Corporate Background
Company Overview
If you enjoy movies, television, music or virtually any other form of electronic media, you have almost certainly experienced the work of the legions of content creators who use Avid® solutions to bring their creative visions to life.
Building on a concept that originated in a garage in Massachusetts in 1987, Avid is a worldwide leader in digital media creation tools for film, video, audio and broadcast professionals – as well as for home audio and video enthusiasts. Avid professional and consumer brands include Avid, Digidesign®, M-Audio®, Pinnacle Systems®, Sibelius® and Sundance Digital®. Today, the vast majority of primetime television shows, feature films, commercials and chart-topping music hits are made using one or more Avid products. Whether used by seasoned professionals or beginning students, Avid’s products and services enable customers to work more efficiently, productively and creatively. The company has received the most prestigious awards in the industries it serves – including 12 Emmy® Awards, one Grammy® Award and two Oscar® statuettes: the 1998 Scientific and Technical Award for the concept, design and engineering of the Avid Film Composer® system for motion picture editing, and the 2003 Scientific and Technical Award for the design, development and implementation of the Digidesign Pro Tools® digital audio workstation.
Since Avid’s early days of pioneering the concept of using a computer to digitally manipulate film, video, and audio its spirit of innovation continues to this day – with increasingly powerful, integrated solutions that reflect Avid’s dedication to quality, and its longstanding commitment to empowering the creativity behind the world’s most widely recognized media.
Corporate Headquarters |
European Headquarters |
Asian Headquarters |
Employees
2,729 (end of March 2008)
Stock Symbol
Avid is registered on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, under the symbol AVID.
Revenue
$929.6 million (FY 2007) |
$476.1 million (FY 2000) |
$134.4 million (FY 1993) |
Executive Management Team
- Gary Greenfield
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President - Kirk Arnold
Executive Vice President of Customer Operations - Ken Sexton
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and
Chief Administrative Officer - Dave Lebolt
Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer - Jerry Kelly
Vice President and Chief Information Officer - Glover Lawrence
Vice President, Corporate Development - Joel Legon
Vice President of Finance and Principal Accounting Officer - Paul Lypaczewski
Vice President and General Manager, Video - Beth Martinko
Vice President of Customer Success
- Paige Parisi
Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary - Ed Raine
Vice President of Human Resources - Tex Schenkkan
Vice President and General Manager, Audio
Markets Served
Television Editing and Finishing
Film Editing
Industrial Post-production
Broadcast Production
Broadcast Graphics
Professional Audio Production and Post-production
Live Sound Mixing
Consumer Audio
Consumer Video
Corporate and Small Business Video Post-production
Media Asset Management, Networking and Storage
Music Notation and Composition
PRODUCT & TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
PRODUCTS
The following section describes the core products and brand families within each of our business units.
PROFESSIONAL VIDEO
Our Professional Video segment markets products under the Avid Video and Sundance Digital brand names. The product categories below may include products marketed under more than one brand.
Video and Film Editing and Finishing
Media Composer Family
This group of digital nonlinear editing products includes Media Composer® with Avid Mojo® SDI, Media Composer Mojo DX and Media Composer Nitris® DX systems, as well as Media Composer software. These products are widely used during the “offline” editing stage in the creation of prime-time television programs, commercials and films, during which editors assemble storylines by cutting different scenes together in sequential order. As part of Avid Video’s “New Thinking” campaign announced in March 2008, Avid Xpress® Pro is being merged into our flagship Media Composer software product with a new price point of $2,495 USMSRP for Media Composer software. In addition, Avid announced new student pricing of $295 USD of Media Composer software available to all students at accredited academic institutions.
Avid DS and Symphony Family
Many professionals who use our Media Composer products to create feature films, television programs, commercials and music videos also use the Avid Symphony™ Nitris DX and Avid DS Nitris and Avid DS Assist systems during the “online” or “finishing” stage, during which editors and specialists work with high resolution media files to augment the storyline with graphics, special effects, color-grading and other sophisticated visual enhancements. These real-time, uncompressed HD and SD solutions provide an environment for high-quality finishing and mastering.
