Avid’s Brave New World

Avid’s been through a tough year, with an unexpected change of CEO. But that hasn’t stopped the pace of development. We report from the Avid NAB Press Conference.

Avid’s press conference is vast, brash and booming. In with the press was a very large part of the Avid Customer Association, which added whooping and cheering to the generally noisy and enthusiastic reaction to the presentation.

With so many announcements, it’s virtually impossible to cover them all, and indeed there were few that would be true headline items. That’s not to say that the dozens of product improvements aren’t important to existing users.

Here’s a small selection of what we learned. For more, we suggest Avid’s website.

The show was different this year. Celebratory and loud though it was, there was a distinct lack of the hubris that could be said to have afflicted presentations in previous years. There’s a new CEO, industry insider Jeff Rosica. He gave a very strong performance in front of a vast crowd: confident, engaging and warm. This does bode well for Avid’s future.

Interconnectedness

There’s a huge trend towards interconnectedness, which is achieved through the cloud. Consistent with this, applications are now no longer monolithic software packages that you keep on bookshelves but subscription based products, updated incrementally.

Adding Sibelius | First to the family of Avid’s free, entry-level but still usefully functional apps, there is now a consistent structure to Avid’s flagship content creation family.

For video makers, there’s Media Composer | First. Next up the scale is Media composer, which is now available at a lower subscription price of $20 dollars per month. For power users, high-end facilities, etc, there’s Media Composer | Ultimate, which throws everything in: it includes every high-end feature including Project Sharing and Shared Storage Management.

We did hear at one point that Media Composer would support 16k resolutions. We’re not sure how or when but it is certainly interesting to hear this resolution talked about in the open!

New mobile app

A curious development is a major new mobile app - Avid Connect - that provides a “centralised “one-stop” experience for artists to find, connect and collaborate with each other on any laptop, iOS or Android device”.

With a change of CEO, and an often repeated assertion that Avid is listening to its customers, this may be a new start for the company that has been at the core of video and film production for a quarter of a century.

Which makes us very eager to see what it has achieved by this time next year.

Go to the next page to see the full Avid press release. Visit the Avid website.

Avid Unveils Latest Wave of Innovations for Media Creation, Management and Distribution

Avid accelerates delivery of tools, apps, services, and solutions for creative professionals, production teams and media enterprises; shares industry insights and expertise at NAB 2018 conference sessions; and unveils an exciting speaker line-up for its NAB main stage

AVID CONNECT, LAS VEGAS, April 7, 2018 – Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID), the platform for media and entertainment, today unveiled a wave of innovative tools, apps, services, and solutions at Avid Connect 2018, the annual gathering of the Avid Customer Association (ACA). Extending the benefits of MediaCentral®, Avid has expanded its comprehensive product offerings with groundbreaking advancements for creative and aspiring professionals, production teams and media enterprises across news, sports, live production and post production. These products and services will be demonstrated during the NAB Show at Avid’s booth #SU801, April 9-12.

In addition, Avid customers and leadership will share their insights and expertise in several NAB 2018 conference sessions, the most extensive Avid Main Stage roster ever and, new this year, the Avid Cloud Platform Theater, where visitors will explore emerging technologies for media creation, production and delivery.

“The massive changes in media and entertainment, while challenging, open up new doors for our customers and users to improve the way they work and secure better results for their businesses,” said Avid CEO and President, Jeff Rosica. “We’re excited to help them unlock their full potential by further accelerating our delivery of connected, open platforms of tools, apps, services and solutions that ensure it’s easier than ever before to create the most compelling content. We’re exceedingly grateful for the advantage that the Avid Customer Association provides by influencing Avid’s roadmap.”

Giving voice to thousands of members of the media industry’s preeminent customer and user community, the Avid Customer Association’s ACA Vote helps prioritize Avid’s product and innovation roadmap, as well as exclusively gather crucial insights and viewpoints of the industry at large. Results from the second annual ACA Vote will be revealed in front of the ACA membership this weekend.

Today’s announcements include:

Avid | On Demand – Avid unveiled Avid | On Demand, a SaaS cloud services and solutions platform that provides media production capabilities on demand. Avid | On Demand lets media organizations conveniently deploy the capabilities they need on a per-project basis with optimal elasticity—and without a drawn-out deployment phase or large capital outlay. Avid | On Demand services include Avid | AI, a new suite of Avid and third-party capabilities that automate content indexing, such as closed captioning verification, language detection, facial recognition, scene detection, and speech-to-text conversion. Avid | AI services introduced at Avid Connect include Avid Phonetic Search, Avid | Illuminate On Demand, Microsoft Cognitive Services, and Avid | Transformation Avid | On Demand cloud solutions include Avid | Shared Library On Demand and Avid | Editorial On Demand.

