Is AVID really for sale, and if it does sell will Media Composer survive?

So Reuters is reporting that AVID Technology Inc is exploring a sale.

Now it’s current financials are pretty good, though it missed analysts expectations which dropped share prices by 20%. And supply issues from Covid kept them from being able to deliver new audio hardware.

The thing that is crazy is that Media Composer is such a small part of their business. I have read as little as 2% of sales. They are mostly a protools and and storage company that also makes Media Composer, which is basically the industry standard for video editing software (though not always the preferred software to use).

The problem is that the studios that use Media Composer, all rent systems that are bulletproof and tested. And that you keep offline. So an old stable AVID system that they rent and has been paid off years ago. The studios will not run the latest and greatest AVID because that would mean getting new systems and making sure they work and are rock solid. So though the Studios are the largest users of AVID, they can’t be bringing in much money to AVID’s bottom line.

And maybe AVID Technologies would sell themself off as parts, sell their storage, and audio divisions, and media composer. But who would buy Media Composer? Or maybe they sell the News version with the storage to keep news organizations happy?

I have heard people say Blackmagic, as they are worth more than AVID, but not by much. And why would they want AVID except for taking some tech to use in DaVinci, and DaVinci works pretty well on it’s own right now.

And maybe the studios would get together and buy Media Composer to keep it working for them into the future, unless they plan on switching to Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, but those both require the latest and greatest hardware, which I don’t see them every moving over to if they don’t have to.

Looking at their web site, it doesn’t even look like AVID offers any hardware for Media Composer anymore, now days you use 3rd party hardware like Blackmagic or AJA. Which is great as AVID hardware was always overprices, and Blackmagic makes great products for much cheaper, but it is also a revenue stream that AVID isn’t making anymore. So maybe Blackmagic Design would take on just Media Composer to keep selling hardware, and make it work even easier with DaVinci, but there would have to be a reason that makes good financial sense.

And with Adobe Premiere Pro’s Productions feature, AVID finally has a company biting at their heals when it comes to huge projects, sure you can’t see individual bins, but with auto save at a minute, and productions breaking projects into small parts it really is competition to AVID.

This is all speculation anyway, but AVID going for sale could send shockwaves through the industry, because how much financial sense does keeping Media Composer really make?

I will certainly be keeping on eye on what happens to AVID Technologies in the future.

Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 May 2023 Update (23.4)

I would have posted on the latest features of Premiere Pro 23.4 earlier, but I have not been able to use it yet. I used all the features in the beta, but 23.4 does not function for me. It is completely unresponsive, which way too much beach ball being seen.

Adobe’s what’s new page shows the big new features.

Text Based Editing, is such a huge addition. You could already transcribe sequences, but I still think it has one huge problem. And that is if you cut from a sequence, it cuts as subclips instead of original clips, and there should be an easy switch for this instead of it just doing subclips, as with multiple audio tracks, getting mixed down to stereo is just not OK.

Still this is a huge feature, and a huge plus of Premiere over AVID.

Background Auto Save is something that should have been in the prgoram for years, and you can save as close as 1 minute. HELL YES! WHY HAVEN’T WE HAD THIS FOREVER!

Dashboard for Background Processes is nice to see.

Smoother Mouse scrolling movement is actually quite nice as I have seen in the beta. I hope it also helps with the timelines, as I have recently found I often get timelines dragged and get hamburger timelines when I am just trying to click another timeline. I hope this is fixed with the added responsiveness.

New Format Support with Sony Venice 2 Version 2.0 and iPhone Cinematic Clips. There is not enough info on this, but does this allow refocusing of Apple iPhone Cinematic Clips? I will to try this out and see.

AND IN THE BETA.

SRT Support means it can now stream video to a client Viewer.

THIS COULD BE HUGE! OMG if I can stream straight out of premiere to a client, finally since this was in original Final Cut Pro 7, though not with built in security.

This could allow work at home so much more easily for all editors. This is amazing.

Color Manager .is something that also is huge and we have needed this for ages. DaVinci has such better color control. I just hope that the fucking Alexa AMIRA plug in is not automatically applied anymore, I want to control my color.

This could be huge, but will have to see how it works before I comment further on it.

Invite to Collaborate on Team Projects.

Restore Projects through Recovery Mode.

This could be a great thing, but I have to see how it works.

Scott Simmons at PVC Reviews Final Cut Pro on the iPad

Review: Final Cut Pro for iPad

I still am not a big fan of Final Cut Pro, though I am an expert on it, so I doubt I will even try it out on the iPad, but some of the omissions do seem curious, like having limited color correction when DaVinci has full color (though missing the edit page, so you really can’t talk about DaVinci).

Still the fact that the already wonky Project naming schemes seems different here is literally insane. Just follow fucking industry standards already!

And no second storylines also seems pretty huge.

Google Authenticator has added cloud sync, but it is not end to end encrypted

I was excited to see that Google Authenticator, for 2 factor authentication has added cloud sync between devices, but as reported at PCWorld and MacRumors, it is not secure. This is awful of google, an awful company.

The whole point of Google Authenticator is to have safe secure 2 step verification and to have it’s sync not be end to end encrypted is unconscionable.

Having Issues with Premiere Pro 23.4, it just beachballs

And here are posts at Adobe Forums where other people are also having the issue. And I ended up trying it quickly because of the whole issue with the export window not working, as I was running the beta to get around it, so I tried this right when ti came out, and no matter what Project I opened the whole thing just beachballed, but the Beta continues to work, but for release version I had to jump back to 23.2, since it is before the damn export bug.

I had been enjoying the text editing features, except how if you edit from a sequence it cuts in subclips and not the original clips (there should be a switch for this, as I can’t think why you would want it to edit out subclips).

I just feel the beta runs a little less stable than the release versions, so for paid work I need to stay on a stable release version, and it would be nice if 23.4 worked for me, but it just doesn’t.

And I basically erased all of my Premiere Pro preferences, the entire folder to try and get it running, as it kept pulling old preferences from earlier versions, but even completely trashing all Premiere Pro sequences on my hard drive it is still beachballing.

So be wary of 23.4 as it does not like my iMac Pro at all.