It was software that I instantly liked.  It was powerful.  It was intuitive to use.  And for the price, it was hard to beat.

But like all software it had some warts too.  It was sometimes sluggish, sometimes froze and didn’t support all of the video codecs that it’s competitors did.  But as brand new, first version software those things were understandable and Avid promised that fixes would come soon.

In a nutshell, the future looked bright with Avid Studio.

But after my video review (and recommendation), I started hearing complaints from people.  And almost all of the complaints were about Avid’s customer support…or lack thereof.  A lot of these people were pretty angry and some were even wanting me to contact Avid on their behalf (since they were being ignored by Avid).

Next there were issues with updates…or lack thereof.  In the first year+ of Avid Studio’s life, there was only one update issued.  By comparison, Avid Studio’s competitors typically release several updates during a year, including a complete version upgrade.  The feedback I got from users was that they were giving up on Avid Studio due to the lack of updates and poor customer support.

And that leads us to the title of this post.  It was announced this week that Avid has sold both it’s consumer audio and video businesses.  On the video side,  Avid has sold their Pinnacle brand of products and Avid Studio to Corel Corp (too bad, I was hoping Sony Creative Software would have snatched Avid Studio up).

Avid also slashed their workforce by 20%.

Avid claims they regrettably did this because the consumer divisions had revenues and margins lower than the rest of their businesses (similar to what Cisco stated when they killed the Flip camera).  But if you look at the reported numbers, it sure seems like Avid couldn’t get rid of these businesses fast enough.

In 2005, Avid purchased the Pinnacle line of products for $462 million.  They sold the Pinnacle line of products, Avid Studio and their consumer line of audio products…combined…for $17 million (yes, you read that right).

So what’s the bottom line with Avid Studio?  What’s going to happen to it?  Will Corel continue to sell it or ravage it’s parts for it’s own video editing software?  No one knows.

What is known is that some very promising software was developed, neglected and then abandoned by it’s owner.

Let’s hope whatever Corel does, they do it better than Avid.

YouTube Live, which is available only to select YouTube partners, announced this week that they are upping the ante by offering a pay-per-view option to live streaming producers.

In a nutshell, producers can charge set prices per country (live streaming is available in the U.S., Japan, France, the U.K. and Canada) or they can opt for in-stream advertising.  However, since the service is new, there is no word on how effective pay-per-view is on YouTube.

And remember, you must be a YouTube Partner to even be eligible for live streaming.  If you are a Partner, you can check to see if YouTube has enabled live streaming for your account by looking for a “Live Events” tab in your video manager.

With the built-in WI-FI you’ll be able to send videos wirelessly to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and virtually any computer.  You can also connect wirelessly to all iOS devices, like the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad (you’ll need to download a free Canon app first).

Connecting wirelessly to the iPad is the most interesting though.  That’s because…if you’re using the new iPad…it gives you a quick and easy way to preview the footage you shot on a better-than-high-definition screen.  This can help you catch any mistakes in the footage on the spot…instead of hours later when it’s tool late to reshoot.

The new Canon Vixia’s which feature the built-in WI-FI range in price from $449 to $749…the specific models are HF M50, HF M52, HF R30 and HF R32.  Click here to see all of them on Amazon.

And below is a video showing a new Vixia connecting wirelessly to an iPad:

The new being the Canon 5D Mark III.  The Mark III is not a complete redesign of it’s legendary predecessor…instead, Canon simply improved all of the areas that needed improving.

For example, the new Canon 5D Mark III sports a 61 point auto focus system vs. the older models’ 9 point system.  The new 5D offers dual memory card slots…you can use either SDXC or CF memory cards (only CF was available in the old 5D).  The new 5D has slightly more resolution in the LCD screen.  And it shoots photos at 6 fps vs. 3.9 fps with the old model.  Those are just a few of the improvements.

But the video section is where the original 5D could have used the most improvement.  And that’s exactly what Canon did with the video offerings for the new 5D Mark III.  The camera now shoots HD video at 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p30, 720p60, and 720p50.  It can also shoot SD video at 25 or 30 fps.

The video is still recorded using H.264 but files are now limited to a max length of around 30 minutes (used to be around 12 minutes)…but if you go over that for a single file, the camera will automatically continue recording to a new file.

The Canon 5D Mark III is scheduled to hit the street in late March or early April 2012.  It will carry a body-only price of $3,499 and will also be available with a EF 24-105mm f/4 IS USM kit lens for $4,299.

