New Avid Media Composer update

 

 

 

 

 

A new update (6.5.2) for the Avid Media Composer family of products, which includes Media Composer, Symphony and NewsCutter software, has been available for a few days now.

When version 6.5 was released, one of the issues that users liked the least was the price of the upgrade ($500 to upgrade from 6.0). Most didn’t think the changes included were enough to make it worth the money. Now, through the forums, it seems that quite a large number of users will opt to upgrade to version 6.5 because of these latest changes.

Some of the new features in version 6.5.2 (10.5.2 in the case of NewsCutter) are intended to offer editors a greater number of possibilities, so that the tool does not limit the user at any time, even when it comes to alternative ways of working.

New functions and features

Probably one of the most significant (and useful) changes is in the possibilities of the Segment mode. When using selection tools such as “Select Left“, “Select Right” or “Select from In to Out” it is no longer mandatory to select the gaps in the timeline. This is optional, and can be very good in situations where we want to move the media, but not move these “gaps”, which can overwrite some of our material.

The next new feature is one that we may not use too much, but it never hurts to have another option. This is the new setting “Activate Record Monitor After Edit“, located in the Composer settings. It allows you to activate the Record monitor after an edit, or a Splice/Overwrite, so that our attention would be focused on this monitor and not on the Source.

Normally, if we are editing from the Source monitor, when we move clips to the timeline the focus remains on the timeline, so that we can continue playing the clips where we left off and keep marking In and Out points. However, there may be times when we want to add or change something in the timeline, the attention goes to the Record monitor, and if I press play what is in the timeline is played automatically. With this setting we can select our preferences.

Improvements have also been included for audio work with keyframes. Now, you can use In and Out points to select several keyframes at once, allowing you to modify them together. This feature will make things much easier for those who have to make somewhat complex audio arrangements within the editing system.

And finally, the export of sequences of files (sequences of frames). In this version they have included some very useful settings for this type of workflows.

With the 6.5.2 update there are different ways to export sequences of files: exporting the whole sequence, a part of it, or specific frames that are marked. When we select this type of export, a setting “Markers Only” appears underneath, which allows us to export only those images that contain markers. In addition, within the markers we have two other options:

– Topmost Image: in case there are multiple tracks and the marker is on a clip of a lower track, the clip of the upper track is preferably used.
– Use Comments: if a comment was added when making the marker, it will be used as the file name in the export.

At the moment we don’t know exactly how they will work, but it seems that something has changed in the workflow with Quicktime ProRes. This format has become a native codec since version 6, to improve performance and ability to consolidate files. As a result, the “Set Source” settings are not available with this file type.

It is believed that the way to work with them will be to link .mov files in ProRes through AMA and then consolidate them into a properly managed media such as Avid MXF ProRes. So far the best workflow is the one we tell you about in this tutorial

The 6.5.2 update is completely free for those users who already have a 6.5 license. It can be downloaded from the Downoad Center on the Avid website, and can be found in the Avid Product – Avid Editor Patch folders. If you don’t have 6.5 yet, you can get it here.

I also leave you the link to the ReadMe, with specifications about all the changes that have been made in version 6.5.2.