Media Composer 2023.8 improves the editing experience offering a new workspace option that shortens the ramp-up time for editors transitioning from older versions of Media Composer, audio punch-in support via third-party USB devices, and more.

Plus, with the new Panel SDK, Media Composer is more open than ever to third-party integration via a set of APIs.

Learn more about Avid Media Composer HERE

Learn more about Avid HERE

Check out some highlights from this article from digitalfilms.wordpress.com to learn more.

Avid Media Composer offers a few add-on options, but two are considered gems by the editors that rely on them. ScriptSync and PhraseFind are essential for many drama and documentary editors who wield Media Composer keyboards every day. I’ve written about these tools in the past, including how you can get similar functionality in other NLEs. New transcription services, like Simon Says, make them more viable than ever for the average editor.

Driven by the script

Avid’s script-based editing, also called script integration, builds a representation of the script supervisor’s lined script directly into the Avid Media Composer workflow and interface. While often referred to as ScriptSync, Avid’s script integration is actually not the same. Script-based editing and script bins are part of the core Media Composer system and does not cost extra.

The concept originated with the Cinedco Ediflex NLE and migrated to Avid. In the regular Media Composer system, preparing a script bin and aligning takes to that script is a manual process, often performed by assistant editors that are part of a larger editorial team. Because it is labor-intensive, most individual editors working on projects that aren’t major feature films or TV series avoid using this workflow.

Avid ScriptSync (a paid option) automates this script bin preparation process, by automatically aligning spoken words in a take to the text lines within the written script. It does this using speech recognition technology licensed from Nexidia. This technology is based on phonemes, the sounds that are combined to create spoken words. Clips can be imported (transcoded into Avid MediaFiles) or linked.

Through automatic analysis of the audio within a take, ScriptSync can correlate a line in the script to its relative position within that take or within multiple takes. Once clips have been properly aligned to the written dialogue, ScriptSync is largely out of the picture. And so, in Avid’s script-based editing, the editor can then click on a line of dialogue within the script bin and see all of the coverage for that line.

Check out the full article HERE.

Learn more about Avid HERE.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making major inroads to post-production, and nowhere more significantly than in Avid’s editing systems.

When speaking with David Colantuoni, vp of product management at Avid, I started by asking how he would define what AI is.

ScriptSync matches each source clip to its associated line in the script.

“In the Media and Entertainment context, we look at AI as using machine learning to reach out to massive amounts of data and streamlining it so it can become practical to use it in productions,” he began. “In addition, it is used to relieve humans of repetitive procedures by letting computers supervise automated tasks.”

And Avid has been in the forefront of putting these concepts to good use.

“We’ve had AI functionality in our systems for many years,” Colantuoni said, “with our ScriptSync and PhraseFind features that let an editor search for spoken words in a general phonetically indexed database. We were using AI before the expression came into general usage.”

PhraseFind allows editors to search their Media Composer project phonetically – that is, by the sounds of the words.

In fact, just to jog peoples’ memories, ScriptSync, or the ability to reference raw footage to its position in a written script was first introduced in 2007.

It was joined by the ability to search for the appearance of specific words with PhraseFind in 2011.

Although well received, due to licensing machinations behind the scenes both were discontinued in 2014.

But ideas as downright useful as those two could not stay down forever, so ScriptSync and PhraseFind re-appeared in 2017, each upgraded to version 2.0 and each with an upgraded license fee offered either separately or bundled together.

“Now we are more and more getting into ways to leverage the computing power of the cloud by using MicrosoftAzure,” Colantuoni told me. “That is giving us the ability to help people responsible for logging massive amounts of source video for productions such as, for example, Reality Shows, based on several criteria.”

Azure was announced in October 2008 under the codename “Project Red Dog.”

Using video uploaded from MediaCentral to the Azure cloud, you can process the visual information and turn it into metadata. Then you can search that metadata for specific words, faces, or even objects.