Full details are available on Canon’s web site by clicking here.  And their promo video for the 5D Mark III is below:

Specifically, Adobe is getting ready to offer Creative Cloud.  What is it?  For $600 a year (or $50 a month) you can download, install and use Adobe’s entire Creative Suite Master Collection (18 titles covering pretty much every Adobe flagship product).  You can do this on both Windows and Mac platforms.

But there’s more.  You get access to their entire suite of touch apps (which run on mobile devices).  You get access to Adobe Business Catalyst (their all-in-one solution for hosting business web sites).  You get access to Typekit (access to thousands of web fonts).  You get access to Digital Publishing Suite (create mobile apps without programming).  You get access to Lightroom 4 (photo management) when it’s released.  And you get 20GB of cloud storage.

So why are some people mad? Well, they fear Adobe is moving to a pure subscription model, where you have to pay every month (or every year) or you can’t get your hands on their software (or at least the latest version of it).  Adobe claims this isn’t the case…at least not yet.  But ultimately, this is probably where all software is headed.  Just watch what Apple does in the next few years…they are usually great predictors of software evolution.

Regardless of speculating where the software industry may be headed though, a more urgent question might be “is Adobe Creative Cloud a good deal for me now?”.  And the answer depends on what you do.

Take for example person A.  They spring for a box edition of Adobe’s Creative Suite Master Collection (currently $2,500 for a single platform version).  And they use it for the next 5-7 years without ever getting an upgrade version.  Simple math will tell you that Creative Cloud isn’t for them.

But then look at person B. They want or need the latest versions of Creative Suite, so they buy an upgrade with every new version.  And they also take advantage of the other features offered in Creative Cloud…like Business Catalyst, Digital Publishing Suite and Lightroom.  And they used both PC’s and Macs.  Again, going by simple math, Creative Cloud is a good choice for them.

In other words, Creative Cloud offers a lot of bang for the buck.  But you have to be a regular user of Adobe’s products (i.e. your livelihood depends on them) for it to make sense.

There is no official word yet on when Creative Cloud will be released.  But you can sign-up to be notified and learn more about Creative Cloud in general by clicking here.

It functions not only as a high-quality boom microphone that plugs into your camera (for recording audio directly to your camera).  But it also serves as a high-end digital recorder that simultaneously records your audio to a separate memory card.

In a nutshell, the audio that gets recorded to the built-in digital recorder will be a higher quality than what gets recorded to your camera.  While editing your video, you can take the audio from the digital recorder and use it to replace the lower quality audio from your camera.

This is essentially how all professional video is shot.  The audio is recorded separately on a digital recorder and then it’s synched with the video footage while editing.  With the VideoMic HD, Rode is simply making this process easier for everyone by building the digital recorder into the mic.

Of course there are a few drawbacks to the design.  The unit probably can’t be attached to a boom pole (it will always have to be on the camera).  And users will have to press two buttons…the record button on the camera and the record button on the VideoMic HD (and a few people will probably forget to press one of them).

So what about price and availability? Good question.  No one knows when the mic will be available or what it will cost.  But you can register to learn more as the details emerge from Rode’s web site by clicking here.

Magic Lantern, a custom firmware add-in for Canon DSLR cameras, has recently released an upgrade to their popular utility that allows you to shoot HDR video (something previously impossible with a single camera).  What the software does, while you’re shooting video, is record different frames at different ISO levels.  Then in post-production everything gets melded together, creating HDR video.

But…Canon 5D Mark II and 7D users are out of luck.  HDR video can only be done with the 60D, T3i and T2i (yes, there are more than a few advantages when it comes to video and lower-end Canon DSLR’s…and this is one of them).

To get the Magic Lantern firmware upgrade and/or learn more, click here.  And to see a sample of HDR video in action (it’s subtle), watch the video below:

Magic Lantern HDR Video X-MAS teaser from Bart@RedKiteMedia on Vimeo.

There is a third option however.  One where your videos can be hosted at no cost, yet you get the professional features of a commercial online video platform.  It’s called Playwire and I originally reviewed the service back in May 2001 in this video.

Playwire has been offering a special no-cost deal for a few months.  With it you get hosting, encoding, streaming, monetization, syndication, analytics and more…for free.

What’s the catch?   Actually, there are two of them:

1. Advertising will appear in 100% of your videos.  Advertising which you have no control over…but…you do get to split 50% of the revenue with Playwire.

