WHAT'S NEW IN MEDIA COMPOSER 6?

Avid announced their latest version of Media Composer at the start of November 2011.

64 bit program

As expected the biggest change is that Media Composer is now a 64 bit application, like Adobe Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas. This means it can access as much RAM as you can install in your computer and use multi-core processors better. It also means the program will only run on a 64 bit operating system, such as Windows 7 64, and you will not be able to use any non-64 bit plug-ins in the program – so any plug-ins you do you have will need to be updated. We had exactly the same issues with Adobe Premiere Pro and the 64 bit version of Vegas. What it should give you is better performance.

What has been added what has been taken away?

When Apple rewrote Final Cut Pro 7 to become a 64 bit application, and produced Final Cut Pro X, they changed the program completely, leaving out half of the features and changing the way it work so it was basically a totally different program. When any program changes to 64 bit it has to be re-written completely so many things could change or be left out. With Avid, the 64 bit version appears to have basically everything that you were used to in previous version with added extras. If you were hoping for a change in the way MC worked then you will be disappointed but actually most people wanted the same program, just a bit better and this is what Avid has delivered.

The only thing missing from the new Media Composer is one of the plug-ins that came as part of the production pack. Boris Continuum Complete is no longer going to be bundled with Media Composer and you will need to buy it separately. Boris will be offering an upgrade for owners of Media Composer to the new BCC8 which should be available around the middle of the month. This upgrade will be at a reduced cost and possibly for a limited period, so if you are interested in getting BCC working with MC6 contact us for more details. Your old BCC will not work because the version supplied with Avid MC5 is 32bit and will not work in a 64 bit program. A new 64 bit version of Avid FX is included with MC6, and this does have all the old BCC filters available inside it as before, so you may not feel you need BCC. Sorenson Squeeze and Avid DVD are also included. Sorenson Squeeze 7 will be shipping with MC6, but Avid say that when Squeeze 8 comes out you will be able to download it and install it using the Squeeze 7 serial number you will get.

NEW FEATURES

Apart from its 64 bitness what is new? In no particular order the major new features are:

STEREOSCOPIC EDITING

Avid have added a whole host of features for editing STEREOSCOPIC footage including controls of adjusting convergence and different ways of viewing 3D footage on the computer screen. Along with Vegas Avid now has 3D editing built in. This handles most types of 3D footage where you have two clips, one for the left eye and one for the right eye, which you then combine into a STEREO clip. It currently does not handle MVC encoded files like those used by the Sony HDR-T10. Currently only SONY Vegas supports these kind of STEREO files.

SURROUND SOUND EDITING

You can now have 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound tracks and can pan clips around using the surround sound panners. You can output the results to a 6 channel WAV file or a MOV file with 6 channels of audio, although to make a Dolby Digital file for Blu-ray or DVD you will need an extra encoding package. This is the same with a program like Adobe Premiere Pro, with Sony Vegas being the only program that can mix and output a Dolby surround sound track out of the box. Grass Valley EDIUS does the opposite – you can output 5.1 to DVD or Blu-ray, you just can't mix it! The best way to monitor the surround sound is using a device like a Matrox MX02 Mini connected to an HDMI mixer, or using the MX02 (not the Mini or LE version) which has 6 phonos for surround sound monitoring.

AMA support for AVCHD

Avid normally stores its footage in a central media directory in certain specified formats, but with recent versions they added AMA (AVID MEDIA ACCESS) where you can just link to a file instead of having to import and convert it. Users of Premiere or EDIUS will be used to working like this all the time but it was a big step forward for Avid.

With MC6 now you can link to native AVCHD files as well as many other QuickTime and MP4 files. Performance with native files is not nearly as good as Premiere Pro CS5.5 or EDIUS 6 so we would still recommend transcoding the clips you are using but it is a welcome addition.

SLIGHTLY REDESIGNED INTERFACE

The interface of MC6 is pretty similar to MC5 but Avid have streamlined it and added the ability to tab bins, so rather than have lots of bins floating around, or use the rather irritating SUPER BIN, you can now open lots of bins and tab the ones you need together. Bins still have the same views and you can change background colours etc and there are some small changes, such as the button to switch between frame and text and script views being moved to a slightly more obvious place, but in our opinion all the small changes are an enhancement.

"Evolution not revolution" is the phrase used by Avid to explain the changes to the interface of Media Composer. MC has a huge user base who have been using it for years, and like the way it works.  However new users, used to other programs, are sometimes put off by the way the program operates.  Even hardened Avid Editors will tell you to forget the way you have been working and learn "the Avid way", promising that once you do you will work faster.  Some people do and some people just give up and use something else, so Avid is trying to add in new ways of working that will appeal to non-Avid editors whilst at the same time.  So in the MC5 a new tool bar has been introduced that lets you work on video in a much more "draggy and droppy" way. 

Activate the new toolbar and you just grab the edge of the clip and trim.

SUPPORT FOR MORE HARDWARE

This is quite a huge leap; we still remember the days where you had to spend £5,000 to buy a MOJO that would let you watch and edit HD in full quality, and would only capture through SDI. Now Avid Media Composer works with i/o cards from a whole host of manufacturers including Matrox and AJA, with whom they were already working, but also Black Magic. You can use a £130 Intensity Pro or the INTENSITY SHUTTLE with Avid Media Composer and you can both playback and capture footage. Black Magic’s MC6 drivers are actually live on their website already.

The same is true for all the other hardware. For owners of Matrox MX02 Minis this suddenly means their Matrox box will now capture footage into a whole host of AVID codecs (including uncompressed and Avid DNxHD) rather than be limited to just playing back footage as it was with MC5. Avid will also work with ALL Matrox MX02s, not just the MX02 Mini so now you have cheaper ways of getting SDI signals in and out of Media Composer using the MX02 LE or MX02 RACK. All you need are new drivers from Matrox which are out now and free to owners of Matrox devices.

We have been testing the Matrox drivers and they are working very well.

Output from Matrox and Black Magic also includes outputting STEREOSCOPIC video (usually in SIDE-BY-SIDE or TOP/BOTTOM) from the Avid timeline. We have not tested the output from AJA cards but we assume they do the same.

Avid MC6 is be available to download from the Avid website now and we expect to have boxed products soon.

There are also upgrades available from previous versions and a new crossgrade offer from Apple Final Cut Pro 7. The FCP crossgrade is £1,029 +VAT.