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Media Composer

Media Composer 6 Editing Guide

AVID has released the Media Composer Editing Guide v6.0 in PDF form. It is 1555 pages and well worth checking out!
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Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite adds Media Composer Support

boxshot-large-magic-bullet-suite

The Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite Version 11.2, has added Looks compatibility with Avid Media Composer! You can also install a single program out of the complete installer, which as of the last version only requires one serial number.

Very cool. I love Looks, and see this as a further death nell for Final Cut Pro (and no I don’t include FCP X in that distinction, that is iMovie Pro).
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Bunim/Murray drops Final Cut Pro for AVID

Arstechnica is reporting that, that top reality show producer and long time Final Cut Pro proponent Bunim/Murray has dropped final Cut Pro and is moving back to AVID media composer.

Due to the large volume of media generated by our reality shows, we needed to re-evaluate our editing and storage solutions. At the same time, we were looking for a partner who would understand our long-term needs,



Basically FCP X is not good enough, and FCP 7 is old and gettiing long in the tooth, and with AVID now being 64 bit, they felt the need to make the move.
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Avid Assistant Editor Handbook

The AVID assistant Edtitor’s Handbook has been released.

The Avid Assistant Editor's Handbook provides new users a solid foundation for working in Avid, and it can accelerate an Avid assistant editor's transition to a coveted editor role. There is also a comprehensive chapter on multigrouping that details this often-used process and often-encountered job requirement.




Sounds interesting, and anything to teach assistant editors is a good thing, and I am sure there are quite a few editors who could use this as well.
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Scott Simmons on Media Composer 6

Scott Simmons from the Edit Blog at the Prod Video Coalition has a must have article on Media Composer 6. It is a must read for some of it’s gotchas on ProRES.

While it can fast import ProRES footage like it can with DNxHD footage, it cannot then Consolidate ProRES footage, which means copying without recompressing, it can still only do that with Avid compressed footage. You have to Transcode ProRES footage, so it adds another layer of compression into the mix.
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Walter Biscardi on AVID Media Composer 6 at Creative Cow

Walter Biscardi from Biscardi Creative, has a great article on beta testing AVID Media Composer 6 over at Creative Cow.

It is most interesting because he was a die hard Final Cut Pro user, who only used AVID when it first came out, but now seems totally sold on AVID. And says it is more rock solid with an AJA Kona 3 than Final Cut Pro ever was, and way better with it than Adobe Premiere is.

Way to go AVID! I just think they should permanently make the upgrade from FCP $1000 instead o $1500, but any which way they are going to slaughter the market, I just hope Adobe is up to making enough competition to keep the innovative, just like Apple did for them.
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AVID announces Media Composer 6 64 Bit

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AVID has announced the fully 64 Bit Media Composer 6, and if you buy or upgrade to Version 5.5 from October 15th you get a free upgrade to 6 when it comes out.

They also announced a software only version of Symphony.

The most exciting thing is being able to use AJA, Black Magic and Matrox I/O cards, no more need for expensive AVID hardware. And AVID has made the program completely 64 bit without losing features (yea screw you Apple). And it has a new interface which has added tabs to bins (taken from FCP 7, which FCP X does not use), but still looks familiar, if darker.

Full ProRES support on a Mac (read only on PC) including being able to just wrap them in an MXF for full AVID support, without re-rendering. Nice!

This is exciting as all hell!

The prices are as follows:

Media Composer 6.0 starts at $2499 with upgrades starting at $299.
NewsCutter 10 starts at $2499 with upgrades starting at $499.
Symphony 6.0 starts at $5,999 with upgrades starting at $499.
Nitris DX starts at $5,499 USD.
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Automatic Duck Plugs Ins are FREE!

thankyou

I honestly thought with them moving to Adobe that the old plug ins were gone for good, but it seems not as
Automatic Duck has released all their old plug ins for FREE!

I already owned Pro Import AE 5.0, which allows you to import either Final Cut Pro 7 or AVID Media Composer sequences into After Effects. You use Free XML exporter for FCP and it works almost perfectly. A must have.

