Mike Jones Digital Basin
cinematic media rinse cycle

The Death of Avid (started a long time ago)

It feels like a hot new topic - the demise of Avid amid corporate shuffling and cryptic press releases - but the truth is that the demise, and the discussion of the demise, began a long time ago....



Avid was built to replace tape-to-tape and flatbed editing. And this is indeed what it did. At the time Avid were smart, smarter than their competitors and predecessors such as Quantel, they designed a paradigm for digital post-production that mimicked, emulated and utilised the language, nomenclature and paradigm of analogue editing. The result was that old-salt editors who had slaved their lives over analogue systems, could make the step to the digital landscape very easily. The great cleverness of Avid was to bridge the digital divide at the narrowest and most accessible point. It worked and they were greatly successful. 

But the same successful approach was their undoing and the writing has been on the wall since the gap was bridged. The analogue paradigms Avid emulated in the digital, its workflow built on hardware and stoic linear assembly (despite being technically a non-linear tool), was a system constructed around how editing Was, how editing Had Been and not what editing Could and Would be. The Avid interface, the Avid mentality, is one born out of keeping traditional editors relaxed and comfortable, designed around ensuring traditional broadcasters felt secure in their major financial outlay on hardware.

But every year since Avid's inception there have been less traditional editors to keep relaxed and comfortable. Every year there were new editors to take their place. Editors who were Digital Natives, not Digital Immigrants. Editors for whom the analogue language, the tape-to-tape paradigm, the hardware base, the stoic mechanics, made no sense - seemed simply old, archaic, inflexible and even irrational. The Digital Native editor whose life centres around a laptop so powerful they barely understand the idea of an 'off-line' edit, looks at the Mojo and the Adrenaline with the same quizzical smile as computer nerd looks at a 'mainframe' computer as big as a room from the 1970's.

Avid Failed.... Every year since Avid began they failed to evolve, failed to account for what was to come, failed to look forward rather than back, failed to change their language, failed to predict new mindsets. No matter how good their product was, no matter how reliable or successful, no matter how many they sold, Avid Failed year after year after year. They Failed to re-think the Editor.

When the original Première proved a domestic computer could edit video how did Avid respond? They raised not an eyebrow. When Final Cut Pro comoditized the professional editing environment from the bones of its Première ancestor to deliver a capable NLE, free of costly hardware, how did Avid respond? They created new hardware for their software. When Vegas matched Avid's format agnostic and resolution independent real-time timeline with software-only how did Avid respond?A condecending scoff and throw-away remarks about 'real professionals...'. When every year Final Cut Pro captured the imagination of the Editor's of the Future how did Avid respond? By appealing the editors of the Past.

The complete sinking of the Avid ship will happen very slowly. But the water in-take in the bilge began a long time ago when the ship left the harbour with holes in the hull. Those who have invested great sums of money in Avid systems did so because expense breeds comfort; the more you spend the greater the perception of security in what you have bought. A process of self-justification, of justifying your professionalism by the expense you can afford. But, like an arrogant ship captain, those same buyers will refuse to believe the ship is sinking until they have to jump in the life boat and row for the smaller, leaner, faster, cheaper ship on the horizon.  A new ship that doesn't look at all like the big sinking Titanic they are fleeing.

This discussion and speculation on the future of Avid is all over the web. The cryptically depressive survey issued by Avid some months ago did little but make the company look tired.... Some may feel sad about Avid's demise. Perhaps feel that a great tool was brought to an untimely end by cocky young upstarts and the 'cult of the amateur'. It strikes me as somewhat like the feeling you have when the company making amplifier valves finally closes the door conceding that their time has passed.

I don't feel this way. I feel a little angry. I feel angry that a company with such dominance, such power, such influence over the  creative artform of our age was so condescending of its users as to refuse to grow with them, refuse to let them grow, refuse to aknowledge new ideas from new younger minds. I feel somewhat angry such a company would not seek to be more accessible, more efficient and instead trade their business on excess, superfluousness and a culture of snobbery whose only means of distinction was to forge a hard line in the sand and declare Real Professionals on their side and Child-like Wannabes on the other.

