I think he said, in his open letter, that they were pretty much going to
cut all the pre-Resolve product loose. Sell spares to all who want them
(til they run out) but not support contracts or support of any kind.
Does Resolve control a (Spirit) Tele(data)cine? Did Thomson give them
the keys to the backdoor as well as to Filmlight?
Rupert Watson
+44 7787 554801
From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of oliverpetersvidy
Sent: 05 October 2009 14:36
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Avid-L2] Re: Why isn't Avid marketing all over this story?
Ian,
> Oliver, do you really think Da Vinci would be on
> the market if it was selling?
> Ian Wilson
I'm not sure that's a given. For example, take a look at Quantel. They
did a leveraged buy-out from Carlton in 2000. This past year was their
most profitable since that buy-out. They have come on quite strong in DI
and news/broadcast servers, but it's a company that many would have
argued could not survive the desktop world. Re-establishing the company
based on new core R&D developments (Generation Q technology) gave them a
new life.
In the case of DaVinci, they have been encumbered by proprietary
hardware in the 2K systems and existing support contracts. The first
thing BMD did was wipe that legacy out. Now this doesn't make 2K
customers happy, but it may well be a required survival move.
As I understand it, Resolve is "software only", but it actually runs on
a very optimized cluster of Linux boxes. You can't simply replicate that
performance with a card today or even in the next couple of years. If
you don't have performance, you don't buy a DaVinci. Resolve is
"software only" in the same way that Flame and Lustre are "software
only".
Second is the issue of telecine support. A lot of DaVinci customers are
grading from telecines, i.e. direct from the negative or print. That's a
lot more involved there than grading from scans or files or even
videotape. My point is that the items that make a DaVinci desirable to
customers cannot be easily reduced in cost.
There are already two other vendors making desktop grading tools who
could easily step in if they wanted to. That's FilmLight and IRIDAS.
FilmLight has a version of BaseLight that runs on a MacBook Pro. They
will only sell this software app to customers who own a full system.
IRIDAS maintains a pricing model like Final Touch used to: very
expensive and tiered around resolution. Both companies could easily
decide tomorrow to sell a 2K-and-higher grading app for $1K if they felt
it made sense. I maintain again that it doesn't, because Apple chose to
give away Color with Studio.
Then there's also Synthetic Aperture who sells a powerful standalone
version of Color Finesse. It basically works like Color, but they were
unfortunate in bringing it to market right when Color was bundled by
Apple.
So, if you go back to everything that Grant has publicly said, his
intention at this point is to maintain DaVinci as a high-end product.
We'll see if the market proves him right.
Cheers,
Oliver
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