Storage & Workgroups
Avid Unity Media Network Family
Our shared media networks offer collaborative workflows that support a wide range of SD and HD digital video formats, including Avid DNxHD®. This product line includes the enterprise level Avid Unity™ ISIS® (Infinitely Scalable Intelligent Storage) system, which provides high scalability and availability based on industry-standard gigabit Ethernet networking; the 4-gigabit Fibre Channel-based Avid Unity MediaNetwork for high performance in facility-class environments; and the Avid Unity LANshare system for smaller broadcast operations and post-production customers.
Avid Interplay Family
Avid Interplay® workgroup tools bring together creative, production and business processes by fusing integrated asset management, workflow automation and security control into a single system that delivers a business-wide workflow for post-production and broadcast settings of any size. The flexible set of Avid Interplay components and services paired with the Avid Interplay nonlinear workflow engine streamline collaboration by automating complex workflow processes so that users can focus on creating compelling content rather than spending time to manually address labor-intensive production tasks.
Broadcast
Avid production, newsroom, on-air graphics, play-to-air and automation device control solutions are designed to help broadcasters accelerate the production process; research, create, manage and deliver television news programs; develop and deliver real-time graphics for broadcast television; and manage, control and play back television programming.
Production Solutions
Our production solutions are primarily intended for news, sports, live events, magazine and similar broadcast programming and are designed to help broadcasters accelerate the production process and increase their capability and efficiency from content acquisition through editing and playout. Avid AirSpeed® ingest and playout servers provide a fast and highly scalable method for recording media directly into, and playing media from, an Avid Unity MediaNetwork or ISIS system. NewsCutter® editing systems build on our core editing technology and provide capabilities specifically designed for broadcast news editing. NewsCutter Mojo DX and Newscutter Nitris DX systems are designed to handle a broader range of SD and HD editing requirements in a broadcast facility, while NewsCutter software systems provide desktop or laptop configurations for editing in the field.
Newsroom Solutions
Our newsroom solutions are used by journalists, producers, assignment editors, reporters and presenters for researching, creating, managing and delivering television news programs. Avid iNEWS® newsroom computer systems give producers and assignment editors control of an entire news production, including gathering and reading wires, e-mail and other messages, organizing assignments, writing stories and preparing news programs. iNEWS Instinct® is a storytelling tool with scriptwriting, shot selection and video and audio editing specifically designed for journalists.
On-Air Graphics Solutions
Our on-air graphics solutions are used to develop and deliver real-time graphics and other visual elements for broadcast television. On-air graphics solutions include the Deko®, Thunder® and DekoCast™ product lines.
Automation and Device Control Solutions
Our automation and device control solutions enable broadcasters to produce, manage, control and play back television programming. Products include Sundance Digital® Titan™, FastBreak® NXT Automation™ and FastBreak NXT XPress, Intelli-Sat™ and Digital Delivery Management System (DDMS).
Support, Service, Training & Consulting
Avid Support is our maintenance support offering for our Professional Video products. Avid Support provides software and application support to meet the product maintenance needs of our customers, including isolating hardware issues, resolving software issues, providing software upgrades and generally helping our customers utilize their applications fully. In addition to Avid Support, we provide installation services for our products and media-industry consulting services for the planning, integration and operation of our customers systems. We also offer a variety of training programs at sites around the globe and over the Internet.
AUDIO
Our Audio segment markets products under the Digidesign, M-Audio and Sibelius brand names. The product categories below may include products marketed under more than one brand.
Professional Audio
Pro Tools Digital Audio Workstation
Pro Tools is a multi-track, non-linear digital audio workstation comprising a variety of hardware options and bundled software that runs on Macintosh and Windows platforms. Pro Tools workstations provide solutions for the entire audio production process, including recording, editing, signal processing, sound synthesis, integrated surround mixing and mastering, and reference video playback. Pro Tools users work in the professional or aspiring professional music, film, television, radio, multimedia, DVD and Internet production markets. Pro Tools systems support a rich third-party development environment, with more than 100 development partners providing a variety of additional software and hardware add-on options.