Avid NEXIS® | E5 NL – Avid introduced Avid NEXIS | E5 NL nearline storage solution. With the addition of this high-density on-premises solution to the Avid NEXIS family—the world’s first software-defined storage platform for media—Avid customers can seamlessly and efficiently manage media across all of their online, nearline, and archive storage resources.

Avid VENUETM | S6L Unified Platform – Avid announced a massive expansion to its award-winning Avid VENUE™ | S6L family of live sound systems, with three new control surfaces, a new engine, and two new I/O racks – all on a unified platform. Offering unmatched modularity, scalability and flexibility to meet any size production, space, or budget requirement, VENUE | S6L is the industry’s only live sound platform with 100% software, hardware, and show file compatibility across all system components.

Creative Tools Family and Avid Connect App – Avid unveiled an unprecedented expansion of its Creative Tools Family, providing access to Avid’s iconic Pro Tools®, Media Composer® and Sibelius® software for creative individuals at any stage of their career and teams of any size. To help users deliver their best work, Avid also introduced the Avid Connect App, which will be available to all of Avid’s 1.4 million account holders this summer, delivering a centralized “one-stop” experience for artists to find, connect and collaborate with each other on any laptop, iOS or Android device.
oPro Tools | First, Pro Tools, and Pro Tools | Ultimate provide the tools to create music or sound for film or TV while connecting users with a premier network of artists, producers and mixers around the world.

Media Composer | First, Media Composer and Media Composer | Ultimate give editors at all stages in their careers access to the industry-standard editing software used by top film, TV and broadcast editors.

Sibelius | First, Sibelius and Sibelius | Ultimate allow composers to create captivating scores more quickly than ever before.

The Avid Connect App is an artist’s personalized connection into the most talented and diverse Artist Community and Marketplace from wherever they are—from their computers, mobile devices, and within their Avid creative tools (Pro Tools, Media Composer and Sibelius). The app provides immediate access to everything an artist needs such as their profile, connections, projects and products.

Maestro™ | PowerWall – Avid introduced the next generation Maestro | PowerWall display control and management solution that puts the power of UHD-quality graphics into the hands of any television broadcaster. Avid developed Maestro | PowerWall to bring greater value to its customers by simplifying production and eliminating prohibitive costs for creating and presenting 3D graphics and video content on multiple displays regardless of size, dimension, or resolution. The successor to Maestro I TD Control™ provides powerful video wall capabilities, a high-performance video processing engine, and real-time, data-driven graphics to more easily and rapidly infuse news, sports, and entertainment broadcasts with greater excitement to captivate viewers.

News workflow innovations – Avid announced apps, services and solutions to accelerate news workflows with the cloud. These innovations optimize collaboration, accessibility and distribution required to capture the significant opportunity of engaging news viewers on any device. Avid is empowering news organizations to create, manage and deliver breaking news to television, social media and other outlets faster than ever before. Avid’s news workflow innovations integrate Avid’s industry-leading products including Avid | On Demand and new MediaCentral apps like MediaCentral | Publish, MediaCentral | Rundown, MediaCentral | Research, Maestro News, and x.news, as well as Avid NEXIS | E5 NL, FastServe™ | Playout, Avid | Shared Library On Demand, Avid | AI and Avid | Transformation.

Post production workflow innovations – Avid announced the immediate availability of its new generation of video post-production workflow innovations delivering greater integration, speed, and collaboration for everyone from small editorial teams to global media enterprises. The new post workflow tools and solutions integrate MediaCentral | Editorial Management for collaborative asset management with Media Composer video editing software, the new Avid Artist™ | DNxID video I/O hardware, and Avid NEXIS software-defined storage.

Sports workflow innovations – Avid announced the immediate availability of workflow innovations for enabling sports broadcasters to streamline creation and airing of live ultra-high definition (UHD) programs. Avid’s end-to-end sports workflow integrates Avid FastServe™, MediaCentral | Editorial Management, the MediaCentral | Log app, the YEPCO Sports Data Feed Connector, MediaCentral, Avid NEXIS software-defined storage, including the new Avid NEXIS | E5 NL, the Maestro™ graphics suite, including Maestro | Designer, Maestro | Live and Maestro | Telestrator, and Maestro studio solutions, including Maestro | AR, Maestro | Virtual Set, and the new Maestro l PowerWall.