Avid and the Avid Customer Association (ACA) have announced the results of the 2nd annual ACA Vote. The ACA Vote gives TV, film and music professionals a uniquely powerful hand in influencing Avid’s future offerings. The results help prioritize Avid’s product and innovation roadmap for 2018 and beyond, while calling attention to its customers’ most pressing requirements and concerns. The findings on emerging technology and new business requirements also provide valuable understanding of the media industry’s plans and challenges related to multiplatform content delivery, remote production, 4K/UHD, multichannel/immersive audio, and file-based/tapeless workflows.
“Each year, the ACA Vote uncovers the most important needs of Avid’s customers—and indeed the industry as a whole,” said ACA co-chair Richard Friedel, EVP and general manager for Fox Networks Engineering & Operations. “The results help Avid identify where it needs to focus its efforts and contribute to the ongoing dialogue between Avid and the ACA so that we can work together to address the most pressing industry challenges.”
This year, more than 4,800 people working in all aspects of media and representing over 3,500 organizations in 117 countries participated in the vote. Their collective input ensures that Avid is focused on helping them to secure their most promising opportunities while fostering deeper collaboration between Avid and its customers. ACA leadership and Avid appointed Devoncroft Partners, a leading media technology research provider, to help expand the efforts of surveying, capturing and analyzing revealing opinions from the community on evolving business dynamics, emerging trends, and technology directions that are important to the media industry.
Major Findings
The ACA Vote revealed that across all sectors—broadcast, video and audio—the top three technology trends facing media companies are multiplatform content delivery, remote production and 4K/UHD. Broadcast and video professionals exclusively (not audio professionals) also consider 4K/UHD, file-based/tapeless workflows and high dynamic range (HDR) to be significant trends.
- 56.9% indicate that multiplatform content delivery is the most important trend because it allows content to be available on all distributed platforms, with 17% believing it provides the potential for new revenue streams.
- 9.8% of respondents believe multiplatform content delivery helps retain consumers’ attention, while 9.2% believe it helps them achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
According to respondents, remote production is the second most important trend:
- 22.6% of voters indicate that remote production saves costs compared to on-premise event production.
- 17.4% believe remote production better utilizes technology infrastructures at existing facilities.
- 13.9% say remote production improves the quality of event production capabilities.
4K/UHD is another trend that continues to be top of mind for media companies:
- The majority of media professionals (47.9%) believe that viewer demand for 4K will make it a necessity to remain competitive.
- Nearly 20% of respondents believe 4k/UHD adds image quality in the production process, while 19.7% perceive it helpful to futureproof content.
The ACA Vote results also showed meaningful UHD penetration across several categories, including encoding/transcoding, graphics and branding, production servers and video editing.
According to report findings, the most significant obstacles to achieving goals within these trend areas were cost and interoperability. When looking at end users’ budgets and their plans to allocate resources over the next 12-18 months:
- 50% say they will upgrade audio capabilities.
- 25% say they will invest in cloud services and technology.
- 25% say they will upgrade their infrastructure for 4K/UHD operations.
“The Avid Customer Association continues to take important strides to give anyone in the media industry a voice that can positively influence the direction of the industry and Avid’s technical contributions,” said Avid CEO and president Jeff Rosica. “Over the past 12 months, we’ve delivered two major waves of product innovations based on last year’s ACA Vote, and we’ll begin to deliver on these latest voter priorities with the next big wave we’ll be announcing at IBC 2018.”
