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Avid purchased everything in sight. The once great company for professionals, absorbed one too many consumer products and now must sell in order to maintain their professional edge.
I have only one question... what will happen to Euphonix?
Beyond ProTools, Sibelius, Media Composer, many of us have large investments in Euphonix Hadrware.
Find the Avid story here:
That is interesting and I'm sure people at Finale are purring with delight and contentment.
Also, Avid is perhaps an instructive example in business. They were once the only way to do serious digital video editing. I remember hearing about their systems that had ALMOST A TERRABYTE! in video storage capability. ALso, the ability to have MULTIPLE TIMELINES! Etc. Etc. In other words, now every rinky-dink amateur NLE with a $70 external hard drive can do most of what only the early Avid systems did. And a low cost professional system like Vegas does EVERYTHING avid does, at less than a tenth of the price, with no crashes or problems - on an ordinary PC. In other words, technology has rendered Avid utterly obsolete. They are now literally floundering as a business, turning this way and that, after first reacting by going into consumer marketing, now going back to industrial only.
At least this is what seems to have happened. Everything Avid ever created was out of the question for me, since I am an ultra low budget user. So I always gravitated to DIY solutions of tinkering things together, and this approach has steadily gotten better with improvements in each compnent, while huge, grossly overpriced complete systems like Avid have become less and less needed.
It reminds me of the Synclavier. Does anyone remember that? It was a sampler that used a MAINFRAME computer, cost six figures, and was fewer samples than one of the Vienna starter editions. But it was a COMPLETE system! This kind of completeness is actually something to be avoid like the plague in technology. Advanced, huge, lumbering, unable to adapt when the giant asteroid strikes, unlike the wretched little mammalian vermin previously underfoot...
William,
Film and Video PostProduction is the number one business in my studios. Yes inexpensive non-linear editors (Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro,) are the brave new world, and you'd be surprised how much TV is edited using them; But when the chips are down (Transformers, Avatar,) Avid is still King and Avid Editors are still the highest paid per hour.
As mentioned earlier, Avid purchased everything in sight. Solid companies, so strong were they that Avid in many cases, incorrectly considered them viable competition.
Someone please explain how the (Video Editing Industry Standard) wound up holding toys like Pinnacle Studio 60 USD, which cannibalized Avid Studio 130 USD, while the non-linears forced the flagship Media Composer, down to 2,500 USD, still 2,000 more than Final Cut, but way off the highs of yesteryear.
Which brings us to hardware...
Avid's ICON was a ProTools / Media Composer only protocol, while Euphonix Eucon allowed its user to control:
None of that matters in the slightest to me as I avoid most of those systems, especially the vastly overrated Pro tools and Nuendo. Also, video/film is not a business with me, it is an art.
So the system I have assembled over the last forty years includes things you would laugh at, such as Super 8 and 16mm film which I am transferring myself using a telecine system I put together from various cantankerous machines that could never exist in your impressive studios. But strangely enough, they create images that will blow away everything you could ever do.
Darn it! My twin brother Wilhelm got ahold of the computer again and posted the last reply using my login. I do apologize! Usually he is safely in the attic, but he occasionally gets out of his rooms. He tends to get a little hot under the collar at times. But his homicidal tendencies have been greatly exaggerated.
IIRC, the financial numbers for Pinnacle clearly demonstrate the excellence of Avid's leadership team. Avid paid roughly $460 million in cash and stock for it, and in the recent divestment, sold their resulting consumer video division to Corel (!!?!?) for $14 million.
OTOH, Avid's president salary has been raised 400% over the last three years. Yep, clearly earned it.
Hopefully, Avid will figure out what it needs to do/become. However, the decisions made in recent years, coupled with the ongoing employee cuts, does not bode well at all. When one is "on top" it becomes very easy to milk the cash cow, rather than continue to do needed R&D. Then the day comes when the cow is old and no longer produces much milk...
Look at this, (EVERYTHING) in sight.
| Year | Company | more details / references |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Digidesign | makers of Pro Tools[7] and Venue live mixing system |
| 1994 | Basys | ITN's newsrooms system sold to DEC then Avid. |
| 1995 | Elastic Reality, Inc. | makers of Elastic Reality morphing software |
| 1995 | Parallax Software | makers of Matador, Illusion and Jester (ink-and-paint software) |
| 1998 | Softimage | from Microsoft |
| 1998 | Tektronix | strategic alliance with Tektronix - then owners of Lightworks |
| 2000 | The Motion Factory | ? |
| 2000 | Pluto Technology | DDR playback servers |
| 2001 | iNEWS | Newsroom computer system (formerly Basys) |
| 2002 | iKnowledge | makers of Active Content Manager |
| 2003 | Rocket Networks | ? |
| 2004 | NXN | Media Asset Management software components |
| 2004 | Bomb Factory | in January |
| 2004 | M-Audio | makers of professional digital and analog audio equipment and audio software. |
| 2005 | Pinnacle Systems | in April |
| 2005 | Wizoo | in August |
| 2006 | Medéa Corporation. | in January, high-speed RAID storage |
| 2006 | Sundance Digital | in April, Broadcast Automation Software |
| 2006 | Sibelius Software | in August, Notation software |
| 2009 | Maximum Throughput | in July |
| 2010 | Blue Order Solutions AG | in January, Media Asset Management software |
| 2010 | Euphonix | in April[8] |