“Say there is a specific red car you need to use in a scene, you can have the system find all instances of that red car by searching the metadata identifying it,” he said. “But it doesn’t end there.”

Avid has extended their metadata information into quality assurance. “For example if PhraseFind has identified some words that should be place in a certain scene,” Colantuoni described, “the operator can access the linked metadata to verify that the associated closed captions are appearing in the proper shots.”

It all has to do with MediaCentral interfacing with a database because of the metadata component that enables this kind of multi-level search.

“Metadata is going to be providing the foundation of ever more elaborate search capabilities as we learn to leverage AI more extensively in post-production,” Colantuoni finished up. “But, of course, it is always going to require human intelligence to give the final result meaning.”

Click here to watch the video on YouTube.

HDLSR Shooter interviews Avids Matt Feury on Media Composer First, the reintroduction of PhraseFind, ScriptSync and more.

Click here to watch the video on Vimeo

Click here to view on YouTube.

Back in the day, with ScriptSync and PhraseFind – life was beautiful. That is until that fateful day when Version 8 of the Media Composer software did not contain these two powerful tools. Boy, was that a dark day. Fortunately there were a few workarounds (see my Vimeo page) but the fixes were never an elegant solution.

Well that’s not the case anymore – finally with version 8.8 of Media Composer the two most powerful features of any NLE have been licensed and incorporated back into the software; it’s game changer kids, a game changer….[continue reading]

With today’s release of Media Composer 8.8, Avid Technologies brings back two important features not seen since version 7.

It’s rare in the world of software to see features return that we’ve lost. Usually, if a developer drops a feature, it’s due to a lack of popularity, and even if a few users complain loudly about its absence, developer resources are already more focused on new features. But, sometimes, legacy features come back around, as they did today with the release of Media Composer 8.8, which resurrects both PhraseFind and ScriptSync.

These features are both popular enough that they have kept some editors and post houses on MC 7 in order to maintain their functionality. Built on Emmy-award-winning technology from Nexidia, PhraseFind and ScriptSync are tools that help editors quickly manage tremendous volumes of footage in a sophisticated fashion. PhraseFind is a powerful dialogue search tool that allows editors to search through all the footage available for specific words and phrases spoken by the subjects, without the use of a transcription.

Especially for doc editors—but for anyone with a lot of footage to sort through—this is an amazing feature. When you know that at some point, somewhere in your footage, someone talked about how much they like orange juice, but you can’t remember where, instead of having to scrub every shot looking for the individual sound bite, you simply type “orange juice” into the search menu and it shows you every time anyone says orange juice anywhere in your footage.

Phrase find even allows phonetic spelling, so you could type “oranj joose” and it would likely find the right moments in your footage. This is especially helpful when searching for proper names you might not know how to spell correctly, or when looking for utterances like whoops of joy. Today’s release integrates MC 8.8 with ScriptSync and PhraseFind version 2,  with improvements in the way dialects and accents are searched and with improved ability to index unclear audio.

ScriptSync builds on that technology for scripted projects. It will automatically index all of your dialogue, then connect it to your script, so you can search by page or scene number and evaluate all the available takes for a given line of dialogue.

Unfortunately, these features are not bundled in with your Avid software, so they require an extra purchase on top of your Avid license or subscription. The price depends on whether you are upgrading from a previous version and or buying both together, but they do offer a generous $49 combination purchase of both tools for academic users.

PhraseFind Features:

• More powerful phonetic indexing engine that speeds up indexing time
• Updates to the Find window, with better visual integration with Media Composer
• Auto-fill for the search field
• Shorter phoneme phrases deliver more accurate results
• Improved indexing of unclear audio
• Supports more dialects and accents

ScriptSync Features:

• Updated color palette
• Video Frames support 4×3 and 16×9
• Undo and Redo Stacks
• User Notes
• Edit Script Text

Media Composer has hit some huge milestones in the last 1-2 years.  The additions of both larger than HD projects, as well as custom project sizes was big, but this update is just as big, if not bigger.  Many long format editors have not been able to update to version 8 as support for two essential tools, PhraseFind and ScriptSync, had lagged.  Well, with the version 8.8 update, PF and SS is back (at an additional cost), and in this tutorial, we’re going to talk about some of the new features in the 8.8 update, and i’m going to show you why PhraseFind is an essential tool for every editor working on Media Composer.  ScriptSync will get some love in its own dedicated tutorial!  I want to also give a big shoutout to EditStock who provided me with the footage used in this tutorial!  You can check them out at www.editstock.com . Enjoy!

