“The tradition of Festivus begins with the Airing of Grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you’re gonna hear about it.” ~ Frank Costanza
Back in January I gave my thoughts on the new Avid Media Composer 6, and thanks to the social media networks of the world a lot of people were able to share in that review. In my overall opinion Avid has been moving in the right direction for some time now, embracing 3rd party technologies, the AMA workflow that has made file-based acquisition post faster, and realizing that they are one of many tools in any post-production workflow. For the last 10 years or so, Avid has been my main tool for all things editing. I have used Final Cut Pro, Premiere, linear tape to tape systems and even Media 100 (that was a LONG time ago) but have always felt that Avid was the cream of the crop. In 2002 I got an internship with NAB in Vegas and was reading a review of Avid Xpress 3.0 and Final Cut Pro 3 and remembered this line – “While I would be more than happy taking Final Cut Pro on a date, I would marry Avid.”
Having said that, Avid has a lot of things they could improve on, and I only say this because one big thing Avid has been doing well is listening to their user base, so hopefully my concerns won’t fall on deaf ears.
Avid has a Pan and Zoom tool that allows the user to point to a still image to do flat art moves. It is better than importing the image and using the 3D Warp tool by keeping the same resolution of the original image. The tool has a couple problems though. First, you have to render any filter than gives you optimized results (I exclusively use the Gaussian filter by the way.) Second, there are no rotate handles so all the moves happen on the same plane. If Avid could incorporate still files (.jps, .tiffs, .pngs, etc.) through a link method like AMA and the files would come in at the same resolution of the original image (like how After Effects works), this feature I think would be met with great adulation from the user community. You can watch a quick overview of this tool work here, and as you can see it is useful, but clumsy and outdated.
Avid has two ways of creating titles, the original Title Tool or Avid’s proprietary title software Marquee. One great thing about Marquee is that it saves each title as a .mpq file and you can open them without having to go through the timeline. After that, I don’t really have many good things to say about Marquee. It is an outdated software that needs to be revamped or retired.
A few weeks ago I spent some time with Adobe Premiere. It was a simple job where I was trimming clips from AJA Ki Pro decks and posting to YouTube. If you have edited anytime over the last decade you know that you have be part compression tech. For a while now Avid has shipped with Sorenson Squeeze compression software, and having been a full time compression tech I can tell you Sorenson is a great tool. What I discovered when working with Adobe Premiere is the functionality of Adobe’s Dynamic Link. With this feature I was able to open up my Premiere sequences directly through Adobe Media Encoder and make my files for YouTube. It was fast, efficient, and an eye opener to how it can be done. My appeal to Avid is, if you have a working relationship with Sorenson, is there a way to make this kind of link between the two programs? Having the ability to open Avid sequences in Sorenson would be, well, awesome.
For now I am going to keep it at that, I know sometimes it is hard to hear constructive criticism, but it is also sometimes necessary. I also write the above letter based on version 5.5 of Avid Symphony and Media Composer, and I know Avid has made some great strides in Version 6.0.
Hi Barry……..
I am sure at one point we connected during our careers in this biz. I managed the support group for Media 100 for a long time but took a lot of calls myself so i am sure our paths crossed. Now that I am with Avid as the customer advocate, this is right up my alley.
Couple things….
1. Titling……. yes marquee hasnt been tweaked much over the years but most customers use Avid FX (AKA Boris RED) for all 2D and 3D composites, titles, animation, and effects. Much more powerful and is a free addition to your MC license.
2. Sorenson – I am going to pass this along to the Product Management team for consideration.
3. AMA continues to evolve and has been updated 2 times already and I expect this to continue. I am going to pass along your comments to the designers.
I think you “tweeted” that you would be attending the MC 6 event in Boston. Ping me on email if that it the case and I can then connect you up with one of the Product guys who attends so you can discuss your feedback in depth.
Thanks for the note……. good feedback is always welcome.
Marianna
marianna.montague@avid.com
Thank you SO much for responding Marianna!
I haven’t drilled down too much in Avid FX, but I guess my question would be then, if that is the workflow, where does Marquee fit in?
The Sorenson Squeeze link would be great, in fact, I have talked to a number of editors and they all said the same thing “man, that would be great.” Although I know that just asking for software development is much easier said than done 🙂
AMA has definitely come a long way, and each update is better than the last. I still say it has to be the leader in file based editing and acquisition. But for stills, I am not sure if AMA is or is not the answer, but was using it as more of a “what if” it worked that way.
