Media Composer 5

[George Angeludis]

When dreams come true.
Avid Media Composer 5. When dreams come true.

[Richard Gooderick]

From the Avid link:
"Drag and Drop Video and Audio to Edit
Get comfortable — with Media Composer 5, you can truly edit the way you like. In addition to the standard way of editing, you can also now directly manipulate elements in the timeline to edit video and audio. Drag and drop clips anywhere you want on the timeline to rearrange sequences. And grab a clip’s in or out point and drag to trim a scene, dialog, or music."

Now that Liquid has been discontinued it seems like Avid may be incorporating some of the best bits of Liquid into Media Composer?
In addition to the features just announced above a 'select all to the right of the cursor', very similar to the Liquid 'U' command, seemed to be a new feature in the last version of MC.
That's good news if you ask me. Perhaps they will do some research to see how Liquid users are using Media Composer and whether any other features could be incorporated into MC.

[George Angeludis]

Richard Media Composer 5 is a revolution using AMA on almost anything.
I was a Liquid user (sverkalo there). Liquid is done. You can upgrade to MC for 495.
But I guess you already know this.

[Richard Gooderick]

Thanks George. I thought it was you. I've always enjoyed your sense of poetry and humour.
I downloaded the trial version of MC and have been learning it for the last week (I was surprised how much of it is similar to Liquid, but then I suppose most NLEs are fundamentally the same).
I am buying an HP 8200 tomorrow and will order Media Composer from Avid shortly.
Most of my shooting nowadays is done with a Canon 5Dmk2.
So with the Canon firmware upgrade to give 25p, MC support for 5D files and the Avid discount for Liquid users, life seems pretty good at the moment.
Good luck with MC to you and all other ex Liquid users.
I hope that Avid may pinch some other good bits from Liquid and incorporate them into MC - like the storyboard function for instance. It works in MC but was so much better in Liquid.
Don't get me wrong. I'm really enjoying learning MC and there are many things about it that are better than Liquid.

[George Angeludis]

You are on forums with us.
Yes?
There is a Liquid to MC forum.
You know it right?
Nothing to take wrong Richard we are all friends.
MC 5 comes in June and will link to QT files from Canon's DSLR from AMA!

[Richard Gooderick]

Thanks. Am on that forum too.
June - that's good to know. Will look forward to that.

[David Parks]

I'm speechless. This is I think the biggest release since the first version 5 (in 1994) that allowed on-line quality.
They finally have opened up the standard!!!

[Vito DeFilippo]

Yep,

All seemed doom and gloom in the past few years, but Avid is back in the game with this one for sure. Can't wait to upgrade.

[George Angeludis]

Originally Posted by David Parks

I'm speechless.

Me too. I have made a countdown clock to count the days of the release.

Days Left till MC5 launch.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Richard Gooderick

From the Avid link:
"Drag and Drop Video and Audio to Edit

After writing a decade of reviews of Avid products ranting about how their model model -- which might have been fine for film editors in the `90s -- was counter-intuitive to those who had experience with EVERY other NLE, I finally listen to an Avid spokesperson say we now have the option for non-model editing.

With kids learning to use computers and editors in grade-school -- and with drag-and drop -- being the way objects are moved -- this is big news for everyone who isn't in Hollywood.

But, there are still open questions:

MC 5 is claimed to support several Canon HD-DLRs (5D and 7D) that wrap H.264/AVC (at about 38Mbps) in a .mov wrapper. (The audio is PCM with the 5D at 48kHz and the 7D at 44.1kHz.)

Are these cameras listed as as POPULAR EXAMPLES of H.264/AVC in .mov files -- which would mean other Canon camcorders such as the EOS Rebel T2i will be supported -- or has Avid done something to limit AMA to just the two listed camcorders?

When Avid says "Get native access to all popular QuickTime formats" am I correct the H.274 (for example) is being decompressed as each frame is used in the Timeline? I assume so.

Which leads me to the Requirements for MC 5. Those who have been NATIVELY editing AVCHD, AVCCAM, and H.264/AVC on Edius, Vegas, etc. are well aware that the almost all, if not all, of these applications require a 3GHz Intel QUAD CORE for dual-stream editing, i.e., transitions, etc.

In fact, on a iMac, a QUAD i7 is required to simply *smoothly* PLAY 1080i60/1080p60 H.264. Bottom line, a QUAD of some kind is required if one wants to edit MPEG-4 the same fast way one would edit MPEG-2.

