Avid survey reveals key investment opportunities and audio tech trends
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
Avid today announced the results of the second annual Avid Customer Association (ACA) Vote, which provides insight into the buying trends of the audio industry.
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.
This year, more than 4,800 people working in all aspects of media and representing over 3,500 organisations in 117 countries participated in the vote.
Here’s what Avid found out from the results:
- 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 utilises 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 it 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.”
Source: mi-pro.co.uk