Fortunately that warning, so inherent in the Avid culture, has been ignored by the digital native and we find ourselves at this juncture; speaking of the great Avid sell-off / buy-out that so many think is near.

But maybe that's just me.....

When an institution such as the BBC move away from Avid to leaner, meaner solutions like Final Cut Pro many obviosuly point the finger at 'Cost' and the all pervasive dollar factor. But it would be a mistake and a simplification to think that the only ill-concieved element of the Avid structure is the expense. This from the BBC on their move away from Avid :

"What drives a broadcaster to implement a radical new concept in programme production? One of the most obvious answers is cost, but in this case, there was far more to it than that. All organisations, whether public or private, need to function efficiently to meet the demands of media-hungry audiences; procedures must be streamlined without hampering productivity, resources and skills must be flexible and transferable without compromising creativity.

This vision of the future of broadcasting, along with the aforementioned cost savings and tight deadlines, is what motivated the BBC to make use of “‘predators”’ -— part producer, part editor..."

In other words, cost aside, what has changed is a cultural shift in what we percieve the Editor to be, how we percieve the role of the Editor in creative process. Avid every year since it began failed to re-imagine the Editor's job. And they are now, and will continue until their demise, pay the price for their short-sightedness. Whether an Avid system, as a tool, is good or bad, better or worse, is irreleveant when they have become so out-of-tune and out-of-touch with what the Editor as a creative role has become. Avid could well be the greatest system on the planet but it wont matter one iota when the paradigm by which they have defined the Editor no longer matches the inherent digital-native sensibilities of the "Prod-Editors".

Over on the Creative Cow, Tim Bird has written an eloquent but forceful post about the demise of Avid and I shall end on his words rather than mine.

About 15 years ago, my old film prof suggested that although  Avid had the popular GUI at the time, their approach to system configuration was deficient and the company had a fairly self-centered business model (my words, not his.)  At some point, he suggested, another manufacturer will come along with a better interface, better business model and a more open platform and Avid will decline in popularity.

Since that time, the issues of openness and corporate business model have been the major gripe of Avid's customers.  This is manifest in Avid's lack of response to customer feature requests, openness of the systems, ease of integration with 3rd party software, overall cost of product etc.  The Dec. issue of POST Magazine carried an article describing Avid's new CEO's plans to re-invigorate the company and respond to user concerns.

Having been a dedicated Avid user, multiple system owner, ACSR, beta tester, and instructor of more than 400 Avid editors over the last decade, I was tickled by the POST article.  How many times has such a publicity campaign been waged by this company with little or no change in corporate mentality  or customer satisfaction?  Yet, they are still perceived as the industry LEADER?

Meanwhile, the Avid system I used everyday for so long has not been turned on in nearly a year and will soon show up on eBay (I've adopted a more capable and cost effective platform.)  If Avid is to remain a leader in this business, they have a lot more to decide than just answers to the questions posed Harcharan.

A few years  ago, Oliver Peters suggested to me that "Mojo is just a dongle for uncompressed."  True.  It is not capable (as is) of HD output of any kind.  Mojo and Adrenaline cripple the the very systems they are meant to enable.  Mojo was introduced as an I/O add on to Xpress Pro.  This combination of crippled hardware to accompany crippled software was Avid's answer to the growth of Final Cut Pro... but it came nowhere near the capability of FCP with an AJA I/O (for example.)

Now we wonder what Avid will do two years from now?  Responses seem to favor Mojo as a suitable interface for Avid for the future.  Ridiculous.

Stop drinking the kool-aid.

Everything customers are asking Avid to provide by 2010 is offered NOW by other manufacturers.  Avid is over.

Respectfully,

Tim Bird

Posted at 12:00AM Jan 29, 2008 by Mike Jones in industry comment  |  Comments[5]