Avid Media Composer 5.0 Review

Thanks for the ProRes, Apple, we'll take it from here...... 

For awhile, things were looking to be on the downturn for Avid. When they first announced they would not be attending NAB 2008, people prematurely had them left for dead. Then Media Composer 3.5 was released, and things started to look a bit brighter. Now with version 5.0, Avid is once again king of the hill, but many would suggest they never left that perch in the first place.

I am first and foremost, an editor. I am not a FCP editor…an Avid editor….a Premiere editor….I am just an editor. Sit me at a workstation, I'll edit it. (I strongly encourage all editors to be OS/Software agnostic.) That said, in my professional career with Major League Baseball, we are 100% Final Cut. Previously at the NFL, we had Avids, but my department was also 100% FCP. The result of this is that I spend about 80-85% of my time in Final Cut Pro. That remaining time in my freelance side career, if I have the option, I lean towards Avid. One, to keep my Avid editing chops up, two, because I like it. I really, really like it. I do not want to write a FCP vs Avid review, but some comparisons are inevitable.

Installation/Licensing
I hate starting off with the negative, but in this case its warranted. The biggest issues most people will run into when using Avid 5.0 are right upfront. To start with, Avid really wants to be installed on a clean Snow Leopard or Windows 7 install. (I am using OS X for this review). Problem is, clean installs take time. At my home office, where I am essentially a one man band, I do not have an IT department to spend my off hours re-installing my OS and setting up my programs. So, I ignored the recommendation, and installed on my current OS X partition. At first I had some issues, but when I did a full un-install of the previous version, and re-installed ver 5.0 again, everything started fine. Just know, Avid support will most likely "encourage" you to re-install your OS as a first step to clearing up problems.

Next issue…the license. My dongle from version 3 had since bit the dust, and I was switched to Software activation as of ver 4. On the surface, its no big deal, but some gotchas are hidden a bit deeper. You can only have one machine activated at one time, so the days of quickly floating back and forth between desktop and laptop via your dongle are now gone. (If you have a previous working dongle, you can have that grandfathered in. All new copies are software activation only). In order to move between machines, you first have to de-activate one copy, and activate the other. Thats where the problems begin. Leave the office and forget to de-activate, your kinda screwed. If your in the first month of your install, the program will work for those 30 days. You might want to think about remote access to your desktop so you can de-activate from wherever you are. The bigger issue to me is this: laptops cannot be activated via wireless. You need to adjust your network settings to LAN, and physically connect to the internet that way. I do not remember the last time I had a network cable plugged into my laptop. Avid really needs to find a way around this.

AMA
Avid has always been more of a walled garden type of an edit system. You bring stuff into Avid, work with it and edit it, then open the gate and export out of Avid land. When they first introduced AMA a couple versions back, they started to break down these walls. Version 5.0 has pretty much removed the entire fence around the yard. You can still directly import into the system via the DNxHD codec, but you can also link to just about any media just like in FCP. XDCam, P2 cards, Red Footage, H.264 footage from DSLR cameras, etc. The benefits are speed. Linking takes seconds, where direct import can take minutes or hours depending on how much footage you are bringing in. You also are saving on Hard Drive space, as you do not need to have 2 copies of your media. Downfalls are mostly related to performance. Linked AMA files can have a tendency to stutter, especially RED footage. This is understandable, as it is taking 4K footage, and playing it on the fly, directly from the original R3D files. The better your video card (nvidia), the better the performance.

Pro Res
Pro res actually works quite well. Really well. The previous 2 releases of Final Cut Studio were overall underwhelming, but Apple did introduce the Pro Res codec. Its a great editing codec, and now Avid works with it 100% natively. This is extremely nice.

I still recommend importing directly whenever possible. You get the guaranteed realtime performance of Avid, and you also get more of Avids media management tools. When using AMA, certain things like Consolidate and Media Tool do not work.

Timeline Editing/Smart Tools
When compared to Final Cut, Avid has always been considered the harder program for newbies to learn because of the somewhat rigid ways Avid works. In Final Cut, you just grab and move. You see a clip, you can pick that clip up and move it. Previously in Avid, you had to manually enter Insert Mode or Overwrite mode to grab things. If not, you work in Trim mode, and move things by setting ins/outs. Ver 5.0 now changes that. The change is a new thing called "Smart Tools". Many will applaud this new feature, although I am not so sure its a great thing. Thats not a knock on Avid, the implementation works, and in many ways better than FCP does it. I just think the old way, the "Avid" way is kinda better. They are trying to bring in new customers and break down the learning barriers, and they need to be applauded for that. When Avid does something, they generally do it well, and that is the case here. And you do not have to use the tool, but its there for those that do want it.

Unlike FCP, which is always in Segment mode, you have to enable Smart tools in Avid to edit in this fashion. You click the different tools in the Smart Tool control panel, which now rests on the left side of the timeline. You can also hit the border around all the tools to gang them and turn them all on or off at the same time. Once they are on, the timeline becomes entirely clickable and dragable. You then determine what tool you are using by "hot-zones". If you put your cursor near the upper part of the clip, you will be in overwrite mode, lower section puts you in insert mode. Rest the cursor near an edit point, you move to trim mode.

When in Avid, do as the Avids do. I prefer the old way, but the new way will make a lot of people happy. They did it right. It needs some practice for old-school Avid editors, but you can get there with a little bit of effort.

Footage out to your monitor
You can now use the Matrox MXO2 mini as a playback device to your HD monitors, directly from Avid. I do not own one, so I was unable to test this feature first hand. I see from various sources on the net that it works, and works well. You can see the direction Avid is going with this. I bet its not far off before your Kona and Black magic cards work with Media Composer as well. In todays mostly file based workflows, the Matrox-to-Monitor solution is about all most people probably need.

Other additions
I could go on and on about new things Avid has added. Since version 3.0, every release has been spectacular. 5.0 blows it out of the water. Audio now can use realtime RTAS plugins, kind of like Pro Tools and the like. You can also now have stereo audio files appear as a single file.

The fluid-cam (think FCP steadicam) now analyzes your footage automatically after applying the effect. You can still change any and all settings, but many times the default settings work really well. Side note, the Avid version seems to get much better results that the FCP version, plus it seems faster. I will do a side by side comparison shot sometime in the future.

I have only had about a month with the new software, but I am loving it. Best part about Avid is how stable it is. It just does not crash. Thats a far, far cry from my experiences with FCP, which normally crashes on me at least once a day. I have had a "Main Thread" error several times since the upgrade, which people are telling me is some sort of a permissions issue. I have never had this problem with previous versions, but I have head that the recently released patch has fixed some of these low level errors.

I recommend any previous users upgrade immediately. I recommend any FCP or Premiere users download the demo and bang on it for awhile. Just do not be surprised if at the end of the month, you are laying down some hard earned cash on Media Composer. Its that good. Thanks for the Pro Res Apple, we will use that, and take it from here.

Heres to hoping Apple follows up next year with a real upgrade for Final Cut. Competition is great, and it is an awesome time in the world of NLE's. Avid has really stepped up to the plate.

Comments

[JAD]

It seems Apple didn't follow up, did they?

If you could write more about Avid and other editing software, like Lightworks, it would be great.

Thanks.