Number of Edius users

[BillShedoudy]

I talk with quite a few other videographers and I would say most (maybe as high as 80-90%) have never even heard of Edius yet alone use it.
In committing the time and effort and expense to purchase and learn this software I feel it is a fair and valid question to GV to get an indication of how many total registered users Edius has. This is especially important when buying multiple licenses for multiple editors.
It is not in my best interest to be on an "island" with relatively few others.
FCP has arguably become the industry standard and I would like to know where Edius fits into that picture and what its projected growth rate may be.
I did take note that there are almost 2400 people registered in this forum.

Please note that this post is not intended to imply that any software is better than another. I happen to really like Edius but am worried that not enough of my colleagues and associates use it or are familiar with it.

I would be interested to hear any other opinions?

Thanks,
Bill

[pjsssss]

Hi Bill. First I would suspect that this will be deleted as I don't think it fits into Gv's stated purpose of these forums. But I will answer anyway. If you are looking at the entire video/broadcast market, I would suspect that Avid is still the leader. I do agree that FCP is making some pretty good inroads into that market share. My daughter will be going to college next year and we have been looking at schools this summer and fall. While she is predominately a dancer, she is also becoming a good editor and has a lot of interest in it. I have asked every school what they use and the answer has always been the 2 that I have listed. Because of that, I bought a MacBook Pro and FC Studio for her to learn, even though she does most of her editing on Edius.

As I go around the country, I find that Edius is becoming much more well known than it was a couple of years ago, especailly in the broadcast market. If Edius is ever to catch the others, it wil have to add a couple of more features, spend a lot more marketing dollars and commit to the resources to do so. From some of the internal information that I have that most of you do not get, I think they are heading in that direction. Whethter it ever gets there is anyones guess. They have a lot of ground to make up.

I choose the NLE that works best and fastest for me. None out there will do everything. I have yet to use anything that comes close to Edius' speed and realtime. Luckily I think the client market has become much more accepting of equipment being used then it was several years ago. No longer do I feel I have to walk in with a large camera or name NLE to justify charging decent prices for jobs. There has been enough exposure that most clients have seen or heard enough about smaller, quality cameras and this seems to have opened a lot of minds.

Obviously these are my thoughts in my market. Your milage may vary...

[Case]

I wish that GV would not delete this thread. I think it serves the user base to provide indications of how broadly or narrowly Edius serves the industry.

I begged Canopus for years to give us some idea of their products' market penetration. I got nothing but silence. However GV is not Canopus, and hopefully GV will be more forthcoming with us on this and a lot of issues.

Personally, I have always advised people to select their NLE with their end goal in mind. If they are looking to get employed by the "big-time" production houses, I think they should seriously consider becoming proficient with the tools that predominate the industry. However, if they are like me with the more modest goal of being an independent producer, etc., I would think that they would have more freedom to consider a wider selection in things. After all, who cares what NLE you used to produce your latest masterpiece, as long as it's good. As for me personally, I've always thought that as long as the product fit my needs, then a product like Edius was just fine, even though 90% of the professionals I have talked to know little or nothing about it.

Let's face it, GV-Canopus products are fantastic. Always have been, and continue to be. Unfortunately, due to a long history of marketing missteps by the former owners, GV-Canopus products have always been "Some of the best kept secrets of the desktop video editing world."

I'm seeing a glimmer that things are changing under GV. Hope I'm right.

[Jim N]

Bill, I have got to say that none of my customers have ever asked me what editing software I use. They are just interested in results and Edius has delivered these for me in an industrial and commercial environment. This forum and my local GV office also provides good support and you can develop contacts online here, so no one is really an island.

Edius also does great things like work as a standalone package, or with (relatively inexpensive) GV hardware for realtime inputs and outputs to decks and monitors in digital and analog. I have Edius on laptops and in PC's with a range of cards. It is just so versatile like this. It even works in the new MACs (with Bootcamp!) Whats more GC support for it's hardware has been legendary. I am still using a DV REXRTPro board after it's compeditors have been well and truely orphaned. This has literally saved me thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.

Also, as Edius is not a megabundle you don't have to learn a "megabundle" to get going. There is a lot of hype out there and people buying whole suites with features they will never use but Edius is helping me get the job done simply and efficiently.

Jim

[kwshaw1]

When we asked people to say what software they use at our local videographer association, at least 1/4 were Edius with a similar number on Final Cut and Adobe Premiere, and the rest a mixture of other programs. That may not be typical on a broader scale, but Edius does have a following in some circles. If you want to be prepared to share video projects with others, being familiar with Apple, Avid and Adobe would be prudent.

