Sundance Film Festival

You overhear a lot of things in the Film Center…usually things that confirm that filmmaking tools are really very poorly understood. I heard one woman–who was clearly knowledgeable about many technology-related things–emphatically insisting that Avid made only high-end systems for Hollywood filmmakers and that the average person had to look to other companies.

“Victim of our own success,” is–not unexpectedly–how Avid‘s Michael Phillips characterized it (while sitting in one of those Mies van de Rohr chair, semi-illuminated by a pinspot). That may sound glib, but it‘s actually true. Very few products in any industry have ever had the market dominance that Avid had at the high end of Hollywood. There was a time when something over 95% of feature films were cut on Avids. Avid‘s higher end products are still dominant in Hollywood. But Avid has been supporting desktop filmmaking for some time now, with Avid Xpress Pro. Phillips, who is principal product designer for Avid‘s post production tools says that Xpress Pro can do for $1500 what a Film Composer used to do when it was essentially inventing non-linear editing.

Like many of today‘s post product designers, Phillips stresses that the price performance equation is all about the relative value of time now more than features. Many products have a certain parity in features. Many of the differences now have to do with media management, network capability, rendering power and other aspects of what is often called workflow.

There‘s two primary issues when it comes to product performance, Phillips says. “First, whose time is it? Performance has a certain value depending on whose time it represents and how you are billing or expensing that time.”

“But the other definition is performance in completing the project–that is making your deliverable and meeting your deadlines. We‘re not an island system. We‘re passing off metadata and doing more workflow-oriented stuff. We have very specific tools that bridge between production and post.”

As camera formats proliferate and deliverables become more varied, these issues are really the meat of the debate over which editing system is right for you. Phillips also adds that apart from the software “it is very important to be3 on a platform that can move fast technology-wise. As trends go more to host processing there has to be tight collaboration among hardware and software developers, more insight about roadmaps than in the past.”

At Sundance Avid is showing Xpress Pro on an affordable HP xw4300 workstation; Phillips points out that Xpress Pro is equally at home on Mac platforms.

Consider attending one of Avid‘s hands-on workshops: in addition to the higher profile events like Sundance and NAB, Avid does dozens of great local events. For more info (Avid Local Events Calendar)