Avid
Media Composer is the software used to edit 90% of the worlds feature films and TV shows. It is packed with effects and features and is extremely reliable. Version 3 is about to be released and promises to use the full power of your computer to give multiple layers of real time effects even if mixing different formats, SD and HD on the same timeline. Media Composer 3 comes in a package with other software: - Boris Continuum - a very powerful set of effects plug-ins which all work inside of Avid just like Avid's own effects.
- Avid DVD - otherwise know as Sonic DVDit pro. 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 you videos. The program writes the music for you and you add cues where you want the mood to change.
- 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.
What is good about Media Composer? - It is one of the best programs for sharing projects with other users, or confirming 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 and some are better than others but Media Composer handles large projects easily.
- You can achieve most effects you want in Media Composer - it can paint on video, has a good keyer built in, you can make animated masks that follow objects on screen, you can motion track effects, do image stabilisation and much more.. It has an excellent colour corrector which in my experience gets the colour looking how you want with the minimum fuss of all the colour correction tools I have used.
- 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 workstation. 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 - it already comes with Boris Continuum but there are lots more 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. Want to add Movie Looks - Magic Bullet, or glow, sparkle and particle effects - Sapphire.
- 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 Premiere Pro 3 also works on both platforms and although you can copy projects from one computer to another you cannot do the same with the clips as on Windows it works with AVIs and on the Mac it works with QuickTime movies.
- Media Management - with Avid you control all you 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.
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 and you need to learn this to use the program properly. Its means if you don't use it regularly you may forget how to do certain things.
- The sound support is limited - you can have multiple layers of sound but only in mono/stereo. You can alter volume, panning etc and add audio effects. With the effects, all of which are excellent quality, if you use more than one you need to render it. There is no surround sound support, or sample level editing - so it is inferior to Vegas or Premiere when it comes to sound, and comparable with Premiere Pro 6 or Canopus Edius. In broadcast picture editing is done in Media Composer and sound would be exported to a different program like Pro Tools, which Avid will do very well.
- The way MXF media works is that if you want to import anything it needs to be stored in the central media location and converted on import. So for example if you want to use a wav file when you import it it is converted to Avid Media and put in Avid's folder, which takes time. For a 3 min WAV file it is not long, for an hour long DV clip it will be 10-15 minutes. You will notice that I have included the MXF format as both a plus and a minus because it also has large advantages!
- Avid will only support you if you use a validated platform - i.e. a computer they have tested and know works. It is most commonly used on HP systems, although other models are included. DVC bespoke systems are not validated and so if we made a DVC system which worked if you had a problem that we could not solve at DVC, then Avid would not help, since you are not using a validated system. Therefore we recommend that you used Avid on HP systems (which we can supply). This just means that an Avid Media Composer system will be a bit more expensive than a Premiere or Edius system.
- HD output is expensive compared to other programs. For standard definition you can just play out through the FireWire and and Avid will encode your effects in realtime. You can add a Mojo or a DV-analogue converter to be used instead of your camera/deck. For HD Avid have produced two extra hardware units - the Mojo DX and Nitris DX, which have just about every input and output you could want. The Mojo DX is £6,300 +VAT and the Nitris DX is £9,400 +VAT.
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 or group 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. |
