Post Picks: Avid Media Composer – Winner
By Adam Noyes
Avid (www.avid.com) announced an all-new version of its flagship video editing system, Media Composer, completely redesigned and reimagined for “today’s and tomorrow’s generation of media makers.” Unveiled at Avid Connect 2019, the company’s gathering of media and entertainment users during the 2019 NAB Show in Las Vegas, the all-new Media Composer 2019 was in the spotlight at the company’s booth throughout NAB.
The intent with Media Composer 2019 is for aspiring and professional editors, freelancers and journalists to be inspired to work more creatively by taking advantage of a new user experience, a next-generation Avid media engine with distributed processing, finishing and delivering capabilities, a customizable role-based user interface for large teams, and more.
“After receiving input from hundreds of editors and teams across the media industry, and knowing where the industry is headed, we reimagined Media Composer, the product that created the nonlinear video editing category and remains the gold standard,” says Jeff Rosica, CEO and president at Avid. “Media Composer 2019 is both evolutionary and revolutionary. It maintains what longtime users know and love while giving them more of what they need today —and what they will need tomorrow.”
With Media Composer 2019, an editor can go from first cut to delivery without ever leaving the application. Whether they are a professional editor, freelancer or someone just starting out, Media Composer 2019 was designed to inspire creative storytelling.
The four main areas of focus are:
A new user experience featuring a paneled interface that reduces clutter, reimagines bins to find media faster, and offers task-based workspaces showing only what the user wants and needs to see.
A next-generation Avid Media engine that puts more power at a user’s fingertips with features, such as native OP1A, support for more video and audio streams, Live Timeline and background rendering, and a distributed processing add-on option to shorten turnaround times and speed up post production.
New finishing and delivery workflows that allow users to create and deliver higher-quality content with editing, effects, color, audio and finishing tools without leaving Media Composer. Whether working in 8K, 16K or HDR, Media Composer’s new built-in 32-bit full float color pipeline can handle it. Additionally, Avid has been working with OTT content providers to help establish future industry standards.
A customizable toolset was built for large production teams. The new Media Composer | Enterprise provides administrative control to customize the interface for any role in the organization, whether the user is a craft editor, assistant, logger or journalist. It also offers unparalleled security to lock down content, reducing the chances of unauthorized leaks of sensitive media.
In addition, the Media Composer family adds Media Composer | Enterprise for post production, broadcast, media education and other larger production teams. Media Composer | Enterprise is a role-specific video editing and finishing solution. Large production teams now have the ability to customize the interface and tailor workspaces for different job roles, providing end users access only to the tools and functions they need. This capability gives teams better focus so they can complete jobs faster and with fewer mistakes. Media Composer | Enterprise also integrates with Editorial Management 2019 to deliver collaborative workflow innovation for post production and enables creative teams to stay in sync.
Avid also announced Media Composer | Distributed Processing, an add-on option that shortens turnaround times and accelerates post production by sharing the media processing load. Tasks that previously took hours can now be done in minutes, strengthening post facilities’ competitive edge while delivering high-quality programming. Media Composer | Distributed Processing also offloads complex processing tasks when working in today’s emerging high resolution and HDR media-rich worlds.
Media Composer 2019 will be available in late spring for all of its models: Media Composer | First, Media Composer, Media Composer | Ultimate and Media Composer | Enterprise.