RED and Avid : in the beginning

[Robert Kurhajetz]

In watching the development of RED over the last year I'm really reminded of the similarities with how Avid Technology got started. In the late 80's they showed up at NAB with a tiny booth and a big concept. Bill Warner, the power behind the formation of the Avid development team was not a video editor, was really an outsider in the world of professional video post-production. In those days video editing was pretty much spelled CMX. One of the earliest partners for Avid in those days was Apple. I believe at that time Avid was initially considered any interesting development, but not a system that would fundamentally change video post.
The team at RED seems likely to have the same sort of impact on imaging.

It does really seem like a "deja vu" moment....

I wasn't able to attend this NAB but I've been admiring the samples showcased at the show and my congrats on an awesome debut...

Bob
===

[Mark Allen]

Long before AVID owned Digidesign.... many many years ago...

I was on a mix for what was supposed to be the first movie ever mixed with Pro Tools. (version 1 ProEdit/ProMix days) We had three different ProTools sessions synch up but the FX one starting having problems. And we kept having problem after problem and the mix was going to hell - sounds were just disappearing. Digidesign couldn't figure out what was going on. Finally after days of trauma and set in stone delivery date fast approaching, we got ahold of a major tech guy at Digidesign who informed us there was a limit of the number of sound files that could be in a project, I forget the number, around a thousand.

Our guy on the phone said "That's it then, why would you limit to a thousand sounds?" The Digidesign guy responded, "What do you need more than a thousand sounds for?" Our Guy: "We're trying to mix a movie and we've got all kinds of sound effects."

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

The Digidesign guy responded. "You're mixing a movie with ProTools?"

(For those who don't understand the irony here.... nearly every major movie uses ProTools now.)

I guess at the time they thought it was "neat" that people had done a couple commercials but... we were apparently flying a little too close to the sun on that one.

:)

[GlennChan]

Great stories! :) (Keep em coming please.)

[Petr Dvorak]

Wow love this history moments! Now with Red we have it in real time.

[Ralph Wong]

I actually equate Red more with Final Cut Pro in terms of what it is doing. When Avid first came out, systems were really expensive. I remember around six years ago they ran from a $50,000 media composer to a $100,000 symphony. At those prices, no average guy could afford one to cut movies. I always thought these prices were extremely inflated, but Avid was the only real game in town. Things like Adobe Premiere came out but never really caught on. Then came Final Cut Pro. For a $1000 you could buy a decent editing program that rivaled Avid. Suddenly, Avid starts coming out with programs such as Xpress Pro to combat Final Cut. On top of that, they began discounting their other products. The Media composer program can be bought for $5000! That's insane considering how much it cost before. But this is what happens when a company decides to go full steam ahead and compete with the big boys.

We see the same thing happening in the camera world. I'm sure most of us would have been happy shooting with a Cinealt or Varicam except for the fact that the price tag was so high. Sony and Panasonic kept trying to justify their price points saying they were necessary because the expense of making them was so high. Enter the RED camera. All of a sudden we see companies such as Panasonic slash their prices by a good thirty percent. The Varicam went from $65,000 to $45,000 in a matter of a year. You can't tell me Panasonic all of a sudden found a way to cut costs by $20,000. I think Sony is going to arrogantly think that the RED will fail. When Red starts kicking its butt in sales, I believe a price correction will happen with the CineAlts too.

The great thing about Final Cut is that it made professional video editing affordable for the average guy. In response, companies that use to have the choke hold on the market had to adapt and compete with lower prices. RED is attempting the same thing, and I hope they succeed just like Final Cut.

[Seán_T]

Yes the first Avids were a bit pricey but before avid came along if you wanted to cut non linear you would have to spend millions (Edit Droid etc)

[Anders Holck]

Entry level Avid/1 was $50.000,- in '89 ($82.170 today), that of cause included a 16 Mhz Apple Mac IIx with 5MB ram.
Top configuration was $80.000,- ($131.473) with the amazing 4 GB Avid Media Drive.

[Bachman]

Entry level Avid/1 was $50.000,- in '89 ($82.170 today), that of cause included a 16 Mhz Apple Mac IIx with 5MB ram.
Top configuration was $80.000,- ($131.473) with the amazing 4 GB Avid Media Drive.

The company I worked for last had a Quantel HAL, and Edit Box, they told me it cost them over $500,000AUS 10 years ago.. They now have 3 FCP suites and some rather large boat anchors

[Seán_T]

I used to work on an inferno that cost about $1000000. Those massive onyx2's were impressive they were coal fired.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I actually equate Red more with Final Cut Pro in terms of what it is doing. When Avid first came out, systems were really expensive. I remember around six years ago they ran from a $50,000 media composer to a $100,000 symphony.

The great thing about Final Cut is that it made professional video editing affordable for the average guy. In response, companies that use to have the choke hold on the market had to adapt and compete with lower prices. RED is attempting the same thing, and I hope they succeed just like Final Cut.

Uhhh your history is really wonky. Avid has been releasing NLEs at consumer level prices for some time. You can't quote the prices of large high powered dedicated systems (at a time when software systems couldn't run video!) to a product 10 years later.

FCP was nothing more than a souped up Premiere when it first came out. The market for professional desktop editing was pretty hot long before apple came along and bought out Macromedia's faltering offspring.

If anybody deserves credit for bringing a professionalish video editor to the masses it's Adobe.

[Bachman]

I agree with the above post. And certainly Adobe deserves the credit for introducing non linear editing to the mainstream.

Macromedia deserves the credit for FCP's creation though, and was originally called "KeyGrip" and actually ran on Mac and PC, (although they pinched some developers from Adobe's Premier team) but was based on Apples Quicktime. Macromedia decided they wanted to concentrate on Web software and decided to find a buyer for their non-web applications. Apple hired the team, but wanted to on sell the software. They didnt...and as they say, the rest is history.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

You could also say Avid wasn't reacting to FCP with the release of Xpress Pro.

Since you're so blindly loyal to Apple I'll use an apple metaphor. Xpress Pro was like the iPod, later to the party, but only because they didn't want to release a pathetic me too product, they wanted to release the best.