Barracuda Media launched at the end of January, offering Final Cut Pro editing and Shake compositing on Apple hardware for training and online and offline editing. Barracuda had worked for National Geographic, Discovery and Darlow Smithson.
Although no figures were revealed, Broadcast estimates that each of Barracuda's three main suites would have cost in excess of £10,000 to kit out.
Barracuda's managing director and owner, Robin Feild, said that while the facility's suites were busy with commercial editing, it was the training side of the business that was the problem: "Our editing side was flying and although there was interest from smaller companies and individuals for training, it just wasn't there in the overall levels that we were hoping for."
The Portland Mews-based company was watched closely by the industry to see how Final Cut Pro would fare in the UK market. An unnamed source commented of Feild: "He just hadn't done his numbers and was overly optimistic. Final Cut Pro does have a future but it's currently attracting the rebels who don't operate in the conventional way. They're not the type who will pay for training."
Feild suggested that the problem was that Final Cut Pro was seen as "a universally available tool and therefore some people don't consider it to be a professional application - which has been proved otherwise in the States".
However, he maintained that Final Cut Pro would make a serious impact on the market: "Not to sound arrogant but I believe that Final Cut Pro is in a more prominent position now than it was. I stand by the claim that it's a fantastic product. Maybe we launched too early - we did what we did and it didn't work out."
Feild dismissed rumours that there had been attempts to buy Barracuda earlier in the year as being "totally unsubstantiated". Barracuda employed four full-time staff.
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