Letter from Avid CEO

[Ryan Patch]

I'm not sure what mailing list I'm on that got me sent this, but I received an e-mail statement from Avid CEO Gary Greenfield today talking about Avid's new cooperate strategy.

Although Avid has done a lot in the last couple of years to try to sway defecting users, this does seem like a particularly large effort if you read the whole e-mail. This is exciting (for me at least) because I do like Avid, and one line is particularly encouraging when they say that one of their goals is to....

• Become more "open," offering greater interoperability between Avid systems and third-party products;

I only hope that this means better support for Red will be included. Although I appreciate FCP, I don't like the limitation of only being able to edit there, and obviously an Avid workflow is the way to a much larger portion of Hollywood's heart.

If others didn't get this e-mail, I could post it if it's needed.

Ryan

 

[Kevin Wild]

A step in the right direction...a step that should have been taken in 1998.

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

Please post this!

Jay

 

[Wayne D]

can you please post the whole email

 

[Julio Quintana]

A Letter From Avid CEO Gary Greenfield

A Letter From Avid CEO Gary Greenfield

Over the last six months I have had the pleasure of visiting and talking with hundreds of customers and business partners around the world. I have learned a great deal in that short time, and heard one very clear theme: Avid needs to do a better job of listening to our customers and developing solutions that truly meet their needs.

As you know, Avid has a very diverse customer base; from the millions of consumers using our audio and video products to the world's largest and most complex media enterprises. But all of these customers are united through a common desire -- to use their creative talents to accomplish their objectives and turn their dreams to reality. Regardless of where you may fall on Avid's customer continuum, each and every employee at Avid is committed to delivering on our mission to provide customers with the solutions that inspire passion, unleash creativity and realize dreams in a digital world.

To do this, however, we need to make some changes to the way we do business. Avid is very fortunate to have a strong legacy and history of innovation, with some of the industry's most talented and committed employees, and an extremely passionate customer base. At the same time, we recognize that we have a unique opportunity to better leverage the strengths of our combined company, allowing us to deliver greater benefits to you -- and all of the diverse customers we serve.

A New Corporate Strategy

We have established a new corporate strategy designed to meet the continuously evolving needs of the marketplace and enable our customers to achieve success. Part of this strategy means realigning ourselves in a way that will further integrate a range of video and audio point products into more collaborative media production solutions. It also means gaining a deeper understanding of the workflow challenges customers face everyday and helping to address them with a mix of both Avid solutions -- and systems from third-party vendors.

The heart of our strategy and the focus for the immediate future come as a direct result of the many conversations I have had with customers:

* Build competitive tools with differentiated performance, at the right price;

* Translate customer feedback into flexible, reliable, high-quality solutions;

* Become more "open," offering greater interoperability between Avid systems and third-party products;

* Refresh our product lines more frequently; and

* Better leverage the innovation from all areas within the company to advance the market competitiveness of our offerings.


Aligning Our Structure to the Strategy

A critical component to executing our strategy is to make sure that we have the right leadership team in place. As a result, we have made several changes to the senior management team. One of the most obvious changes to the structure is that the leadership team will no longer center around separate, independent business units. Instead, we are creating a much more integrated customer-centric structure that will facilitate our goal of operating as a single company. Here's a snapshot of the new leadership team:

* We are combining all of our sales, marketing and service across the company into one common organization: Customer Operations - led by Kirk Arnold. Customer Operations will act as a single, integrated unit representing the majority of the customer facing teams - such as sales, marketing, product marketing and service - for all of the top-level markets we serve, including Video, Audio, and Education.

* We are re-aligning our business units to have their full attention and focus on product development. These units will include a Video Business Unit - led by Paul Lypaczewski and an Audio Business Unit - led by Tex Schenkkan. Paul joins Avid with more than 25 years of deep industry experience, having held leadership positions at ATI and Autodesk Media and Entertainment, and Tex is assuming this leadership role having been the COO of the Audio group for the past two and a half years. Both the Video BU, which now includes all of our professional and consumer video lines and the Audio group which includes Digidesign, M-Audio and Sibelius, will be integrated teams comprised of both engineering and product management.

* On the service and support side, we've created a new Customer Success organization, led by Beth Martinko. Customer Success is an integrated team chartered with our technical service and support efforts for all of our offerings - from professional to consumer, and video to audio.