Pro Export FCP 5.0 is for FCP X and is to allow OMF export.

Pro Export FCP 4.0 lets you export either OMF or AAF from FCP to AVID, and I previously owned this.

And their is Pro Import FCP 2.0 which allows you to import an AVID sequence into Final Cut Pro.

And they are all FREE. So download them now. Sure they will not be updated again, but free is a huge price drop!
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FCP.Co on the AJA Io XT thunderbolt

FCP.Co has a report on the new Thunderbolt equipped AJA Io XT with HD-SDI dual link support and HDMI input and output. Now if only someone could come out with a Thunderbolt PCI card for older MacPro’s (I know they say it is not possible). And I love that new cards are working with Media Composer.
AJA_IOXT
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Biscardi Creative on Premiere and AVID with Davinci Resolve

Biscardi Creative has an interesting article on workarounds to use Adobe Premiere Pro and AVID Media Composer with Davinci Resolve which is currently made to work with Final Cut Pro 7.
It looks like there is no easy solution right now, as Resolve reads Premiere’s XML, but not all of it’s media is compatible, and you need a $500 plug in to make it work with AVID. Otherwise you basically need to export a quicktime and use scene detection to make a grade (so no dissolves).
Not an ideal solution for sure.
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PVC on some usefull AVID tools

Scott Simmons has posted an excellent article on some new and old useful features in Media Composer. I didn’t know about the Stereo for sure (much like Premiere Pro AVID can now have Stereo tracks and Stereo clips), and think these are well worth checking out.
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John DeMaio at Production Apprentice back to Avid

Production Apprentice has an excellent article on moving back from Final Cut Pro 7 to AVID Media Composer. He likes the move and really gets back into using trim mode, which is barely used on FCP 7, though still likes some things about FCP 7.

I feel about the same, I still like certain things about FCP 7 better, but now that it is EOL, it is time to really to get back into Media Composer, though I am also really enjoy Premiere Pro quite a bit.
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Splice now has a great AVID tip

Splice Now, have a great tip on Copying a clip to source monitor, that can really speed your up in editing.

The shortcut, not visible in the menus, is Command-Option-C. Mark a region in the timeline and select tracks, or simply select a clip or clips. Then hit Command-Option-C. Your material instantly appears in the source monitor.

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Editing Software on Lion

So I am checking Editing Software Compatibility of Mac OS X Lion.

As Apple Said Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 does open fine in Lion, though it does ask me to register, though the button to register is grayed out.

The Demo of AVID Media Composer 5.5.2 boots and runs just fine.

Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5 I am having issues with. and it won’t start. Adobe claims it should run fine, so I am going to try and re-install and see what happens. It is weird as After Effects and Photoshop work fine, but just Premiere won’t boot.
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Avid Event gives some tantalizing clues

There is a great article over at EditBlog on some tweets from this weeks AVID Media Composer Committed to Professionals event held at Warner Bros.

There is some pretty amazing stuff here.
LiveToEdit tweets:

3D, 7.1, new U.I., Kona, Decklink, Matrox, Bluefish support coming soon



and

3rd party I/O: no announcements,  other than ‘we’re working with them for the future’



and

80% of pro systems are Avid, 50% of #Avid employees used to be in production



And even cooler

future is 64bit, new interface, WILL NOT lose known features, keyboard short cuts, etc.


And @comebackshane has this interesting tidbit.

Third party hardware support (Matrox, AJA, BMD, MOTU)...Plugin support from more vendors (Red Giant)...external control surfaces… #avid



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And thanks to
Pietari Creative for this awesome pic of the possible AVID Media Composer 64 Bit Interface.

•••••••••••

Pretty amazing news, though no timeline given. Still I love the look of the new interface, especially if is fully 64 bit, and does not lose all the features of previous AVID (see it can be done Apple).

And Black Magic and AJA support is huge, as is Red Giant Support, does that mean we may be getting Collorista 2 for AVID soon? Awesome.

It can’t come soon enough!
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Created by Jonah Lee Walker 2011