Waiting for Godot?

This Post is a follow-up to our conversation on That Post Show, listening to that first may help as I’m not repeating everything I said on the show here.

My first reaction to Avid’s Media Composer 6 release was akin to “Ahh… I see the screw-up fairy has visited us again”. But after Bob Russo explained that the main problem is with their Player Engine I’m inclined to believe Avid has a future beyond the next 5 year radius.

Avid still is in its pre PostScript age. You can design anything on it as long as it is in the shape they tell you to use. Very much like the first days of desktop publishing.

Apple gave use proportionally spaced fonts in pixels for the first time. And without spending hugh amounts of money we were able to design things that stayed on screens. It still meant to write on something nicely and give something to layout that’s not just barbaric looking threads of text.

But when the Mac got PostScript and we saw the first layout applications spawning that was when it all changed. No longer did we have to glue together strings of film to expose a page. No longer did we need someone else to clean up after us.

With Avid it’s the same. It’s still in its pre PostScript age. Unless it stays in their cookie cutter choices, using Media Composer means, someone else has to clean up after you. This doesn’t only sound stupid on paper, it also wastes millions of Dollars a year across the industry.

Once Avid evolves to its PostScript age, the cost of production goes down tremendously, editors can work more efficiently, increasing the quality of each show as a result. The people who cleaned up after the editors can then move up to grading or sideways to become effects editors, assistant editors or full editors amplifying the output of a facility without losing quality.

The AMA Hack with getting RED footage (doesn’t really work, I hear) into Media Composer is very telling that the current Player Engine has reached its limit (well, it did that in 2006). If this is really the only part that’s dividing Avid from reaching its potential, then it can be fixed within a year’s time.

Artificially imposed frame-size and frame-rate limits really only thing, a futile stance against evolution.

The Player Engine should be agnostic, not limiting the users in what type of story they want to tell or how. Most people seem to understand only the RED footage equation but unless you’re shooting live action, you don’t actually have any size or speed limits. And for those of you thinking “yeah I can do this 30 second loop in After Effects” think again, most non-cookie-cutter products are around 20 to 75 minutes. Still After Effects? Even Motion chokes on those. Final Cut Legacy, however didn’t.

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The more arrogant1 section of Avid users often tell me that it’s a tool to assemble a story, while being completely oblivious on how strongly seeing it correctly influences edit decisions. And at that point it isn’t even about output.

In general I found talking to Avid users they have their own reality which comes across as having marinated in elitism.