Avid Media Composer

Extra programs which come with Avid Media Composer

Media Composer comes in a package with other software:

• Avid FX - an Avid version of Boris RED this is a full blown compositing program that also works directly off the Avid timeline.  Extremely powerful you can do animated titles in true 3D, extrude shapes into 3D images, rotoscoping and a lot more.  A rival to Adobe After Effects.
• Avid DVD - otherwise know as Sonic DVDit Pro HD. This is a very comprehensive DVD writing and Blu-ray writing program, very similar to Adobe Encore. You can do different audio and video tracks, subtitles, slideshows and multiple menus easily.
• Sonicfire Pro - created by the makers of Smartsound this is a pack for creating music for your videos. The program writes the music for you and you add cues where you want the mood to change. Comes with several packs of pre-made scores.
• Sorenson Squeeze - you want your footage in a different format, then Squeeze it. Sorenson has been around for years and handles multiple formats and encoding from a simple interface.

 Boris Continuum is a very powerful set of effects plug-ins which all work inside of Avid just like Avid's own effects.  The power of these effects is stunning. You can add them into other programs. like Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro, but apart from having to buy the programs as an extra for these programs they are not as well integrated as they are in Avid.  All of the effects included in Boris Continuum are also included in AVID FX anyway, so you may decide you do not need them.

Full RGB colour space support

While some programs (like Grass Valley EDIUS for example) can only work in 8 bit colour space MC can now work in anything up to full 4:4:4 RGB colour space .  This is useful for animators and people producing high quality work.  For most users 8 bit (the same quality in which DV, HDV, AVCHD, XDCAM and DVD work) is good enough.

Dongle support

AVID's licence can be done in 2 ways:

1) By software activation over the internet.  If you want to use MC on a different machine you deactivate from one machine and re-activate on another. This is fine as long as you can get on the Internet and as long as there are no glitches in the process.  If you lose the activation, because of a hard drive dying, for example, you will need to contact AVID to get it re-activated.

2) A dongle (pictured) - a USB key, without which the software would not work.  The advantage of a dongle is you can move from machine to machine and AVID will work on which ever machine the dongle is plugged into.  Also a dingle will work ALL previous version of AVID where as the software activation will only work with the current version.  The disadvantage is that if you lose your dongle you need to buy another one.  You can buy Avid with or without the dongle - buying with a dongle will cost about another £150.

What is good about Media Composer?

• It is one of the best programs for sharing projects with other users, or if conforming the final edit on an Avid Adrenaline.
• It is one of the best programs for large complex projects with lots of cuts and effects. Long projects are a problem for most editing programs - some programs are better than others - but Media Composer is the king of large project.
• You can achieve most effects you want in Media Composer - it can paint on video, has a very good keyer built in, you can make animated masks that follow objects on screen, you can motion track effects, correct glitches in the image, stabilise and image and much more.. It also has an excellent colour correction tool which gets the colour looking how you want with the minimum fuss. All this without even touching the add-on  Avid FXwhich is also supplied.
• There is just so much in it - you can customise everything, save preset layouts of on screen buttons, colour, column layouts etc and move them between workstations. You also have access to huge control over the program, not just through the preferences but also using the command line, console.
• Everything is does is excellent quality. Avid editors expect nothing less. You can control everything about how the effect render either per effect or in global settings.
• Many time saving short cut ways of doing things - you can apply and effect to multiple clips really easily; the auto colour corrector gets colour and image correction right within a few clicks on lots of clips and you can even customise its "automaticness"; want to take your footage to another program - a "QuickTime reference file" will quickly export a file which references your original clips instead of making news ones.
• Lots of plug-ins -  there are lotsof plug-ins available, so if you want to do something you can probably do it - want to export your timeline from Avid into After Effects and have it come in as a series of layers with as many of your Avid effects intact as possible? Then you use Automatic Duck, which is now free thanks to Adobe.
• The way media is stored in the MXF media folder means that you can move projects from machine to machine with minimum fuss.
• Mac and PC - Media Composer works on both and you can share the media between both. Of all the other programs only Adobe Premiere Pro also works on both platforms. However with Premiere, although you can copy projects from one computer to another, you cannot do the same with the clips.  On Windows Premiere works with AVIs and on the Mac it works with QuickTime movies, so its not as cross-platform as Media Composer.
• Media Management - with Avid you control all your clips inside Avid. You move, delete, consolidate etc all from Avid's own tool. No more looking around with explorer to find a missing file or wondering whether its safe to delete a file an if its being used somewhere. On large projects this is a great time saver.
• Lots of different internal formats - say you want to take a large project and edit on a laptop, then just "consolidate" your footage into a lower resolution format that takes up less space and will fit on your laptop drive.  Edit on the laptop, then transfer the project back to the desktop with the full quality footage and re-link the files.  There are formats that range from a low resolution where and hour of video can be squeezed in about 2GB space, to higher resolution formats that you can use for HD editing.

What is not so good about Media Composer?

• It is not as intuitive to use as a program like Adobe Premiere. It was designed to be like cutting film and still retains quite a lot of that "logic". If you are used to the way a a typical Windows program works then a program like Premiere generally works in the same way, but Avid has its own ways of doing thing which need learning. That does not mean that is a huge amount of hard work to learn, just that it is a bit different.  Its means if you don't use it regularly you may forget how to do certain things.
• COST - Media Composer costs around £2,000 - although you must remember this is for a suite of programs including easy music creation, advanced 3D compositing and professional Blu-ray creation.  The Blu-ray and DVD program only works on a PC, unlike Adobe's Encore which works on PC and MAC.
• Avid officially only support you if you buy a validated platform - which is generally an HP or Dell computer of a certain specification.  However they are a lot less strict than they were a few years ago and there is a lot of help for people on non-validated platforms.

What are Xpress Pro and Xpress DV?

Avid used to have three versions of their program - Xpress DV, Xpress Pro and Media Composer. They were all variations of the same program, with the same interface and more features on more expensive versions. These days Avid just sell Media Composer and if you have any of the previous versions it is possible to upgrade.

Do we offer training?

We can do one-to-one courses in Avid Media Composer aimed at those starting in Avid or moving to it from a different platform.

We also have a range of Avid training DVDs available covering all aspects of the program and the Avid website is packed with free training and tutorial videos.

Do we do Avid systems?

Of course!  At DVC making and supporting complete systems is what we do best.   We have both laptop and desk top Avid systems available and all can be customised.  Click here for more information.