Digidesign Pro Tools systems are offered in a variety of price points and configurations, ranging from Pro Tools|HD® systems for professional music and post-production environments, to the affordable Mbox® 2 and 003® product families for home production studios. The hardware offerings of these product lines are typically bundled with industry-standard Pro Tools software, but can also run third-party software applications. Customers can choose to use Pro Tools with a wide range of audio peripherals, including a variety of mixing control surfaces such as our newly introduced C|24™ or those from our ICON family, and our post-production Pro Tools customers can choose a qualified Avid Video peripheral to provide reference video recording and playback.
ICON Control Surfaces
In the large-format digital mixing console category, the Digidesign ICON (Integrated Console System) system features the D-Control™ and D-Command® mixing surfaces, our high-end, expandable hardware control surfaces for tactile control of Pro Tools software and hardware. ICON systems can be customized to fit any studio, providing from 16 to 80 channels of simultaneous control.
Live Sound
VENUE Mixing Consoles
The VENUE product family includes products for mixing sound at live concert and theater performances, and other public address events. VENUE systems can be interconnected with Pro Tools systems to make live recordings. They also offer the ability to run Digidesign and third-party signal and effects processing software plug-ins. In keeping with our strategy of delivering superior integration, we continued to extend the hardware interface options and software capabilities of this product line in 2007. A VENUE console was used by four of the top eight highest-grossing concert tours in North America during 2007.
Aspiring Professional and Home Studio Audio
We offer a number of product lines specifically designed to meet the price-sensitive needs of a range of aspiring music industry users, including the home hobbyist with a personal home studio and the up-and-coming professional. Our Digidesign Pro Tools LE® family of audio interfaces and M-Audio family of digital audio and ancillary hardware and software solutions enable electronic musicians and home enthusiasts to manage the production of their own material from creation and recording to the editing, processing and mixing required to produce the final result.
Audio Interfaces
Our M-Audio interfaces dovetail with the Digidesign Pro Tools LE product line, allowing users to get high-quality sound in and out of a computer at affordable prices. Users can create audio recordings on their personal computers using optional Pro Tools M-Powered™ software or with third-party software. We continued to expand the software and interface capabilities of this product family, including the addition of compatibility with newer technologies such as USB 2.0.
Keyboards
Our M-Audio USB, FireWire and wireless keyboards allow users to send MIDI messages directly to a personal computer, access sound-creation software and control a variety of other musical functions without the need for additional MIDI interface peripherals. The M-Audio sound-producing keyboards line includes the KeyStudio™ 49i, a combination controller, audio interface and digital piano.
Speakers, Microphones, Mixers and Add-On Software
We offer a variety of in-ear reference earphone monitors and self-powered monitor speakers that provide stereo or multi-channel surround monitoring aimed at the recording studio, home music hobbyist, personal computer and home-theater markets. Under the M-Audio brand name, we also offer condenser and dynamic microphones and the recently introduced NRV10, a desktop analog mixing console with built-in audio interface capability. We also distribute a selection of third-party software product lines that allow customers to purchase complete home recording packages from a single supplier.
Notation Products
Our Sibelius software allows written musical scores to be created, edited and published electronically and is used by composers, arrangers and other media professionals. We also offer student versions of the Sibelius notation software to assist in the teaching of music composition and score writing.
CONSUMER VIDEO
Our Consumer Video segment markets products under the Pinnacle™ brand name. Our consumer video-editing and capture products offer a wide range of features that streamline the three-step “capture, enhance and share” process. For example, consumers can drag and drop clips to create video sequences in the order they desire, insert transitions between scenes, and add simple graphics, titles, music or narration to their personal productions.
Video-Capture Products
Our consumer video-capture products include a wide range of hardware-based solutions that enable consumers to capture analog video from VHS or camcorder tapes, live TV signals or any other analog source and turn it into a variety of digital formats for archiving or editing. Our Pinnacle Studio™ and Dazzle® video capture solutions are available for either Windows or Macintosh users. We also offer Pinnacle Video Transfer, a stand-alone device that does not require a computer in order to capture video from any analog video source and transfer content to a mobile video player (such as an iPod), a hard drive or a flash memory stick.
