NLEC

About the NLEC

For the longest time, Avid was the cream of the crop when it came to “need to know” Non-Linear Editing Systems. That all changed when Apple brought down the cost, increased the ease of use and leveled the playing field with Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro held that crown as king of the NLE’s for quite a few years.

Something happened recently, that you may have heard something about. Apple essentially relinquished that crown by making a (arguably) more prosumer and less professional version of their NLE called Final Cut Pro X. As a result there has been a huge fracturing in the usage share. Some folks have moved back to Avid. Some folks are sticking it out with the older Final Cut Pro 7 for the time being. Others are giving it a go with Adobe Premiere Pro and other NLE’s.

Now, no one NLE commands the crown. Well…maybe there shouldn’t be a crown.

Maybe unifying artists, companies, groups and industries under one piece of software isn’t the right way to do it. Maybe this fractured world of NLE’s can be celebrated as a diverse array of editing systems. Maybe the unifying point needs to reside in open standards so these different NLE’s can talk to each other. Creating standards in XML, intermediate & delivery codecs and more.

The Non-Linear Editing Consortium is a project concept born out of the 2011 Open Video Conference. The focus is to move away from a holistic software approach to an open approach that promotes and (hopefully) achieves a more interoperable ecosystem.

Let artists and creators work in the NLE environment that allows their creativity thrive. At the same time prevent impeding the effort to share and collaborate with their peers in the NLE of their choice.