I think it is more due to cost. The cost of video equipment used to prohibit small agencies from having in-house video. A linear edit suite could cost up to a million dollars by the time you got all the peripheral equipment (tape machines, scopes, sync generators, etc). Now for way under $10,000 you can purchase a full suite that can do just about anything videowise. If tape acquisition is needed, you can outsource that cheaply. So the only real cost now is personnel, and from what I see, there are some many editors out there now, as opposed to even 10 years ago, that it is easy to man an edit room for a lot less than what a weeks worth of edit suite rental used to cost.

Dave T2

If it's moving from 3rd party to 1st party, it's not dying, it's just shifting it's location. :) It would be like saying the food service industry is dying because places are hiring & running their own cafeterias.

What this will cause is the 3rd party ones to be more specific. IE if a business has their own editor, I doubt they'll have their own green screen setup unless they use it all the time. They'll still need to hire out for stuff that can't do.

Yeah, this is a huge transition period starting NOW. The entire industry is being reinvented leaving the old way behind and confused. It's an exciting time as the young can do what the old can do faster and better without all that gobbly gook. Plan your moves carefully because the Great Year is almost upon us! Choose your software carefully because the times are a changing... Sony software looks like it will be left in the dust as Apple, Avid and Adobe take over.

Dreamline,

You are always good for a giggle.

Dave T2

what a belated thread!!!

post (mid-level) died here about 10>12 years ago. the desktop revolution swept away ALL low / mid end post houses just as the print revolution did 20>25 years ago.

when i opened my production / post facility in australia in 1990 (?) there were around 6 other shops. (we're not talking high-end), all of us handling low-end broadcast, 'cheap' tvc, lots of corporate, medical, industry stuff and the like.

in 2000 when i closed up shop there weren't any. true there were (and probably still are) a few 'individuals' doing this sort of work, but no 'facilities', ie, with inhouse staff.

it also brought about my biggest gripe - rate prostitution - every tom dick and speilberg wannabe bought a $500 camera, $500 pc and set up shop. then they chased clients offering ludicrous rates (since they thought the equipment base didn't count). eg. for a project i might have quoted $7k for, they'd be coming in with a $1.5k quote. of course, the people looking at these quotes usually had no idea what they were buying into. and many a time i had a client come in saying 'we had this done by..... could i fix it up?'

as it was, i was of an age where it really didn't matter - i had, and still have a band of very loyal clients (mostly old farts like myself), and enough knowledge to know that once you start dropping your rates to match the perceived competition you're on the road to ruin.

i'm out of sydney and the general rat-race nowadays (and loving every minute of it), but from what i gather (and the few 'corporate' jobs that still come in), they're most handled by pr, marketing companies hiring freelancers for all aspects of production (usually paying peanuts), and rarely giving credit where credit is due.

i was a few years ago called in by a few corporate clients to advise about setting up 'inhouse / multimedia' facilities, but more often than not bowed out since even they didn't know what exactly they wanted / expected / needed from such departments ;-)

now i enjoy watching the paint peel (with cc'ing courtesy of vegas)

Sony software looks like it will be left in the dust as Apple, Avid and Adobe take over.

Because a startup over a decade ago is so easily squashed by the big boys who've bought most of the competition & taken everyone else out.

Hey, wait, that didn't happen! The only thing I hear about Apple & Adobe outside of this forum is how annoying iTunes is/how controlling Apple is (even from die hard Apple users) and that Flash is really really annoying.

Well, being one of the individuals who dabbled in "rate prostitution," perhaps the Circle of Life is complete. I started doing videography as a side business about 8 years ago doing cut-rate work that the mid-level businesses wouldn't touch, then worked my way up to 4-5 annual projects paying reasonable money. Just a few V1U's, audio/lighting equipment, and a good PC with Vegas and I'd make some nice cash on the side each year to buy more equipment and make the wife happy with great summer vacations.

Now, my son opens up his fancy Mac, and in about 5 minutes, can assemble a video/photo montage with iPhoto or iMovie or whatever he uses, and in a few minutes he can create what used to take me about two weeks using pan/crop, fx, and trying to create fancy borders/frames. Who wants to even pay the small guys when you can buy an HD camcorder at Best Buy for a few hundred dollars and a laptop and throw something together (especially since they'll only watch it a few times anyways)? Unless you do this work for a living at a studio (maybe making local car dealer commercials), or you work weddings/bar mitzvahs, who wants to pay you for something their little nephew can do for free in an afternoon? It's no different than when photography friends of mine went out of business when the average Joe could make a few mouse clicks on B&H and in two days have a camera with as many megapixels as their pro model.

So now us little guys who did the rate prostitution are just fried-out old crackheads lying on the sidewalk! What comes around.... Oh well, now I'm mostly back doing things for fun for a season until I can figure out where any future markets might be. I sold my HDV equipment while it was still worth anything... put the money into better audio equipment and a few small cameras (Panasonic GH2 and TM700) to keep my feet wet until the storm passes and I see what remains.

I do a lot of weddings, and did plenty of photo montages back in the day. Before the software was available to everyone, it was a novelty for clients to see the panning and cropping involved.

But as time went on, more and more clients were just doing the montages by themselves.

But I haven't had a montage as part of my package for a good few years, and honestly, I don't miss it a bit. That leaves me to concentrate on the stuff that can't be easily done. The camera work and the audio.

interesting...

i keep asking my clients why they keep coming back to me (don't really need them nowadays, though i was never one to turn down a paying job!).

it seems, at least with the old farts i deal with, that most of them went off a some stage or other and tried a variety of 'cut-rate' freelancers (by that i mean a cameraman here, editor there, etc.,). to get a clearer idea i charge $150(au)hr, doing whatever i'm asked, direct, camera, edit, combination, etc., most of the guys they went to were charging anything from $30>75hr - so it was (in theory) saving them quite a bit of money.

that was theory, in practice they (the producers) were working a great deal harder / longer for an 'inferior' product. (by 'inferior' i don't mean it in a technical sense - far from it, some of the stuff they had done was technically brilliant.... but it wasn't what THEY wanted; a tour de force in post production techniques, or mouthwatering videography is only part of the story).

they found themselves having to become both artistic / technical directors, dop's, editors, etc., - whereas all these roles were usually taken up by their 'regular guys' who either knew exactly what was wanted, could visualize what was in the producers mind, and / or suggest practical (budget, treatment) alternative.

the producers found themselves actually having to work during 'long lunches', and worrying about all aspects of the production. what they missed was basically dealing with people who they knew knew what they wanted.

so it simply came down to making the clients experience so effortless that it's worth the extra bucks.

that said, the people i come across in marketing and pr nowadays (usually mba's or the like) have literally no idea of their corporations history, it's 'style', it's seems to be all about getting another production under their belt before looking for a step up the ladder, and not necessarily with the same company.

as for a lot of their productions - well, mostly they're all style and no substance.

perhaps i should go back to watching the paint peel....