I just read a relatively reserved blog about Final Cut Pro X, as demonstrated at NAB. It's easy to find a lot of enthusiasm about Final Cut Pro X just by googling Apple NAB, whereas if you google Avid NAB you don't get nearly the same kind of flood of enthusiasm about anything they're showing in Vegas this week. It leads me to wonder whether Avid is poised to get left in the lurch again by Apple, just as they have an opportunity to gain some ground while Apple and Adobe duke it out.
I don't really know, and frankly don't really have a direct stake in that race because it's mostly about video editing software and video manipulation tools. It seem that no matter what Apple or Adobe do, they haven't made any kind of dent in Pro Tools in the professional post-audio world the way they have in comparable video facilities. I suspect that's because they're not really trying. When we first saw Soundtrack Pro debuted at NAB, I leaned over to Kat and said "they are going to do to Pro Tools what Final Cut did to Avid." We only placed a small bet on that in the form of investing in Soundtrack Pro 1.0, but we also got a Pro Tools LE rig at about the same time because at the time Soundtrack couldn't import OMFs. Fast forward however many years, and we still have the same Pro Tools LE hardware, have upgraded the software from 6.whatever to 7.4 and bought a new Pro Tools HD rig which is also running 7.4. Oh, yeah, and Digidesign was purchased by Avid in those years, too--that's important. (We'll get around to 8 or 9 one of these days--undoubtedly before we upgrade Soundtrack Pro to anything.) For awhile Soundtrack got opened now and then when we wanted to do some noise reduction, which has always been the most appealing feature of Soundtrack to me, but we've since bought some tools (by Izotope and Waves) which blow doors off the internal noise reduction in Soundtrack Pro, so we're not using it for anything these days.
But here's where it does matter to me: the rise of Final Cut Studio has coincided with a declining willingness to ever lock picture and as this happens, post-production workflows become dependent on integrated tools. If Soundtrack Pro could do audio half as well as Pro Tools, this might be moving us in that direction, but it doesn't seem as though Apple has any interest in developing Soundtrack Pro in that direction. Whether they do or not, my preference would be for Avid to regain some market share (and respectability in the cutting edge video post world) so they could develop some tools to allow us to integrate our work with video departments who are unlocking picture when we're halfway through dialog editing. So far, all I've seen out of Avid at NAB this year is a slick video about how important their customers are to them, and a guy in a goofy jacket demoing the latest Media Composer.
Meanwhile, Avid acquired Euphonix last year (Best. Acquisition. Ever.) and I haven't even seen any exciting news in that department coming out of NAB. Are they showing something exciting which just isn't getting as much press because it's not Apple? I hope so. I've switched audio tools before when Pro Tools shocked and awed Waveframe, Sonic Solutions, Fairlight, etc, etc, and took over as the Kleenex brand. I can do it again if Avid isn't going to compete in the integrated post-production model. I'd rather not, though, because Pro Tools rocks.