I will definitely be at the Avid event on Thursday and look forward to talking with you guys then. Bob Russo has been my go to guy the last couple of events and has been an outstanding point of contact as well as Samantha Selig.
Oh, and for all you out there make sure you register for the event here and join us!
http://www.cvent.com/events/media-composer-6-live-event-boston/event-summary-cb836d16e0a641bf8e03ecdb4ad60ba0.aspx
Barry Clegg
The pan and zoom thing is definitely a frustration I share, although after years it’s something I’ve learned to live with. At various times I’ve used BCC’s Pan and Zoom and Avid FX to achieve more than the Avid plugin could manage.
AMA is fantastic and a great compromise between Avid’s rock-solid media management and the need to have direct linking to native media.
While I have no idea what is coming from Avid in future releases I am very optimistic as I believe the rewrite for version 6.0 has allowed the developers to plan a little more for the future. Obviously the idea of larger-than-frame support is a biggie (for stills and >HD formats like R3D) so I’m hopeful that the foundations for that have been laid and will come to fruition in the near future.
The Dynamic Linking in Adobe’s suite is hard to match, but it is possible to get close. A Quicktime Reference file can usually be used with Sorenson or Media Encoder. Also DNxHD MXF and AAF support is becoming more common so it’s now possible to export a linked AAF from Media Composer and open it directly in DaVinci Resolve for example. The native media files are accessed and new MXF media created, an AAF then goes back to Avid and all effects are reapplied to the graded clips – it’s a more robust workflow than Apple managed between FCP and Color.
I think the difficulty with similar linking into something like Sorenson is that it would need to be able to understand and render all the plugins and effects that Media Composer would support. A QT Reference will render necessary new media, but if we were to export an AAF or something from Avid to use in Sorenson that wouldn’t be the case. In Adobe’s case they can have a common video rendering library that all their software can access, allowing Media Encoder to be able to totally understand and render a Premiere Sequence.
However I think the future for all these products is promising.. And the speed of development is incredibly encouraging (from Avid, Adobe, BlackMagic and others – stuff is happening fast).
My goal over the next couple weeks is to kick tires on the whole Avid FX thing, for me I have always just leaned on After Effects, more so because in the collaborative environment I am currently in that is the defacto program for both editors and animators. Keeps us off any island, but I am going to see how it can work into our system.
The QuickTime reference is obviously a good workflow, and I use it regularly, but it just seems like an unnecessary step. Your point about how Adobe shares their media in a different and more proprietary way is a good one, but I would hope that maybe a software development where you have a rendered Avid sequence equals a sequence that Sorenson can see. But again, not being a developer and code writer I understand how that could be more easily said than done.
For years I have been using AAF exports for Pro Tools mixes, and OMF exports before that. In all that time I can’t say I have had any complaints. To hear that workflow working in a DaVinci Resolve environment is very promising.
It has been to see this post meet with such positive conversation. It can be easy to just start listing off features we don’t like or would like to see, but I think we can all agree it can more constructive to have a meaningful conversation about how we work and what can make that work easier, faster and better. Today Avid contacted me directly through Twitter, email and Marianna’s comment below. If there is any feature in Avid that can be described as rock solid, is their willingness to listen to their users, and that is the type of boat I want to tie my line to.
Hoping to talk to some of the Avid folks this Thursday in Boston. You probably won’t be able to make it from New Zealand, but either way I will report back any info I get.
For those of you who would like to see it in person, you can register here:
http://www.cvent.com/events/media-composer-6-live-event-boston/event-summary-cb836d16e0a641bf8e03ecdb4ad60ba0.aspx
Barry,
Definately give FX a run through. There are some good custoemr based tutorials that Douglas Bruce created here http://community.avid.com/forums/t/71781.aspx
Also there is a new forum called Media Composer Getting Started Fast http://www.avid.com/mcgetstarted which was created for those new to MC or those migrating from other app’s. Within this forum is a subforum called Complete Your Suite which is monitored by many of our 3rd party partners so a good place to post if you have questions on Avid FX.
Make sure that you use Avid FX 6.0.3 which is the latest version. If you dont have that you can obtain it on the download center and your serial # that came with the MC 6 will activate it.
As far as I know, Rob is going Thursday to the event. Samanatha ( AKA Sam ) won’t be attending as she has classes. I am waiting to hear back from Product management as I would like you to connect with one of them if they are going. If not, I can certainly connect you via email/phone.
Thanks
Marianna