There’s nothing like giving something away to get people’s attention and that’s what Avid’s doing with their new version of Media Composer: Media Composer First.

This is a well trodden path. Lightworks has had a free version for years and last week we heard about a free version of Media 100. Avid is also not new to the idea: It announced a free version of ProTools this time last year.

As you’d expect, this is not a fully functional version of Media Composer: it’s limited to four video tracks and eight audio tracks. There’s a selection of effects but they’re mostly pre-set or templated. But for the intended user base, that’s not going to be an issue, because it’s only intended to be a stopgap – an easy to use stepping stone on the way to full price and full function Media Composerdom….[continue reading]