Pinnacle Software Products
Our Pinnacle software offerings consist of nonlinear video-editing software products that run on the Windows operating system. Our Pinnacle Studio editing line is available in three configurations, Pinnacle Studio, Pinnacle Studio Plus and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate. Pinnacle Studio is designed for entry-level storytellers looking for a quick and easy way to enhance and share their projects with family and friends. Pinnacle Studio Plus and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate are intended for advanced video enthusiasts who require additional power, control and quality to create more professional looking results by offering additional features such as HD editing and HD output to disc. Pinnacle Studio products are available as stand-alone software products or bundled with a variety of video input/output hardware. Our recently announced VideoSpin™ editing product is available by free download and allows users to easily create movies in minutes simply by dragging and dropping videos, pictures and music from their personal computer hard drive onto a timeline and adding transitions and titles as they wish.
TV-Over-PC Viewing Products
Our TV-over-PC viewing products allow Windows or Macintosh users to view television programming on their computers wherever and whenever they choose. A television program can be viewed or recorded on its own using the Pinnacle TV Center software or in conjunction with applications such as Windows Media Center. The Pinnacle PCTV™ line, available for HD format in certain markets, consists of a family of USB sticks with a small and convenient form factor well-suited for use with laptops and PCI-based cards more appropriate for desktop users.
Distribution Channels
Avid’s professional video, audio, computer graphics and consumer video products are marketed in more than 75 countries through the company’s direct sales offices and worldwide reseller network. For more information on reseller locations, visit www.avid.com.
Sales Offices
Canada, China, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Latin America, Singapore, Spain, U.K., and U.S.
Licensed Distributor Offices
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Benelux, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, and Sweden.
Avid Historical Timeline – 20+ Years of Innovation in Digital Media Technology
1987
- Avid Technology, Inc. is founded by William J. Warner in a garage in Burlington, MA.
1989
- Avid introduces the industry to digital nonlinear editing with the Avid/1 Media Composer system, the company’s flagship editing solution. The Media Composer system revolutionizes the post-production process by providing editors with a faster, more intuitive and more creative way to work than was possible with traditional analog linear methods. This development helps pave the way for a digital revolution within the film, video and broadcast industries.
- Avid posts revenue of $1 million USD.
1990
- Avid opens its first office in Europe.
1992
- Avid opens its first office in Asia.
- Avid sells its 500th Avid/1 Media Composer system.
- Avid introduces the Film Composer system, the industry’s first digital nonlinear editing system that supports 24p.
1993
- Avid goes public, trading on the NASDAQ market under the symbol AVID.
- The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presents Avid with two Emmy Awards for the Media Composer system.
- Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers becomes the first feature film cut on the Avid Film Composer system.
1994
- Avid acquires BASYS Automation Systems (news division) and SofTECH Systems, Inc., two leading providers of newsroom computer systems for broadcasters.
- Avid introduces the Open Media Framework® (OMF®) interchange, an industry-standard file format for the exchange of digital media among different platforms and applications, and now widely recognized as a key enabling technology for all-digital post production.
1995
- Avid acquires Digidesign, Inc., a pioneering developer of digital audio production solutions, including the Pro Tools digital audio workstation platform.
- Avid acquires Parallax Software, Inc. and Elastic Reality, Inc., leaders in paint, compositing, effects, and image manipulation software.
- Avid moves from Burlington to its current headquarters in Tewksbury, MA.
1997
- Avid enters into strategic alliances with Intel and Matsushita to support its development plans on the Windows platform.
- Cut on an Avid Film Composer system, The English Patient becomes the first digitally edited film to receive an Academy Award in the Best Film Editing category.
1998
- Avid acquires Softimage, Inc., a Montreal-based developer of software tools for digital artists who create professional animation and visual effects for the film, broadcast and games industries.
