As somebody who has cut extensively on Avid at a commercial editing house, Vegas is the perfect PC/Home solution, providing an amazing amount of power and professional capability.

There is nothing I did on Avid that I can't do on Vegas; indeed, many things are simpler and a bit easier to use. From thirty second spots to an 80 minute feature.

Even with difficulty of new product releases and support, VV is one of those odd instances where affordable software outstrips the more expensive.

And, as I have discovered recently, these forums have filled in nicely in helping answer a great deal of questions and product issues.

Well I don't want to defend Avid, particularly at Vegas' expense.

But I would have to think that if Avid has to move away from it's admittedly tape-based paradigm to maintain market share they should be able to do that simply by developing next generation software that mates with their very powerful hardware engines. That should not be rocket science and I would expect that Avid will go in that direction before giving up the ship.

IP - I can see your logic in this, but just as I discovered over the last four weeks watching the TLC "The Remaking of Miss America", when all was said and done, a Barbie doll cookie cutter Miss America was chosen, even though, the viewers had a very different choice to be Miss America (I wanted Miss Washington - who had a real personality and more life experience than the org's choice). It all came down to the entrenched bureaucracy of what they knew instead of making the changes necessary to survive.

I think this analogy could be said about Avid. I see them surviving, but not at a level they have had in the past. Then again, they may very well go down with the ship, if they are too stubborn to make the changes needed to survive in the marketplace.

That's my POV anyways.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

their very powerful hardware engines
I played around briefly with an Avid Media Composer and wasn't really impressed. Only a handful of FX are truly real-time.

Other high-end systems are much faster. e.g. Quantel has background rendering, renders really fast (and I believe they use FPGAs), other systems use GPU acceleration and are pretty fast.

2- I don't use Avid so I don't know its strong points.

Avid will survive simply due to the "boys club" mentality if its marketing machine. It works, feeds off the editors ego, pretends to do menial stuff better than the others while glossing over the stuff it cant do.

Agreed that Vegas can be and in many cases has been far more powerful and intuitive, however Vegas doesnt have this kind of marketing muscle or "jump the ship" appeal.

Its too "non conforming" for those editors who are set in their ways to even consider. There are reasons for this, but mainly its the GUI.
Ive had numerous people refer to vegas as an effects box and not a real editor.
Reason being is that it doesnt BEHAVE like any other NLE, and these guys dont know or dont understand why this non conformity offers so much power.

As for content, I have to disagree and agree at the same time.
All i will say is that after seeing what CS3 can pull off, Vegas and DVDA have ALOT of catching up to do

there's nothing like avids media management, nor it's edl / film capabilities.

that said, if you don't need them, then vegas is the way to go....

leslie

AVID is pretty universal in the broadcast/high-end market and I don't think they're going to fold up and go away anytime soon. They are in some trouble though and it's mainly due to their unbelievebale arrogance and not reacting to the fact that Final Cut Pro was making inroads into a market that they have pretty much owned for fifteen years or more. Plus, AVID has made some pretty stupid moves business-wise in the last few years, like buying Pinnacle, for example. AVID needs to change their attitude and I think they're slowly coming to that realization.

About ten years ago we looked at all the available NLE packages and decided that the Matrox Digisuite was way beyond AVID in terms of capabilities, so we bought one. Unfortunately, it didn't say AVID on it and clients were reluctant to use the Digisuite. That was pretty frustrating. AVID systems are ridiculously expensive for what they are, but they do say AVID on them and that's been the buzzword for a long, long time. That's changing, but not very quickly.

John

Its too "non conforming" for those editors who are set in their ways to even consider.

That's probably why I prefer Vegas over the other apps. Vegas isn't perfect, but I have to say for what it does do - it does it better than the competition - at least for the projects I do.

...these guys dont know or dont understand why this non conformity offers so much power.

That's the very thing that keeps me using Vegas.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

When Avid bought Pinnacle, their plan was to go into the consumer market with Pinnacle products. My initial response was "You morons - are you that out of touch with the consumer market?"

Not defending Avid either, but...

I work in mainstream TV production in Hollywood and Avid ain't going away any time soon. When the TV season is in full swing, (as it isn't right now, thank you, WGA) the workflow from shoot to delivery has been set in stone now for several years. Avids do almost all of the editing. That means there are assistant editors who injest and log as the production shoots, in the case of HD Shows, the tapes are often collected from production as they come out of the cameras and get delivered to the post house who make downconverted dubs that go immediately to the assistant editor. From there, many times the same day, the editor starts editing the show.

On film shows, the process is similar but the film has to be developed and then telecinied, which pushes the process back, but only slightly.

