Avid Technology

Last updated
Avid Technology, Inc.
Company type Private
Industry Computer software, Technology, Multimedia
FoundedAugust 1987;37 years ago (1987-08)
FounderBill Warner
Headquarters Burlington, Massachusetts, United States
Key people
Wellford Dillard (CEO)
Products Pro Tools, Media Composer, Sibelius, Avid Play Avid VENUE, Avid NEXIS, MediaCentral, FastServe, MBOX Studio, Pro Tools Carbon, Pro Tools MTRX, Airspeed, Avid Maestro Graphics.
RevenueIncrease2.svg US$417 million (2022)
Increase2.svg US$53.9 million (2022)
Increase2.svg US$55.2 million (2022)
Total assets Increase2.svg US$287 million (2022)
Owner Symphony Technology Group
Website www.avid.com
Footnotes /references
[1]

Avid Technology, Inc. is a global technology company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, and was founded in August 1987 by Bill Warner. [2] [3] It develops software, SaaS, and hardware products used in media and entertainment.

Contents

Avid products and workflow solutions are used extensively in Hollywood and the film industry; in the broadcast television and streaming media industry; and the music industry. It is known for its video editing software, audio editing software, music notation software and media management and distribution services.

Products

Avid's software and hardware are used by companies and individuals in the media and entertainment industry.

Media Composer and Avid | Edit on Demand: Professional-grade video editing software.

MediaCentral and Avid | Stream IO: Workflow management for news and sports media.

NEXIS: Shared and nearline storage for video and audio.

Pro Tools : Software for music creation and audio production.

Venue: Hardware consoles and tools for live sound.  

Sibelius : Music notation and engraving software.  

History

Avid was founded by Bill Warner, a former marketing manager from Apollo Computer.

A prototype of their first non-linear editing system, the Avid/1 Media Composer, was shown at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in April 1988. The Avid/1 was based on an Apple Macintosh II computer, with special hardware and software of Avid's design installed. The Avid/1 was "the biggest shake-up in editing since Melies played with time and sequences in the early 1900s". [4]

By the early 1990s, Avid products began to replace such tools as the Moviola, Steenbeck, and KEM flatbed editors, allowing editors to handle their film creations with greater ease. The first feature film edited using the Avid was Let's Kill All the Lawyers in 1992, directed by Ron Senkowski. The film was edited at a 30fps NTSC rate, then used Avid MediaMatch to generate a negative cutlist from the EDL. [5] [6] The first feature film edited natively at 24fps with what was to become the Avid Film Composer was Emerson Park. The first studio film to be edited at 24fps was Lost in Yonkers , directed by Martha Coolidge.

By 1994 only three feature films used the new digital editing system. By 1995 dozens had switched to Avid, and it signaled the beginning of the end of cutting celluloid. In 1996 Walter Murch accepted the Academy Award for editing The English Patient (which also won best picture), which he cut on the Avid. This was the first Editing Oscar awarded to a digitally edited film (although the final print was still created with traditional negative cutting). [7]

Avid logo, 1999-2008 Avid logo.svg
Avid logo, 1999-2008

In 1994 Avid introduced Open Media Framework (OMF) as an open standard file format for sharing media and related metadata.

Over the years, Avid has released numerous freeware versions of Media Composer. Initially this included Avid Free DV: a free edition of Media Composer with limited functionality; Avid Xpress DV: a consumer edition of Media Composer; and then Avid Xpress Pro: a prosumer edition of Media Composer. These editions were discontinued in 2008 as the flagship Media Composer was lowered in price. Later, Avid released Media Composer | First, which included a large portion of Media Composer's functionality but its exporting workflows publishing finished videos directly to web services like YouTube.

On March 29, 1999, Avid Technology, Inc. adjusted the amount originally allocated to IPR&D and restated its third-quarter 1998 consolidated financial statements accordingly, considering the SEC's views. [8]

In 2006, Avid entered the shared storage market with Interplay and Unity. Combined with Media Composer, this became a milestone workflow for network television and film studios.

In February 2018, Avid appointed Jeff Rosica as CEO, after terminating Louis Hernandez Jr, who was accused of workplace misconduct. [9]

In November 2023, Avid Technology was acquired by an affiliate of STG for $1.4 billion. [10] This process delisted Avid from the public stock exchange, making it private.

In April 2024, Avid appointed Wellford Dillard as CEO, succeeding Jeff Rosica.

Awards

1993: The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences awarded Avid Technology and all of the company's initial employees with a technical Emmy award for Outstanding Engineering Development for the Avid Media Composer video editing system. [11] [12]

1998: Avid received an Emmy Award recognizing the real-time multi-camera grouping option in the Media Composer and Film Composer digital editing systems.

1999: At the 71st Academy Awards, Avid Technology Inc. was awarded an Oscar for the concept, system design and engineering of the Avid Film Composer for motion picture editing which was accepted by founder Bill Warner. [13]

2000: Avid received an Emmy Award recognizing outstanding achievement in technological advancement for broadcast-quality PC video and compression plug-in cards.