- Avid receives an Emmy Award recognizing the real-time multicamera grouping option in the Media Composer and Film Composer digital editing systems.
1999
- Avid receives an Oscar statuette representing the 1998 Scientific and Technical Award for the concept, design and engineering of the Avid Film Composer system for motion picture editing.
2000
- Avid receives an Emmy Award recognizing outstanding achievement in technological advancement for broadcast-quality PC video and compression plug-in cards.
- Avid acquires The Motion Factory, Inc. of Fremont, CA, a company specializing in applications for the creation, delivery and playback of interactive, rich 3D media for character-driven games and the Internet.
- Avid acquires Pluto Technologies International, Inc. of Boulder, CO, a provider of video storage and networking solutions for broadcast news, post-production and other bandwidth-intensive applications.
- Avid introduces the Avid Unity for News family of shared storage solutions, which serves as the core of the company’s end-to-end broadcast news production workflow.
2001
- Avid acquires iNews, LLC of Madison, WI, the world’s leading provider of broadcast news software solutions for television, radio and the web. iNews was originally formed in 1998 from the combination of Avid’s AvidNews and Tektronix’s NewStar news production systems.
- Digidesign receives a technical Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.
2002
- Avid acquires iKnowledge, Inc. of Lexington, MA, a developer of enterprise content aggregation, distribution and syndication solutions.
2003
- Avid opens the NASDAQ market on the 10th anniversary of the company’s initial public offering.
- Avid acquires Rocket Network, Inc. of San Francisco, a developer of Internet media collaboration and delivery products for audio and video media.
- Avid launches the Avid DNA™ product family, a powerful series of Digital Nonlinear Accelerator™ systems specifically engineered for media processing. These products – which include Nitris, Adrenaline and Avid Mojo – represent the industry’s first hybrid computing architecture, which leverages the power of both host-based software capabilities and hardware-based acceleration.
- Digidesign acquires the assets of Bomb Factory Digital, Inc., a manufacturer of real-time audio DSP effects for the Pro Tools platform.
2004
- Avid acquires NXN Software AG of Munich, a leading developer of asset and production management systems specifically targeted for the entertainment and computer graphics industries.
- Avid enters the consumer audio market by acquiring M-Audio, a leading provider of digital audio and MIDI solutions for electronic musicians and audio professionals; M-Audio becomes a business unit of Digidesign.
- 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.
- Avid introduces Avid DNxHD technology, a 10-bit encoding system that enables high-definition (HD) collaboration with the same storage bandwidth and capacity requirements as standard-definition (SD) media. The source code for Avid DNxHD is made licensable for free from the Avid website.
2005
- Digidesign enters live sound market with the introduction of the VENUE live sound environment, featuring the D-Show® mixing console.
- Avid acquires Pinnacle Systems, Inc., a leading developer of digital video editing solutions for consumers and professionals in the broadcast and postproduction industries.
- Avid launches the Avid Unity ISIS system, a next-generation shared-storage solution that leverages a distributed architecture to achieve unlimited scalability, extraordinary resiliency and vast client connectivity.
- Avid introduces the Symphony Nitris solution, a nonlinear SD and HD finishing system that offers guaranteed real-time editing and effects for multi-stream 10-bit HD and SD media, as well as HD Total Conform with the Avid Media Composer system.
- Digidesign acquires Wizoo Sound Design GmbH, a German developer of virtual instruments, sample libraries, and real-time effects – and forms the Advanced Instrument Research Group from the assets of the acquisition.
2006
- Avid acquires Medéa Corporation, a California-based maker of high-performance, low-cost RAID storage systems for digital content creation and streaming media applications.
- Digidesign acquires the assets of Trillium Lane Labs LLC, a manufacturer of audio processing plug-ins for the Pro Tools platform.
- Avid introduces SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT, a revolutionary facial animation technology that allows 3-D artists to achieve stunningly realistic results for high-end film, post and games projects.
- Avid acquires Sundance Digital, Inc., a leading developer of automation and device control software for broadcast video servers, tape transports, graphics systems and other broadcast station equipment.