2. This special deal expires at the end of the year.  So if you want to get in on it, the link where you can learn more is below.

Click here to learn more about the special Playwire “no cost” deal.

And gift cards are big business.  It’s estimated that the average person has $300 worth of unused gift cards stuffed in their purse, wallet, junk drawer or somewhere in their car.

But the days of forgotten and unused gift cards may soon be over thanks to a rapidly growing release of mobile apps, that turn your smartphone into a one-stop-shop for gift cards.

What exactly can you do with your smartphone when it comes to gift cards?  Sumi Das of SmartPlant provides the details in the video below:

Why? Because HTML5 video playback on the Kindle Fire, in my testing, was much smoother than Flash.  That led to a number of people wanting to know more about HTML5 video.  So here’s a primer on it.

HTML is a programming language.  It is used to create web pages.  HTML5 is the latest version of the HTML programming language.  One of the biggest additions to HTML5 is support for the video tag.  With it, people can add videos to a web page as easily as they add images.

The idea behind the video tag was standards.  That means the intention was a single video format for the web that made it simple for everyone to add videos to a web page and simple for everyone to watch videos on a web page.  There are no browser plugins required (like Flash or Quicktime) and no confusing/cryptic video embed code is needed (like Flash or Quicktime) when using HTML5 video.

While the idea behind HTML5 video is great, unfortunately the powers-to-be (Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) have made it a bit of a mess.  That’s because none of them can agree on what the single video format should be for HTML5.  In a nutshell, Google and Mozilla think it should be WebM or Ogg and Apple and Microsoft think it should be H.264 (mp4).

That means to make your video play using HTML5…across all browsers…you must prepare your video in at least 3 different formats.  WebM and Ogg for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers and H.264 for basically all other browsers (including basically all mobile device browsers).

So how do you get your videos into each of these formats? If you want to go the free route, you can use Miro Video Converter.  If you have money to burn, you can use Sorenson Squeeze.  And if you prefer to go the cloud encoding route, both Zencoder and Encoding.com are good choices.

OK…after you have your videos in the 3 different formats (WebM, Ogg and H.264)…how do you embed HTML5 video in your web pages? This is actually the simplest part.  The code goes like this:

<video width="320" height="240" controls="controls">
  <source src="full url to your h.264/mp4 video" type='video/mp4' />
  <source src="full url to your ogg video" type='video/ogg' />
  <source src="full url to your webm video" type='video/webm' />
<video>

Pretty simple huh? You’d just take the above code and paste it in your web page (keeping in mind you need to change the “full url” listings to the actual full URL’s to your videos).  And you’d probably want to change the video width and height values.

Actually, there are more things you can do with HTML5 embed code, but we’re just keeping things simple here.  If you want to see the full array of commands you can use, click here.

Anyway, there are a couple big gotcha’s with HTML5 video.  First, you must create a video in each of the 3 formats…remember, different browsers require different versions of the same video.

For example, if you don’t make an H.264/MP4 version of your video, people using Apple mobile devices, Internet Explorer 9, Safari and a number of other browsers won’t be able to see your video.  Or if you don’t make an Ogg version of your video, people using Firefox won’t be able to watch your video.

Second, Internet Explorer versions 8 and older do not support HTML5 whatsoever.  Only Internet Explorer version 9 supports HTML5.  That means when someone using Internet Explorer 8, 7, 6, etc. tries to watch your HTML5 videos, they won’t see anything.

So what do you do about this issue (after all, a lot of people still use Internet Explorer 8)? You provide Flash fallback.  That means you tweak your HTML5 video embed code in such a way that if a viewer is using a browser that doesn’t support HTML5, the embed code will sense it and deliver the video using old-fashioned Flash.

Of course the next question is, how exactly do you do that? Well, there are lots of options.  One of the simplest (because they offer an embed code generator) is VideoJS.  With VideoJS, all you have to do is supply the URL’s to your files and click a button…they’ll give you HTML5 embed code, with Flash fallback…that you can simply copy and paste into your web pages.

And that’s all there really is to it.  Prepare your videos in the 3 formats (H.264/MP4, Ogg, WebM) and use a free service like VideoJS to build HTML5 embed code with Flash fallback for you.

But if you’re still confused about HTML5 and mobile video in general, check out our Mobile Video Made Simple course.  With it, you can master mobile/HTML5 video in about an hour…even if you’re a complete beginner.  It takes out all of the guesswork and makes mobile/HTML5 video as easy as connecting some dots.