* We also have a new Chief Technology Officer - Dave Lebolt. Dave, who moves over from GM of the Audio Group, has very strong technical knowledge of our entire company's audio and video product portfolio. As we move forward, Dave will play a pivotal role in ensuring that we continue our history of innovation in the digital media space. He'll ensure that we set the right priorities, align our resources to deliver new and emerging product solutions, and deliver an exceptional user experience that enhances the way our customers work in the future.

* We have created an Administrative Operations organization - led by Ken Sexton. Ken has been overseeing our Finance, HR, IT and Legal functions since he joined the company earlier this year. Ken's group will now include Operations (e.g., manufacturing, quality assurance, strategic supply chain, etc.) for all of our lines - from professional to consumer, and video to audio.

* Our Corporate Development organization will continue to examine Avid's growth strategy with respect to addressing industry trends through acquisition, third-party partnerships and other strategic business development opportunities.


This team, which is already in place, combines proven business experience with deep industry expertise. Although there are likely to be some additional changes in the weeks and months ahead as we do some additional integration and realignment work, it's important for you to know that your current sales and support contacts have not changed. As we move forward with any changes that might impact your day-to-day contacts within the company, we will share that information with you as soon as it is available.

In Closing...

We believe it is important that our customers and business partners have a clear picture of where Avid is headed in the future. We appreciate your business and look forward to helping you achieve great success in the world of digital media.

Sincerely,
Gary
Gary Greenfield
Chief Executive Officer
Avid Technology

 

[MichaelP]

I only hope that this means better support for Red will be included. Although I appreciate FCP, I don't like the limitation of only being able to edit there, and obviously an Avid workflow is the way to a much larger portion of Hollywood's heart.

Once the SDK is released, Avid and other companies will have a much easier time integrating RED into their respective offerings. Without that, companies are limited to the solutions available via RedCine, Red Alert, RedLine, REDrushes, etc. It would be like Kodak releasing a new negative but not allowing the KeyKode to be read by everyone. Once the R3D is a known entity, you will see anyone having to deal with R3D in the workflow offer solutions. It is good for everyone involved, even better for RED.


Michael

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

I have to say I am very excited about this letter, although I am not an avid customer, I would like to be, and if they were actually able to open up to companies like Cineform, or Aja, then this would truely be a game changing event. Avid is the standard by which all have been judged. If they open up.. Oh boy...

Jay

 

[Wayne D]

doing my "HAPPY AVID" dance....

 

[Dylan Reeve]

I have to say I am very excited about this letter, although I am not an avid customer, I would like to be, and if they were actually able to open up to companies like Cineform, or Aja, then this would truely be a game changing event. Avid is the standard by which all have been judged. If they open up.. Oh boy...

Jay

That opening up thing has caused a lot of speculation around the place.

Personally I don't see it likely meaning necessarily support for things like AJA and BMD hardware as I believe Avid's more closed hardware approach is actually one of the things that gives it strength and stability.

But things like wider format support may be an option. Clearly with native support for things like P2 MXF and XDCAM HD there is some scope for Avid to support non-Avid codecs. What the limitations on that might be, but could be promising for the likes of Cineform with high-end high-performance codecs.

I tended to interpret that statement alluding more toward metadata exchange and the like however. Avid has long been a supporter of various metadata formats and I assume that is likely to continue. I'm also keen to see Avid push DNxHD more widely to other vendors, it's a fantastic codec.

Either way I still feel good about Avid overall and look forward to the future.

 

[Scott Simmons]

You'll never see Avid supporting AJA or Blackmagic, mainly because they make a lot of profit selling hardware. That's not necessarily a bad thing either. Apple does the same with the Mac. And the only reason they don't have better RED support is all on RED the company. I think Michael P has done a great job in getting the most support possible thus far for RED users and Avid. If they are working this hard without the SDK I like to think Avid will leapfrog FCP in RED support when the SDK is fully available. Let's face it, Apple hasn't really done shit to make FCP work any better with RED.

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

Even Cineform support with Avid would get me to move over.
Jay

 

[Jason Diamond]

yeah. Michael P is definitely the RED champion over at AVID and is doing a great job.
As he says. once everyone knows what the SDK gives them access to then they can start giving info as to how they may implement it. until then its all speculation.

 

[laguun]

Paul Lypaczewski has been hired by Avid? What a big mistake - imho he is one of the worst and underinformed managers ever to work in this industry

Besides that - good news for avid and i hope avid lays off paul lypaczewski faster than discreet & autodesk did, before he can damage to much.

 

[laguun]

yeah. Michael P is definitely the RED champion over at AVID and is doing a great job.

Agree 100%.

But Avid MC *must* access redcode raw directly, not by transcoding, or it will be second choice by design.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Agree 100%.

