IBC 2012: Avid improves Media Composer, Symphony & NewsCutter
September 7, 2012

IBC 2012: Avid improves Media Composer, Symphony & NewsCutter

AMSTERDAM — Avid is at this year’s IBC with the latest releases of its video editing tools — Media Composer 6.5, Symphony 6.5, and NewsCutter 10.5. The new releases are the first to work in conjunction with Avid Interplay Sphere to support universal connectivity and collaborative production. 

The new Avid Media Authoring feature allows facilities that handle a variety of input formats and deliver multiple output formats to master and archive projects more efficiently. This new component of Avid Media Access (AMA) offers support for AS-02, a standard developed by the Advanced Media Workflow Association that helps post facilities simplify efficient media management for versioning of programs and streamline delivery to a variety of platforms and devices. 

Native support of the JPEG 2000 codec allows editors to package sequences for easy versioning and archiving, as well as scale sequences to meet the needs of multiple generational content passes, without media degradation. The Media Composer 6.5 family of products also supports Active Format Description (AFD) to enable one consistent viewer experience — regardless of down-conversion or reformatting.

With the new I/O Hardware Release control in Media Composer, Symphony and NewsCutter, customers using third-party hardware through Avid Open I/O can further customize their workflows. Editors can now activate and deactivate hardware to pass control back and forth between Media Composer and third-party applications, such as Adobe After Effects or Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve. In addition, editors can now access software-only mode features, such as full-screen playback, directly in Media Composer without disconnecting.

The NLEs have received audio enhancements as well. The addition of advanced audio keyframing accelerates the automation process within and among audio tracks. And with support for 64 audio voices, video editors gain more power to work with multiple stem mixes and play them all back simultaneously.

In addition, advanced relink support gives editors flexibility to interact with media from third-party applications, such as DaVinci Resolve. They can now dynamically reconnect clips to new or the original media using a wide variety of common metadata fields.

Pricing is as follows: Media Composer 6.5 starts at $2,499 (upgrades start at $499), NewsCutter 10.5 starts at $2,499 (upgrades start at $499), and Symphony 6.5 starts at $5,999 (upgrades start at $499).