Click here to watch the video on YouTube

Every editor has been there. You’re staring at a growing mountain of drives and cards and devices containing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hours of footage. You know the story you want to tell. But finding the best takes or that perfect clip of dialog to complete your narrative can suck up hours of time daily. Hours you’d rather be spending creatively focusing on your story.

Back in 2006, Avid partnered with a company called Nexidia to bring Nexidia’s phonetic dialog indexing and search technology to Avid’s editing systems. First with ScriptSync, which automated the process of syncing every dialog line in a script or transcript with its equivalent media files. Then later with PhraseFind, which made it possible to simply type a word or phrase and quickly find every clip where that word or phrase is spoken.

With this technology, Media Composer editors gained significant speed and ease throughout the creative editorial process. Unfortunately, we experienced a partnership setback a few years ago and had to remove ScriptSync and PhraseFind from Media Composer. This wasn’t easy for us—and we know it especially wasn’t easy for you. Thankfully, that’s all about to change because they’re back!

Meet the new and improved ScriptSync and PhraseFind
As we mentioned late last year, we acquired the exclusive rights to Nexidia’s phonetic dialog search technology and would be bringing ScriptSync and PhraseFind back. Well, I’m thrilled to tell you that both are available now. And they’re better than ever! All you need is Media Composer 8.8 and you’re ready to rock (check out our special upgrade offer below).

ScriptSync

With the new Media Composer | ScriptSync Option, you can quickly sync every source clip to its associated dialog line in your script or transcript in seconds. This makes it super easy to compare all performances in the context of your story, so you can choose the best take. And it offers several new features and enhancements, including…

• Sync clips faster with the more powerful phonetic indexing engine

• Easily undo and redo tasks

• View clips in their native frame format, including 4×3 and 16×9

• Get more color choices for richer organization and script markup

• Work in multiple languages, with all available languages included

• Edit, find, and replace script text

ScriptSync is available now as a new purchase, upgrade, or bundled with PhraseFind—see all of your options here.

PhraseFind

With the new Media Composer | PhraseFind Option, you can quickly find all relevant clips by typing a word or phrase of dialog. That means you can spend less time searching for the right media and more time focusing on what matters most—your story. It also offers several new features and enhancements, including…

• Get faster search results with the more powerful phonetic indexing engine

• Save time and money with the ability to catalog volumes of dialog-driven media

• Get more accurate results with support for shorter phoneme phrases

• Gain better indexing of unclear audio and support for more dialects and accents

• Work in multiple languages, with all available languages included

PhraseFind is available now as a new purchase, upgrade, or bundled with ScriptSync—see all of your options here.

Got an older version of Media Composer?
Both ScriptSync and PhraseFind require Media Composer 8.8 to operate. If you have an active Annual Upgrade and Support Plan for Media Composer—or a Media Composer subscription—you can download the latest update at no charge right now (you’ll find the latest installer in your Avid Account).

If you have Media Composer 3 or later, Symphony 3 or later, or NewsCutter 7 or later, we’re giving you a limited-time only chance to upgrade your software to Media Composer 8.8 for just $399. This not only enables you to update your tools and editorial skills, you get an Annual Upgrade and Support Plan too, which provides access to all future Media Composer releases and support for one year, renewable annually for just $299/year.

Get more details about this special offer—or invest in your success and upgrade now through March 31, 2017.

So, how excited are you to have ScriptSync and PhraseFind back? And how will these tools help you? Share your story in the comments.