We have just completed and complied the results of a comprehensive industry survey of ProVideoCoalition.com readers globally. While I do not have any predictions for 2013, I did want to share my thoughts on the findings. When looking through the 2013 Digital Content Creation Report there were a few surprises though largely most of the results fall in line with what industry watchers were probably expecting. While a large percentage of the respondents fell into the small content creators category nearly half of all those who took the survey described their Industry Type as “Film/TV.” Considering the recent explosion in online video I would have expected the “New Media” category to be the primary industry for a larger percentage of the respondents.

One thing that wasn’t at all surprising was the high level of concern people have today with data storage and post production workflow when it comes to digital content. There is so much content created today that everyone is wondering about the best ways to store, transfer and manage all of that media be it in camera raw acquisition format, intermediate post-production files or mastered content. It’s all files and data these days — and all of that has to be stored, managed and archived. Everyone is still searching for the best method(s).

Digging into some specifics, ARRI maintained a strong lead among performance in camera brands. I haven’t encountered anyone who hasn’t been very pleased with the ARRI Alexa so that result wasn’t a surprise. I was surprised to see Blackmagic Design with such a positive camera brand perception considering their Blackmagic Cinema Camera has been plagued with production issues. This probably speaks to quality of the Blackmagic Design brand name within this industry.

One surprise in the post-production tools brand ratings were how low of a rating respondents gave to Apple’s Final Cut Pro X. It ranked between EDIUS and Sony Vegas as far as perception of performance. It would appear that the low numbers for both EDIUS and Vegas could be attributed to respondents not being familiar with those two PC-based applications (as shown in the large number of people who were unfamiliar with those brands) but for Final Cut Pro X people were familiar with the application but just didn’t rate its performance very high.

Final Cut Pro 7 still ranked very high, beating both Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro in overall performance.

In a ray of sunshine for the content creator, many respondents are still extremely involved in the selection of their camera. While they’re not involved at all in many of the other gear choices for a shoot (which was surprising in that not involved at all was the highest rated choice in lens selection) I’m sure all DPs out there still greatly value the option to shoot a particular job on a particular camera.

Things aren’t as bright for visual effects: The numbers were almost evenly split when respondents were asked this question: Are you involved in the selection or usage of visual effects, special effects or pre-visualization software or solutions? That probably has a lot to do with effects artists being hired on a freelance basis to work on existing systems, but I don’t know many in post-production who don’t want the freedom to choose their software package for a particular job. It’ll be interesting to see how that question is answered next year.

The complete report, with full demographics and product rankings, can be purchased here.