Avid to Retire the Liquid Product Family

A post went up today (March 3, 2010) in the Chat with Avid forum over at Avid.com from Avid Executive VP and COO Kirk Arnold about the future of the Liquid product. As a Mac-based Media Composer editor I know next to nothing about this product but I do understand that it has some fairly passionate users. There will be no commentary on this decision as this post is to only inform any Liquid users who might be unaware of this announcement. From the Liquid Update – A response from Kirk at Avid thread:

So, let’s get right to the heart of the matter ……

Avid has decided to retire the Liquid product family.  This means we will no longer sell or develop Liquid products effective today, March 3, 2010.  The decision to end this product family was not made lightly but it is necessary to allow us to focus our future development efforts to ensure that we can best respond to the changing needs of both our professional and consumer customers.  When making this decision, we had to consider Liquid’s role in our video editing solution portfolio, our ability to evolve this platform to cost effectively meet future customer needs and our focus on enabling the success of all of our customers by making sure we delivered robust training and support capabilities.

That’s got to be some big (and maybe disappointing) news if you are a Liquid user. But Avid also announced a “limited loyalty upgrade and conversion to Avid Media Composer v4.x (PC or Mac) for just $495 US MSRP (valid March 10 – June 30, 2010).” As a Media Composer user I can say that’s a pretty good deal to get MC for $495. They state that you can upgrade only if you are registered so hit the product registration page by March 10. For complete details read Kirk’s post at the official Liquid update thread as well as a lot of discussion.