Avid Technology of Tewksbury, Mass., has announced a restructuring plan which will see the leading developer of post equipment and software cut its staff by 200 worldwide, saving the company about $20 million next year.

Avid executives say the restructuring, which includes initiatives focused on the Internet and ‘advanced work-group solutions,’ will have no effect on Softimage, Avid’s Montreal-based animation software business.

‘Avid is totally committed to Softimage,’ says William Flaherty, Avid’s cfo and acting ceo, pointing out Avid is eagerly awaiting the release of DS 3.0, the upgraded Softimage ds version which will start shipping this quarter.

He adds that Avid has beefed up its sales effort for ds in North America because the product performed better in Europe this year.

Flaherty also gave a new window for the release of Softimage’s new Sumatra 3D animation system on the ds architecture, saying it will hit the streets around February. Sumatra is being positioned as a nonlinear animation system which allows for non-destructive animation mixing, interactive rendering and realtime surface continuity management.

‘Although it’s taken longer than we had forecast to bring it to the market,’ Flaherty says, ‘we’re totally committed to getting it out.’

Flaherty and David Krall, Avid’s newly appointed president and coo, laid out the details of the restructuring during an international conference call mid-November.

The restructuring means the end of Media Illusion and Matador, they say, which Avid had until recently planned to continue shipping as part of a deal with Blue Software. Avid has also discontinued shipping standalone versions of Marquee and Avid Cinema. Marquee will, however, be included as a plug-in feature of Avid’s nonlinear editing line.

‘Unfortunately in a restructuring, we have to make choices and set our priorities,’ says Flaherty. ‘All these products were fairly low volume, fairly low price, and were not pulling their weight with respect to the bottom line.’

Avid will continue to support the existing customers of those products and honor all service obligations, says Krall.

The majority of layoffs, affecting 11% of the company’s worldwide staff, took place at Avid’s home office and focused mostly on the video and film editing and effects component of the business. Other layoffs came in Avid’s u.s. field operations and in Europe.

‘The plan unveiled…represents a comprehensive new approach to Avid’s business,’ Krall says. ‘It not only removes cost from the organization, it also brings the company’s best resources to bear on our brightest opportunities.’

Avid plans to continue serving its core market on both the Macintosh and nt platforms, he says. The post community will not see a change in the positioning or pricing of core editing products, Media Composer, Symphony and Xpress, he adds.

‘We’ve determined that the strategies we have discussed for long-term growth in television finishing, broadcast news, corporate and institutional and in the audio markets continue to make sense and play an essential role in Avid’s future.’

Krall says Avid is taking steps to more clearly define the differences between products such as the Xpress line and Media Composer line, which have been the source of customer confusion and caused complaints.

Avid also announced a new product, to be unveiled at nab next year, which Krall describes as ‘a comprehensive editing and publishing solution for the emerging web broadcast market’ which will be the follow-up to Xpress dv, due out early next year.

‘The Internet holds huge opportunities for Avid as demand for tools to create, publish and serve high-quality audio and video grows over the coming years,’ says Krall.