"Am I avidly avid about Avid?"

American Editor by Rob Ashe

Since the beginning of Final Cut Pro Xmageddon (or should it be FCPXpocalypse?), I’ve been looking to see how the other post production software vendors would respond. It’s not often that a large corporation such as Apple would make itself so publicly vulnerable about a popular product. I believe the opportunity is there due to Apple’s long standing “no talkie to anyone from the public or apparently anyone who is editing a current film or television show and instead talks through trainers and writers of the New York Times” policy. The companies I have been watching are Adobe, who makes Premiere Pro, Avid, who makes Media Composer, and even Editshare, who makes the newly open source Lightworks. I decided to ignore Microsoft and their Movie Maker software since we know it’s the future anyway and will eventually dominate us all. So, let’s see how the various companies have responded according to Apple’s choices and see what choices they are making.

EDITSHARE

Editshare is the current owner of the long used Lightworks. I used to be a West Coast trainer when Geevs owned Lightworks and I was a huge fan of the editing system. I’ve never personally had the opportunity to use it without the controller so I’m not sure how that goes. What more could you ask from a editing software than to have a shark eat your timeline? Editshare markets Lightworks as being open source which will definitely pick up some customers who hate to spend money. The problem I’m personally having about it is outside of a few tweets about it, I’ve seen absolutely no marketing. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place.

ADOBE

A lot of folks feeling burned from Apple have been jumping over to Adobe. If you own a Kona or Blackmagic card, this move makes a lot of sense. People will be able to continue to use the equipment they already have. They have been very aggressive on the Internet , Twitter, and Facebook. They have offered 50% off their CS 5.5 suite to any users of Final Cut or Media Composer. I’ve tried Premiere over the past few weeks. It’s not bad. It’s actually very similar to Final Cut Pro 7. It’s not too simple which should make some folks on the web happy. I’ve never understood this argument as I am EXTREMELY lazy and I like things to be VERY simple. I’ve never considered simplicity a threat as any Joe Schmoe can walk into an Aaron brothers and get themselves some paint and brushes but it doesn’t mean they are going to Picasso (or maybe they will since he died broke). read more...