2001: Digidesign receives a technical Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

2004: Digidesign receives an Oscar statuette representing the 2003 Scientific and Technical Award for the design, development and implementation of the Pro Tools digital audio workstation. The award marks one of the few times in the 76-year history of the Academy that a company is honored with more than one Oscar statuette, and that an audio company is recognized with a statuette for its contributions to the film industry.

2008: Digidesign ICON integrated console earns the Cinema Audio Society Technical Achievement Award.

2008: Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11 receives PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice award for Consumer Video Editing Software bringing the number of consumer and retail awards received by the Pinnacle Studio product line to 36 since its May 2007 release.

2009: Avid Media Composer was recognized by American Cinema Editors (ACE)   Board of Directors with the Board’s first-ever ACE Technical Excellence Award which recognized the software as the preferred choice of the industry’s most acclaimed editors.

2010: Avid was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with an Engineering Plaque for Avid Media Access (AMA) for its role in dramatically improving the process of working with tapeless media – by eliminating time-consuming transcoding processes and saving time and money in the production process.

2010: Avid received the Philo T. Farnsworth Award for outstanding achievement in engineering development.    

2022: Avid NEXIS | Edge and Media Composer took home TVB Europe and TV Technology's NAB Best in Market Awards.

2023: NEXIS | F2 SSD won NAB Show Product of the Year Award.

Acquisitions

AcquiredCompanyDetailsSold
1993 EditDroid A computerized analog non-linear editing (NLE) system which was developed by Lucasfilm spin-off company. [14]
DiVA Corporationdeveloper of Videoshop, Quicktime-based home video editing software
1994 Digidesign developer of Pro Tools, digital audio workstation, and Venue, brand of digital mixing consoles
BasysITN's newsroom computer and automation system (from Digital Equipment Corporation), then implemented into iNews in 2001
NewsviewNovell-based newsroom computer system[ clarification needed ]
1995Elastic Reality, Inc.developer of Elastic Reality, morphing software
Parallax Softwaredeveloper of Matador, Illusion and Jester, ink-and-paint software
1998 Softimage developer of Softimage|3D, 3D graphics software (previously subsidiary of Microsoft)2008 (to Autodesk)
NewStarstrategic alliance Avstar with Grass Valley—then owners of Lightworks [ clarification needed ]
2000Motion Factorydeveloper of interactive 3D software for games and the Web [15]
Pluto Technology DDR playback servers
2002iKnowledgedeveloper of Active Content Manager, newsroom management software
2003Rocket Networksprivate sharing network technology for Internet collaboration, then implemented in Digidelivery, encrypted file transfer system [16] 2007 (to Aspera)
2004NXN Media Asset Management software components
Bomb Factory audio plug-ins developer
M-Audio audio interfaces and equipment manufacturer2012 (to inMusic)
2005 Pinnacle Systems digital video hardware and software manufacturer2012 (to Corel)
Wizoovirtual instrument, plug-in effect and sample library designer; [17] developed AIR (Advanced Instrument Research), series of plug-ins and virtual instruments subsequently included in Pro Tools 2012 (to inMusic)
2006Medéa Corporationhigh-speed RAID storage manufacturer
Sundance Digitalbroadcast automation software
Sibelius Software developer of Sibelius, notation software
Maximum Throughput [18] developer of MAXedit, visual effects editing software [19]
2010Blue Order Solutions AG [20] Media asset management software
Euphonix [21] digital mixing console and control surface manufacturer; EuCon protocols were integrated into Pro Tools; the Artist Series and System 5 Family were added to Avid control surfaces
2012Rocket Networkprovides online music recording studios [22]
2015Orad Systemsdeveloper of 3D real-time graphics and video servers products, then integrated into the MediaCentral Platform [23]
2024Wolftechprovider of story-centric workflow management solutions to large broadcasters, enhancing collaboration and efficiency in news gathering & story creation

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-linear editing</span> Non-destructive audio, video, or image editing

Non-linear editing is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by specialized software. A pointer-based playlist, effectively an edit decision list (EDL), for video and audio, or a directed acyclic graph for still images, is used to keep track of edits. Each time the edited audio, video, or image is rendered, played back, or accessed, it is reconstructed from the original source and the specified editing steps. Although this process is more computationally intensive than directly modifying the original content, changing the edits themselves can be almost instantaneous, and it prevents further generation loss as the audio, video, or image is edited.

NewTek, Inc., was a San Antonio, Texas–based hardware and software company that produced live and post-production video tools and visual imaging software for personal computers. The company was founded in 1985 in Topeka, Kansas, United States, by Tim Jenison and Paul Montgomery. On April 1, 2019, it was announced that NewTek would be acquired by Vizrt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pro Tools</span> Digital audio workstation

Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture and, more generally, sound recording, editing, and mastering processes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital audio workstation</span> Electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files

A digital audio workstation is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrated stand-alone unit, all the way to a highly complex configuration of numerous components controlled by a central computer. Regardless of configuration, modern DAWs have a central interface that allows the user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final produced piece.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Final Cut Pro</span> Video editing software by Apple

Final Cut Pro is a professional non-linear video-editing application initially developed by Macromedia, and, since 1998, by Apple as part of its pro apps collection. Final Cut Pro allows users to import, edit, and process video footage, and output it to a wide variety of formats.