- Avid introduces Avid Interplay, the world’s first nonlinear workflow engine that fuses integrated asset management, workflow automation and security control into a single system.
- Avid introduces Media Composer software for Mac and PC desktops and laptops, offering professionals the power of the Media Composer toolset without the need for additional hardware.
- Avid introduces ALEX®, the first web-based, 24/7 Learning Portal for content creation professionals.
- Avid acquires Sibelius Software Limited, a leading music applications software company with products for professionals, educators and students who want to use computers to write, teach or learn music.
- TV show “Bones” is Fox’s first primetime drama mastered in Avid DNxHD.
2007
- Avid introduces Avid Unity MediaNetwork 5.0, a streamlined, next-generation architecture that sets a new standard in price-performance for real-time shared storage.
- Avid introduces ScriptSync® - a groundbreaking feature in Media Composer that advances the functionality of Avid’s script-based editing. ScriptSync is the first tool capable of automating the task of synchronizing scripts or transcripts with their respective media files, and eliminating the labor-intensive process of manually inserting sync points.
- More than 150 customers purchase Avid Interplay systems in the first six months of the product shipping – with the worldwide client count exceeding 5400.
- 24 manufacturers sign SDK licensing agreements for Avid DNxHD, allowing them to integrate the capabilities of Avid DNxHD encoding into their own products.
- More than 10,000 customers purchase the latest Digidesign Pro Tools upgrade within the first 25 days on the market.
- Pinnacle Studio 11 consumer video editing software launches, and with more than 9 million registered users, Pinnacle Studio is the #1 choice of consumers who wish to make movies and DVDs on their PCs.
- Gary G. Greenfield joins as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Avid in December 2007.
2008
- Avid’s Professional Video group introduces “New Thinking” campaign—its new approach to the way it interacts with customers, prospects and the industries it serves. “New Thinking” is based on the following:
- Increasing the value of Avid Video’s products, services and workflows,
- Advancing our technical support programs and capabilities,
- Investing in the community of media professionals, and
- Fostering an open, two-way dialog with customers.
- All of the nominated and award-winning films in the Best Motion Picture, Directing, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, Documentary Feature and Original Score categories at the 80th Annual Academy Awards® were created using at least one Avid, Digidesign, Sibelius or Softimage system. Nearly two-thirds of these nominees employed workflows consisting of multiple systems from the various Avid brands.
- For the eighth-consecutive year, every nominee for a Sound Editing Oscar used Digidesign Pro Tools systems.
- Digidesign ICON integrated console earns the Cinema Audio Society Technical Achievement Award.
- 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.
Avid takes steps to focus on it’s core video and audio segments and agrees to the sale of the Softimage, Inc. 3D animation line to AutoDesk.
© 2008 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product features, specifications, system requirements, and availability are subject to change without notice. All prices are USMSRP for the U.S. and Canada only and are subject to change without notice. Contact your local Avid office or reseller for prices outside the U.S. and Canada. Avid, Adrenaline, AirSpeed, ALEX, Avid DNA, Avid DNxHD, Avid Interplay, Avid Mojo, Avid Unity, Avid Xpress, C|24, D-Control, D-Command, D-Show, Dazzle, Deko, DekoCast, Digidesign, Digital Nonlinear Accelerator, Fastbreak, Fastbreak NXT Automation, Film Composer, iNEWS, Instinct, Intelli-Sat, ISIS, KeyStudio, M-Audio, Mbox, Media Composer, Nearchive, NewsCutter, Nitris, 003, Open Media Framework, OMF, PCTV, Pinnacle, Pinnacle Studio, Pinnacle Systems, Pro Tools, Pro Tools|HD, Pro Tools LE, Pro Tools M-Powered, ScriptSync, Sibelius, Sundance Digital, Symphony, Titan, Thunder and VideoSpin are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. Oscar and Academy Awards are trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Emmy is a registered trademark of ATAS/NATAS. Grammy is a trademark of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Inc. Alienbrain and NXN are trademarks of Avid Development GmbH. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
