LAS VEGAS – Avid (www.avid.com) made two notable announcements at the NAB show in Las Vegas this week. The company introduced Avid Interplay, a nonlinear workflow engine for managing assets, as well as debuted a Media Composer product facility with workflow intelligence features.
Avid Interplay is the result of the company’s significant effort to solve complex tasks. The solution fuses integrated asset management, workflow automation and security control into a single system. While Interplay is focused on the Avid production environment, it can also manage 100 other media and non-media file types. The management solution is embedded within the system, so editors don’t have to leave their creative environment.
The core Interplay system is a client-server engine that works with any member of the Avid Unity MediaNetwork family of shared-storage solutions to form the backbone of an interoperable media production environment. The engine arms individual contributors, project teams, and functional departments with a portfolio of low-cost, user-friendly software tools that automate routine production tasks, track revisions and streamline administrative activities.
Interplay monitors the status of components and can be configured with Transcode, a service for creating various resolutions or proxies. Because all of the Avid Interplay tools can work with any resolution, and projects maintain links to any file variations, the process of switching between resolutions is easy.
The company says a base system can be configured for facility with a number of Avid NLEs and a Unity system already in place for around $18K, and that includes the Interplay server, which consists of a PC running software on the network, and five licenses.
The new family of Media Composers feature workflow intelligence. Media Composer 2.5 with Interplay offers a live window into the asset management system of Interplay. Users can see all Avid media and can track media as it evolves throughout the facility.
The company is offering a software-only version of Media Composer for desktops and laptops with a full set of HD creative tools for both PC and Mac users. The release is optimized for multicore systems and lacks only the I/O and acceleration found in dedicated Media Composer systems. Avid reps say they see the software-only release as a great way for studios to build out their distributed workflow.
Additional Avid announcements include a new member of DNA family – Avid Mojo SDI – which the company sees as the big brother to the original Mojo. The system offers a portable serial digital interface I/O device, a compact form factor, FireWire connectivity, and can be added to the software only Media Composer or Avid’s Xpress Pro editing tool.
At the high-end, Avid’s Media Composer Adrenaline with Avid DNxcel now lets both Mac and PC users encode video to 10-bit or 8-bit Avid DNxHD.
Pricing for the software-only Media Composer is $4,995. The Mojo SDI is $2,495, and Adrenaline with the DNxcel board is $22,995.