[plasma_video]

Bill,

Working in graphics/editing systems tech support at a broadcast facility, I can truthfully say that until recently, no-one here knew much, if anything, about Canopus products. However, they were constantly amazed (when after watching someone try to do a particular task and being frustrated about the clunkiness or slow rendering times) I would say "I can do that at home on my Storm Edit or Edius system in no-time" and would come in the next day with a finished product. When I demonstrated Edius to one of our Avid editors he remarked "that's a lot easier to do that job in Edius than I can do on my Avid. I wish corporate would let me get one of those systems".

We have a mix of Avids, Premier Pro with AJA cards and GV NewsEdits around the building, but not Edius - yet. We purchase "industry standard" systems at a corporate level, so the Avid "perception" is quite strong and hard to overcome.

We now have quite a number of the GV/Canopus A/D converter boxes of various flavors in house, and it looks like Edius or its next generation equivalents will be on our NewsEdit systems someday soon.

I suspect it won't be long before Edius shows up in our topical promos and features editing suites, as it's SO much faster to knock out a quick project in Edius compared to Avid.

GV is getting the word out in the broadcast trade mags a lot more these days, as well as in the other publications like DV and Videographer. I suspect it won't be long befor there is a lot more penetration in the various markets.

What's also helping is that major broadcast suppliers, including ones in our area, are GV dealers, so they can now offer former Canopus products to their customers. This means that the potetial distribution base has dramatically increased.

As Case said, it's been one of the best kept editing secrets in the world. I've been knocking out hundreds of projects over the years, starting with a DVRex board and RexEdit quite a while back.

FCP and Avid are the ones that get most of the press, and generally it looks great on a resume if you have FCP and Avid experience, but my advice is to go with what works best for you and your workflow. For me, that means Edius and Sony Vegas (for more complex compositing tasks). I still get frustrated with Avis's workflow. Fortunately, I only need to know it well enough to provide basic tech support for hardware and software issues - not to edit with daily.

T

[Rusty]

First, this is probably the best time for a thread like this because the Mods are busy elsewhere. Better post before lockdown :)

Second, I see a real expansion here on the new forum, particularly from locations other than the US and UK.

Third, one look at the GV site and you can see that they mean (BIG) business. Certainly a force to be reckoned with with backing big enough to rival the "3-A's" (Apple, Avid, and Adobe) I think that the broadcast industry is on the right track to pick up a stable system that handles multiple formats as well as Edius and GV has been behind broadcast for decades.

Rusty

[GrassValley_KH]

First, this is probably the best time for a thread like this because the Mods are busy elsewhere. Better post before lockdown :)

Actually, I could've locked this right from the start. I haven't because it hasn't technically broken the rules (yet). Keep the soapboxing and ranting out of here, and the thread might actually live - though I would prefer that this thread die a natural death.

With that said, I don't have numbers - nor would I be in a position to post them if I did. Needless to say, EDIUS is certainly out there and growing.

I sincerely echo the responses of others - use what gets the job done, and done today. You can put a nail in with a hammer, but it's hard to use that same tool to cut a piece of timber in half - it's possible, but not sensible.

[STORMDAVE]

Grass Valley needs to hype Edius a bit and put out a bunch of posters on streets where edit suites reside.

Just my recommendation :D

[Deane Johnson]

I think we will see a lot of new growth now that Grass Valley owns Canopus. Not only has Grass Valley brought some improvements to Edius rather quickly, but the Grass Valley name is also everywhere and very well respected in professional television.

I predict a real top of mind awareness of the Edius name in the near future. The trend in the television industry is that once something proves to be superior, everyone starts jumping on board. The word spreads like wildfire. The Grass Valley name will get that kind of attention.

OK guys, I've sucked up here all I can. Now I'll hope for help with my ProCoder Express installation issue. :)

[EasternSP]

I don't intend to try to find work with an established producer, so I'm content to stick with my Edius system. I've been using it for about 7 years now and I'm used to the work flow of it. I looked at another software package a few years ago and even bought a copy to try out. It was too much of a learning curve to be able to do what I can already do with EP3 and on top of that, it didn't offer real time transitions. As far as the mountain of transitions that are offered with editing systems, I have learned that we tend to only us the disolve most of the time. Anything else is novel to us but mostly transparent or missed all together by the customer.
I guess my only concern about Edius is when the upgrades come out and if I will be able to revert to an older version. I need to drop that concern because I haven't had the need to do that yet.

[tdtinker]

We made the move about 4 years ago to Edius. We have been doing NLE since 1997. Started with a system made by Fast out of Germany(real time editing). They got bought out by Pinnacle and our system wasn't supported by XP. We started looking at other systems(FCP, Maxtro and others). We settled on Canopus cards(RexPro) and Premier. After the issues with PPro and the Canopus cards we move to Edius and have not looked back. We have 3 systems with swappable drive allows us to move customer projects from one system to another(Premier always had problem doing this). We think Edius is here to stay and we are happy we made the switch. And thanks to pjsssss (Pat) for talking us into to making the change.
tdtinker