Avid’s New(er) Direction

PVC by Kevin P McAuliffe

When I ask you who the main NLE players are, most people mention Media Composer and Final Cut Pro right off the bat, with Premiere Pro and Vegas taking up the rear, and in the last few years, I think that Avid has really taken a beating from Final Cut Pro. Not to say that Final Cut Pro has taken the lead in the non-linear editing world, but Final Cut Pro has made real in-roads and has grabbed Avid’s coattails, and held on strong. In recent years, the Avid user base has become more and more frustrated with Avid’s,seemingly, lack of interest in what we (yes, I am included in there) have to say, and that frustration has made some editors jump ship for good. But, a funny thing has happened recently, and that is that Avid has sat up and taken notice, and has started to do something about it. They’ve gotten out and started pounding the pavement and letting everyone know that Avid is the company that editors want to stay with!

I had the opportunity to be a fly on the wall at a breakfast get together of some editors in Toronto, Canada (Bob Kennedy of Rooster Post Production and Steve Manz of Relish Post), as well as Burke Moody, the Executive Director of AICE, Taryn Unruh, Media Programs Manager, Video & Corporate Communications for Avid and Angus Mackay, Avid Segment Marketing Manger | Professional. Now, for those who don’t know, AICE is “an international association which represents the interests of independent creative editorial, design, visual effects and post production companies and their editors, designers and artists”, and AVID was in town the night before to not only show off the new Media Composer 5 to AICE’s Toronto user base, but they were also here to do something else that no other NLE company out there is doing right now, and that is get feedback from their user base. This is something that Avid in the past really hasn’t done. Avid has always worked in a very “It’s our way, or the highway” fashion, and thanks to the in-roads that Final Cut Pro is making (in my opinion), they are out there to find out not only what the user base is thinking, but to actually get our input on what they can do to make Media Composer better. This was a meeting that I was looking forward to, as I consider myself to be very…..opinionated what it comes to Avid, as I have been working on their products for the better part of 14 years, and have gone through the “what are they thinking???” phase, but I think that Avid is starting to get things right. read more and watch the video