But Avid MC *must* access redcode raw directly, not by transcoding, or it will be second choice by design.

There is a 6-of-one argument here. Avid present has to transcode most formats into a supported codec. In doing so there is no need to do additional rendering on the footage. While FCP can read the files directly (through the QT component) there is a fairly heavy requirement for rendering later on.

 

[laguun]

There is a 6-of-one argument here. Avid present has to transcode most formats into a supported codec. In doing so there is no need to do additional rendering on the footage. While FCP can read the files directly (through the QT component) there is a fairly heavy requirement for rendering later on.

There are scenarios in which transcoding makes sense, for many others transcoding is bad. editing is mainly one of them - another step which is unnecessary which can add human error and needs explaining, disk space and time.

 

[Blue]

Paul Lypaczewski has been hired by Avid? What a big mistake - imho he is one of the worst and underinformed managers ever to work in this industry

Besides that - good news for avid and i hope avid lays off paul lypaczewski faster than discreet & autodesk did, before he can damage to much.

Very professional of you to make this very personal statement openly on the forum

 

[Peter Moretti]

Once the SDK is released, Avid and other companies will have a much easier time integrating RED into their respective offerings. Without that, companies are limited to the solutions available via RedCine, Red Alert, RedLine, REDrushes, etc. It would be like Kodak releasing a new negative but not allowing the KeyKode to be read by everyone. Once the R3D is a known entity, you will see anyone having to deal with R3D in the workflow offer solutions. It is good for everyone involved, even better for RED.


Michael

Michael, I truly like using Avid, but this is the same company that took how long to support JVC's HD 25P? And two years later still doesn't support Canon's 24F, even though the XH-A1, XH-G1 and XL-H1 have all been wildly successful cameras.

Red has more cache, so I'm sure this will be a higher priority. But IMHO Red's agreements with Assimilate and Apple have given Avid nice cover to hide under. "New Thinking" came out after Red One did, and is just as much of a beta.

The fact of the matter is Avid has been woefully slow adopting new formats. If 24F, with orders of magnitude more Canons than Reds floating around, is considered too much of a resource drain, I can only imagine what de-bayering wavelet compressed .R3D files will do to Avid. It ain't gonna happen soon, IMHO. (DS still doesn't directly open even the simplest MC project. Protools can't even reside on the same system as MC. And these are all your own products.)

I'm sorry if I sound cynical, but while I DO see real improvement, Avid and integrating technology from other companies (even ones it owns) doesn't exactly go hand-in-hand.

That all said, I truly appreciate your hard work on the Avid/Red front.

 

[MichaelP]

Avid management has done a world wide tour and has heard much of what you are raising in your posting. While it is difficult to change the past, the important part of "New Thinking" is the change being put into place to correct for a lot of these areas. Will it happen over night? No. But knowing what to correct for and prioritization of those issues is the first step.

A lot of the changes are still in course, and management of a finite number of engineering resources versus all the solutions Avid provides into a postproduction market whether that be feature film, television, news, broadcast, of form a single point editor to very large scaled collaborative environment - it is a huge effort as you can imagine.

But one of the major changes you will see over time as a change to past managements is looking to all the Avid owned companies as separate companies and truly making it one. With that comes a lot of work due to differences in data models, compositional structure, metadata representations, etc. There are four major and different code bases for core editors: Media Composer/Symphony, DS, Pro Tools, and Liquid. Each one with their own advantages unique approach to a similar challenges.

And yes, RED is another camera in a market where there seems to be a new camera every other week. Even cameras from the same manufacturer use different essence and metadata wrapping. Some manufacturers go outside the specification (HDV for example) to provide a unique offering in what is now a very competitive market. All of this lands on the NLE at the end of the production day. So not only do we need to ensure the single point editing product can deal with it, but also through the entire post chain of Avid shared solutions. From ingest to archive.

I don't say this as an excuse for any faults in the past - all issues have two sides to them and New Thinking is also about understanding needs and priorities and working with the customer as a partner to move forward together. It is the first step of many.


Michael

 

[Dylan Reeve]

There are scenarios in which transcoding makes sense, for many others transcoding is bad. editing is mainly one of them - another step which is unnecessary which can add human error and needs explaining, disk space and time.

Avid performs much better with its own codecs than other NLEs I've used that have the ability to use any old codec. In many of those applications the transcoding still has to be done, but is hidden in the rendering and may end up being done many times as edits change.

Personally, even with the extra up-front time, I find Avid's approach of consistent codecs and formats, to be more efficient and productive with most jobs.