Whatever else Avid is, it is surely robust and efficient. I don't enjoy editing on it but there are many, many excellent editors who edit on Avid all day and night.

Here's something to ponder when you think of Avid. A good friend of mine has a production company that produces 1 hour music based specials for major network delivery. Depending on the show, he might have a few thousand hours of footage, sometimes over 10 editors working on the edit at once. Without a great deal of computer expertise, and no tech support from Avid, they routinely consolidate all the parts of the edit from the 10 or more (relatively) inexpensive Xpress Pro workstations into an Avid Nitris and generate a finished color corrected HD product in house. (they do the audio mix outside on a protools system, and bring back the 5.1 mix into the avid)

There's not an edit in the whole show that couldn't be done in Vegas but that ain't the point. I'm always surprised by how difficult it is on an Avid to do so many simple things, but Avid does some things that no other NLE can even come close to. Final Cut has made some inroads in Hollyood and it will continue to do so, as will Premiere and Vegas (I hope). I'm sure Avid sees the competition approaching, how they respond will decide their fate, but they do have quite a head start in the heavy lifting department.

ABC TV (Australia) has just changed over ALL of it's AVID workstations for Final Cut Pro.
That's from offline right through to online across the whole country.

They have also opted for the Panasonic P2 camera... full professional version, as their field camera.

>>>ABC TV (Australia) has just changed over ALL of it's AVID workstations for Final Cut Pro.<<<

That's like going from crazy to completely derranged.

When Avid bought Pinnacle, their plan was to go into the consumer market with Pinnacle products. My initial response was "You morons - are you that out of touch with the consumer market?"


Well the answer to that was YES.. they are out of touch, which is why they flicked it back as since "avid" sat on liquid, liquid didnt flow down that proverbial stream of evolution.
You gotta rememebr that during teh time of Liquid acquisition, HDV was coming to the fore and the only semi decent cameras with HD capabitites were HDV units, which Avids line didnt even support.
In tunr, theyre idea was to buy an NLE which already supported it. Little did they know that Liquid wasnt one of those apps that made life easy for many people. In addition, the numbers of sales of liquid compared to evry other NLE was dead below everyone.. in fct it was laughable. The thing with Pinnacle though was that it didnt only produce or distribute NLEs. Their consumer and multimedia products are waht has kept them in the loop.

In any case, Avids arrogance came to thr fore (for me) when one rep told me "its not the NLE or its functions that people buy, its the name"
I laughed at him, and i said you might make one sale, but that one disgruntled user will deter another 10.
Needless to say, the guy was made redundant 12 weeks later...

Thing is, Liquid HAS the potential to puke on every other SW driven NLE, if only they worked on the GUI.

the NLE business is in the same state the 3d app business was in the late 90's early 00's. High end 3d apps went from $15k year/licenses (or $30k perminant license) with dedicated hardware to $3000 for the whole app within a few years. Not because it wasn't worth it but because all the NEW guys comming up went with the $750 "non-pro" apps because they were cheaper & did what they wanted. Yes, Pixar payed $15k a year for Power Animator/Maya/etc. but all the "indy" guys bought the cheap stuff. And that killed the high-end app market so much Maya, practically overnight, went from ~$30k + SGI to $3000 for SGI, Linux, Mac & Windows.

Same thing right now: all the "indy" guys who the "pro's" don't even see on the radar are changing the market. How many vid's on youtube are done in Avid systems? How many indy movies? How many video game highlight reals?

Avid will still exist but they'll conform to the small time market because they won't be able to survive. Their systems people bought a few years ago will die. New editors/production houses will come up. They'll want their equipment. It's just like when movies started being shot in digital: one day it was "yeah, like film's going to not be used" & the next practically every film is being shot digital in some way.

"ABC TV (Australia) has just changed over ALL of it's AVID workstations for Final Cut Pro.
That's from offline right through to online across the whole country.

They have also opted for the Panasonic P2 camera... full professional version, as their field camera."

to clarify, ABC invested $5mil in their HD upgrades. Which isnt really al that much considering its a TV station.
The predominance of this investment was spent on P2 cameras, mainly HVX for "doco" producitons among other P2 cameras.
They had always been DV50 or Diigibeta (along with SBS) so DVCProHD was the only step up considering the only other option was long gop 35mbps XDCam F units. In the end, tehy weighed up the bitrates which are already in use, vs the "newer" bitrates for HD, and did their own math.
I dont blame them either...

They didnt have much of a choice in jumping ship to FCP as at the time, it was the only NLE which played nice with P2 MXF.