something OTHER than the established "standard" makes it attractive in itself.  Don`t know if there`s a simple way around that one.