So looking at the MC 5 requirements I find:

Windows

Computer: Avid-qualified Windows-based computer or laptop (see details)
OS: Windows 7, Windows XP Professional SP2/SP3 (32-bit), Windows Vista Business SP2 (32-bit* and 64-bit), Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 (64-bit)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz processor or faster <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Memory: 2 GB of RAM (4 GB of RAM recommended; Windows Vista requires 4 GB of RAM)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Quadro FX family** (FX 560 or higher)
Internal Hard Drive: Minimum 80 GB 7200 rpm hard disk
Optical Drive: DVD drive for disc-based software installation

** Only NVIDIA cards are supported; full-screen playback requires a minimum of 128 MB of graphics memory.

Mac

Computer: Avid-qualified Mac-based computer or laptop* (see details)
OS: Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard)
Processor: Intel Dual or Intel Dual Core 2.66 GHz Xeon processor or faster, or Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz processor or faster (laptops) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Memory: 2 GB of RAM (4 GB of RAM recommended)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce family**
Internal Hard Drive: Minimum 80 GB 7200 rpm hard disk
Optical Drive: DVD drive for disc-based software installation

**Full-screen playback requires a minimum of 128 MB of graphics memory.


Does the "or faster" mean a QUAD CORE? (Somehow, I suspect not.)

If not, what on earth are Mac laptop users going to do when, as expected, Apple next week announces a new line of MBPs that except for the lowest price model may use nothing but Quads. In fact, even the lowest cost model may use an I3 -- not a Dual Core. (Likewise, even under $1000 hp laptops use Quad Cores!)

ALSO Note that now Macs are restricted to NVIDIA whereas ATI has been previously fine. Given the divorce of Intel and NVIDIA, has Avid checked that the new MBP are going offer NVIDIA graphics with the non QUAD models? And, what about the thousands of MBP owners who have ATI graphics?

Old MBPs won't work and neither will new ones!


Best Regards,
Steve
dvcinlv@me.com

[George Angeludis]

So after using Liquid and MC after for almost a decade I could share my opinion on this.
Avid has a phenomenal approach which is called AMA. You know that.
Every use of the AMA will be just point to the files and only if the user will want, he/she
could consolidate the files to a DNxHD flavour of his choice, depending on the project working.
Now as for the H264 files, MC loves those. I am on 4.0.5 and 550D files are working fine
inside MC even on my laptop with a T8100 and 3G of ram on W7 64 which is not
official supported for MC4. The only trouble so far is AVCHD which I don't use at all.
But this will change by MC5.

[David Parks]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

But, there are still open questions:

Since version 3's under the hood code rewrite, Avid has brought forth real-time mixed format timelines,
stereoscopic editing, mixed frame rates, AMA, and now a more FCP style drag/drop timeline. (To name a few.) As like Scott Simmons I can say, while no software is perfect, Avid continiues to allow me to make a living and feed my family. They've made the software much easier for me to edit a wide-range of projects.
If the software sucked, I wouldn't be able to make a living.

I have openly learned FCP, Edius, and Premiere and have all of those packages in my full -time job here at NASA/JSC. Do you want Snap-on tools or Craftsman tools?

The native quicktime editing opens up a lot of shooting/workflow possibilities for us. We are now thinking of buying a KiPro which would allow us to use any camera to shoot and then record out uncompressed 4;2:2 to ProRs 4:2:2. In fact, a co-worker suggested maybe we use ProRes as our standard codec for post and even archive.

This has the appearances of being a very good release and look forward to upgrading. I just didn't expect a major release this quick. Fortunately, Avid's upgrades since version 3 have been very stable.

BTW, my new slogan for Avid. Avid: Edit: Make a Living!!

[George Angeludis]

See this one. Me wants bad... Those files are treated natively through AMA. Create a folder at a disk drag there the contents of the SxS, SD whatever card and link through AMA.
No files are touched unless you need to consolidate them.

[George Angeludis]

I am re posting another pic which first posted by Wim (editorbelga) at Avid's MC forums, which illustrates the new audio RTAS plug ins use!
Official Avid images.

[Mike Poglitsch]

Great, the upgrade note says anyone who upgrades from 4/12/10 gets 5.0 for free. I upgraded one of my Avids last week (4/6/10)....anyone wanna bet I get boned on this one?