NEWS
An Avid Interest
by Patrick Gregston
 A demonstraton at Avid's booth at NAB. Photo by Tomm Carroll |
Notable changes in Avid’s product presentation this year (see accompanying floor report) extended to a renewed interest by Avid staff at many levels to improve relations with the Hollywood community, and Guild members in particular.
While recently growing the company’s presence in the Burbank, California offices, other efforts included contacting Editors Guild Magazine in advance of NAB, staff reading of past reports in the publication and a one-hour meeting with members of Avid’s Tewkesbury leadership, including Chas Smith, vice president and general manager of Avid video division; Michael Phillips (who has contributed many Avid tips to this publication in the past), principal product designer; and Carter Holland, director of corporate communications.
Avid has 28 different profiles of users, many of them drawn from and modeled upon Guild members’ uses of their products. “Avid’s heritage is in editing and providing ‘best-of-breed tools,’” Smith states by way of pointing to the common interests Avid shares with Guild members.
The latest offerings of the company––whether they are in products like Interplay, the acquisition of Medea or events like the Avid leadership council–– are evidence of “the focus on what Avid does best, providing the best price performance to support the customers’ needs with greater capabilities,” according to Smith.
The leadership council events are “not sales-oriented, but motivated by a desire to understand how we can best serve our clients,” Phillips says. “We want to hear from those users who demand the most” from the tools.
The Interplay application is the “beginning of the evolution of nonlinear workflows to enable greater flexibility,” Smith explains. “How can non-creative activities be automated? How can we support real creative decisions at any number of resolutions?”
While clearly an enterprise-wide application, Interplay is expected to be applicable to any scale, including feature film companies, supplied either by facility, dry hire or the production itself. “Depending on how the backbone of the network is supplied, any or all of these could be the owner of Interplay application,” Smith suggests.
Given the proliferation of channels and formats for distribution and redistribution, Avid sees more work than ever before for editors. For example, Phillips suggests that there will be a need for a “re-composition” function for re-sizing and scaling content for mobile and web applications. “It’s like pan-and-scan; having machines do it doesn’t work out,” says Phillips. “It is likely that the scaling of a feature film or television show for a mobile phone screen will require someone to make the creative, story-based choices to ‘re-composition’ the production.” Phillips sees this as a function that Avid may consider developing for its products.
In the near term, expect to see more invitations from Avid to events and forums––and for Phillips and Smith to be listening more to Guild members.
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