With one eye firmly on the existing Final Cut Pro 7 user base, Avid today announced Media Composer 6 using the phrase “Committed to the Professional.”
When Avid CEO Kirke Arnold opened the press conference this morning, her opening remarks included the phrase: “Not only is Avid committed to its customers, we are committed to the professional.” She also mentioned that recent sales of Media Composer have exceeded Avid’s expectations.
This is the sixth major release for Media Composer, according to Avid, in about three years.
Chris Gahagan, Senior VP of Products, then presented the new software by announcing upgrades to Media Composer, Symphony, and News Cutter. My report will focus on Media Composer.
Ship date: Nov. 15, 2011
Retail price: $2,499
Upgrade from MC5.5: $299
If you purchased Media Composer October 15 or later, the upgrade is free.
The upgrade focuses on four key areas:
1. Architecture
2. Enhanced user interface
3. Stereoscopic 3D
4. Integration with stock footage and other outside resources
ARCHITECTURE
All new Avid applications are now 64-bit, providing much greater speed and more scalability.
Avid now offers an SDK (Software Development Kit) – called Avid I/O – for capturing and outputting media. They also announced that, in addition to Avid, AJA, Blackmagic Design, Matrox, MOTU, and Bluefish 444 will all be providing hardware support.
Native AVCHD support.
Native encode and decode for ProRes on Macintosh.
New DNxHD 444 codec providing 444 color support.
Support for Epic R3D files.
USER INTERACTION / INTERFACE
Avid has updated the user interface, but not how the software works. Same keyboard shortcuts, same “muscle memory.” Chris made a point of saying: “We can’t disrupt our professionals.”
More deeply integrated support for Avid Color hardware, though no new color correction tools.
Two weeks ago, Avid announced ProTools 10. Today, they announced support for surround sound workflow integration between ProTools and Media Composer.
REDEFINING 3D
Avid’s goal was to make editing 3D as easy as editing 2D. The new version provides significant speed improvements. Tasks that “used to take days now take minutes.”
They are also provides a complete suite of tutorials and workflows that explain, for editors that are new to 3D, how to edit 3D. Training on 3D is as important, Avid says, as the tools themselves.
CONNECT EDITORS TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD
Avid announced Avid Marketplace, with their first partner “Thought Equity,” a stock-footage supplier.
Avid Marketplace provides a series of plug-ins that allow you to search, view, create proxies, and integrate final version stock footage directly within the Avid interface.
They are also offering two support plans to make on-going technical support more affordable.
All in all, some impressive announcements. I’m looking forward to learning more and sharing the news with you.
As always, your comments are welcome.
Larry
13 Responses to Avid Announces Media Composer 6
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Larry says:
November 6, 2011 at 11:00 am
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Shameer M. says:
November 7, 2011 at 12:51 am
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Larry says:
November 7, 2011 at 1:10 am
← Older CommentsMarcus:
Apology accepted and no offense taken.
Software we use to make a living is a subject people feel passionately about. I’m here to help — that’s been my plan all along. I don’t intend to change.
Larry
Hi Larry,
I enjoy reading your blog. Just recently, I read a post on Appleinsider claiming that Apple senior management are debating whether to axe the Mac Pro next year or upgrade it for one more revision? Have you heard anything or have any opinion on this?
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/31/despite_new_cpu_options_apple_reportedly_questioning_future_of_mac_pro.html
Thanks & keep up the good work.
Shameer:
I’ve read the same rumors. If I “knew,” I’d be legally prevented from talking about it. In this case, I don’t know — Apple never shares advance knowledge of hardware with me. I can see both sides of this issue. Apple wants to make machines that sell in the millions. Tom Coughlin recently estimated that the number of high-end video editing workstations that truly need the power of a MacPro is around 350,000. This is not a large market.
So, I can see that Apple would be reluctant to spend lots of dollars chasing it.
Even more, now that Thunderbolt is available – though in VERY scarce supply — Thunderbolt provides sufficient through-put that almost all video applications could use Thunderbolt for both storage i/o and image capture. In which case, even the lowly Mac Mini would have the capability of moving massive amounts of data. This further reduces the business case for the MacPro.
On the other hand, he said as he was writing this answer on his own MacPro, it is very, very nice to have a system that supports plug-in cards for those special few that need the expandability and flat-out drop dead performance that a high-end system provides.
So, we shall just have to wait and see what Apple does – personally, I wouldn’t be surprised either way.
Larry