Avid Audio is an American digital audio technology company. It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. The company began as a project to raise money for the founders' band, selling EPROM chips for drum machines. It is a subsidiary of Avid Technology, and during 2010 the Digidesign brand was phased out. Avid Audio products will continue to be produced and will now carry the Avid brand name.

Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a division of Autodesk which offers animation and visual effects products, and was formed by the combination of multiple acquisitions. In 2018, the company began operating as a single operating segment and reporting unit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avid Free DV</span>

Avid Free DV is a non-linear editing video editing software application which was made by Avid Technology. Avid discontinued this product, stating: "Effective September 1, 2007, Avid is discontinuing the Avid Free DV application offer, and has no immediate plans to make an updated version available."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xpress Pro</span> Non-linear video editing software

Avid Xpress Pro was a non-linear video editing software aimed at professionals in the TV and movie industry. It was available for Microsoft Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media Composer</span> Film and video editing software

Media Composer is a non-linear editing (NLE) software application developed by Avid Technology. First introduced in the late 1980s and widely adopted in the 1990s, it has become a prominent tool in the professional editing landscape, particularly in the film, television, and broadcast industries. Media Composer is used in a variety of production environments, including feature films, television shows, documentaries, and streaming service content.

Blackbird is an integrated internet video platform, video editing software, covering non-linear editing and publishing for broadcast, web and mobile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prosoniq</span> German software developer

Prosoniq Products Software was a German software developer of audio and music tools, mostly known for their sonicWORX, OrangeVocoder, TimeFactory and Hartmann Neuron synthesizer products. It also licensed proprietary technologies in the audio/music DSP sector to software manufacturers including Emagic, Steinberg, Digidesign, TwelveTone Systems, Merging, DAVID, AutoDesk/Discreet and others. Headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, Prosoniq pioneered the use of artificial neural networks for commercial audio processing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avid Elastic Reality</span>

Elastic Reality was a warping and morphing software application available on Windows, Macintosh, and Silicon Graphics workstations and was discontinued in 1999.

Avid Symphony is non-linear editing software aimed at professionals in the film and television industry. It is available for Microsoft Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avid DS</span> Editing and effects software

Avid DS is a high-end offline and finishing system comprising a non-linear editing system and visual effects software. It was developed by Softimage in Montreal.

Ingex is an open-source (GPL) suite of software for the digital capture of audio and video data, without the need for traditional audio or video tape or cassettes. Serial digital interface (SDI) capture is supported, as well as real-time transcoding. Portions of the software suite also act as a network file server for media files, as well as archiving to LTO-3 data tape. Audio and video media files can also be stored on USB hard drives or Network Attached Storage. The software is heavily used by the BBC, and was developed by the BBC Research Laboratory.

Boris FX is a visual effects and video editing software plug-in developer based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The developer is known for its flagship products, Continuum, Sapphire, Mocha, and Silhouette.

Lon Ethan Bender is an American supervising sound editor, business executive and inventor. Bender won the Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing for his work on Braveheart (1995). He has been recognized for numerous other industry awards as well, including Oscar nominations for The Revenant (2015), Drive (2011) and Blood Diamond (2006). Bender is the co-founder of post production sound services company Soundelux.

The Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards, or Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Primetime Engineering Emmys are presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), while the separate Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards are given by its sister organization, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DaVinci Resolve</span> Video editing application by Blackmagic Design

DaVinci Resolve is a proprietary color grading, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production video editing application for macOS, Windows, and Linux, developed by Australian company Blackmagic Design. It was originally developed by American company Da Vinci Systems under the name da Vinci Resolve until 2009, when Blackmagic Design acquired the company. In addition to the commercial version of the software, Blackmagic Design also distributes a free edition with reduced functionality, simply named DaVinci Resolve.

References

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  5. "Ron Senkowski". IMDb .
  6. Kennedy, Ashley (10 December 2011). "Fun Facts and Dates in Digital Editing 'Firsts'" . Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  7. Scott Kirsner, Inventing the Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs (2008) Publisher Scott Kirsner, ISBN   1-4382-0999-1, ISBN   978-1-4382-0999-9 page 84-85
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  9. "Avid Technology Announces Appointment of Jeff Rosica as Chief Executive Officer and Termination of Louis Hernandez, Jr". Avid. 26 February 2018. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
  10. Giardina, Carolyn (November 7, 2023). "Private Equity Firm STG Completes Acquisition of Avid for $1.4B". The Hollywood Reporter.
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  12. Curiosity Expert: William J. Warner
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  17. "Digidesign buy Wizoo". www.soundonsound.com. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
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  19. September 23, Alex Udell; Pm, 2009 at 6:06 (2009-09-08). "More transitions – Avid acquired Max-T". fxguide. Retrieved 2019-12-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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  21. TVTechnology (2010-04-22). "Avid Acquires Euphonix". TVTechnology. Retrieved 2024-10-31.
  22. "Avid Acquires Rocket Network's Assets". Mixonline. 2003-04-10. Retrieved 2020-05-14.
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