Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/13405
SPECIAL REPORT Has Avid caught up to FCP with MC5? I t was only a few years ago that Avid, trying to win back the hearts and minds of cus- tomers who were abandoning them and going to Final Cut and other systems, adopted the motto:“We’re Listening.”With the release of Media Composer 5, it’s obvi- ous they did. One of the most anticipated releases in By JONATHAN MOSER Owner/Operator Flashcut Productions New York flashcutter@yahoo.com @yahoo.com This new release could be a game-changer. years,Avid’s re-realized Media Composer 5 is among the most robust, feature-laden and dynamic packages from the company in over a decade. It’s taken that long (some say even longer) for Avid to step up to the plate against Final Cut Pro. While many can say FCP’s had all along what MC5 is just now introducing, truth be told, in most cases Avid went several steps further — historically changing its almost two-decades-old modal editing model with- out throwing the baby out with the bathwa- ter, adding some abilities that FCP, in its cur- rent iteration, doesn’t have. Additionally, by opening up to inexpen- sive third-party hardware,Avid’s removed a major hurdle to wider acceptance. Most im- portantly though,Avid has put its software where its mouth is and changed its business paradigm and overall corporate philosophy. The ultimate question is: “Will it will be enough to reclaim lost users and territory?” As this is being written, MC5 had just hit the streets. (Avid reports 500 downloads from their site the first day). Reviews are out; judgments are being made. This isn’t your typical review about the release, but also about the company behind it:Avid, who only a few years ago had been written off as a bureaucratic and technological dinosaur — expensive and unable to adopt to chang- ing times and new paradigms.That was then, and this is a very different now. With the monster release of 5.0,Avid just Videoguys.com’s Gary Bettan: “Avid is back in a big way, and people don’t have to drop their Final Cut; the two can work side-by-side.” may have rebuked the critics, reinventing and renovating itself and its flagship pro- gram, and, according to many, redrawn and leveled the playing field. It did so against the odds and against one of the most commer- cially-savvy and powerful companies in the world — Apple. MC5 marks historical departures for Avid as a company and its perception in the mar- ketplace. For the first time, Avid has truly opened up Media Composer to the outside world...in many ways: both in hardware and software, MC5 allows tremendous flexibility in how it is used. 18 Post • July 2010 While not all is rosy, MC5’s feature set and newer, more open architecture; modified user interface; QuickTime, Red and other AMA implementations; inexpensive HD monitor- ing; and myriad other major and minor en- hancements has created a buzz...and not just among Media Composer users, but die-hard FCP users as well — users who Avid has bent over backwards to accommodate after years of denying their existence. In fact, some blog talk is placing Apple in the same place Avid was years ago — not responsive or innov- ative enough to its users. Part of this was due to Apple’s weak re- tooling of Final Cut Studio 7.0 last year, many considering it a minor upgrade. Within this same time span, Media Composer 5: there were 500 downloads of the software on its first day of availability. RED AND QUICKTIME AMA Recently, a demo allowed me to see Media Composer 5 strut its stuff, playing multiple codecs and native Red playback through AMA without transcoding. On one timeline were QuickTime H.264, P2, Red, XDCAM HD and DNxHD media, all brought in natively through AMA and playing back flawlessly. Red files played back in scaled-down HD with no transcoding. AMA (Avid Media Architecture) is what sets Media Composer’s last three version releases (with AMA, mix and match- ing multiple frame rates and resolutions on the timeline, and other major enhance- ments) have Final Cut is showing its age. When we contacted Apple for a comment about Final Cut 8, they would only point us to a quote from spokesman Bill Evans on CNET saying,“The next version of Final Cut is going to be awesome, and our pro cus- tomers are going to love it.” OPENING UP In hardware, Avid, long known for its closed architecture and expensive hard- ware, has opened up by enabling the use of the Matrox MX02 Mini, a low-cost HD monitoring solution. (See my Matrox Re- view in this issue.) With users and facilities now having the flexibility of going the Ma- trox route rather than the pricey Mojo DX, one of the biggest complaints about Media Composer — cost — has been vanquished. Avid has indicated this is only the beginning of its new thinking about hardware openness. However, the software is where MC5 may re- ally outshine its nearest competitor. www.postmagazine.com Media Composer free and democratizes formats, literally making transcoding a thing of the past, and playing virtually any QT codec back natively. Media Composer 5’s AMA implementa- tion is proving to be more robust and dy- namic than anyone imagined, with Avid ag- gressively jumping on new codecs that are just now in development. But even with this, Avid still maintains much of its strong media- management methodology. It indexes and creates unique identifiers for linked files al- lowing them to be moved around easily. According to Gary Bettan of retailer Videoguys.com, a whole new market is looking eagerly at AMA’s ability to playback Canon XF and other files.“There were mil- lions of new DSLRs sold last year, and own- ers are looking at MC5 as the platform to edit their films,” says Bettan,“Media Com- poser 5 handles the files transparently.Avid is back in a big way, and people don’t have to drop their Final Cut; the two can work side-by-side.”