Adobe | Avid | Blackmagic Design - NAB 2019

Loads of stuff came out of NAB 2019 this year in terms of video editing software. Arguably the most enticing one was the Avid Media Composer's 2019 interface (which I am eagerly awaiting its release in May).

But they weren't the only ones. Adobe Premiere saw a nice redesign, so did Resolve, even Vegas 2016 (which I love Vegas 2016). We're seeing great an innovative new leaps in AI technology while also taking some strain off of your precious GPU.

Avid

A better user experience is what Avid was striving for. They've removed much of the unnecessary clutter of previous version of Media Composer.

Having the task-based workspaces and being able to rearrange your layout quickly based on what part of production you’re in, for audio mixing versus editing and effects versus grading and coloring.

Rob D’Amico - Director of Product Marketing for Audio & Video Solutions

The introduction of Bin Maps will help organize your work space extensively. You can reorganize and place it where you want without it affecting the rest of your UI!

Then there is the 32bit color pipeline.

You can have confidence round-tripping with other applications that your color won’t get clipped or your file support is adhered to.

Rob D’Amico

But for those wondering if they should switch over, or update, or if Media Composer 2019 is the end all be all, Rob D’Amico says that this will continue to be worked on throughout the year. The needs of the customer is what Avid is focusing on the most, taking notes, studying, looking at user reviews and analytics. They want to be modern with their editing software, which requires them to adapt, learn, and make necessary changes. I'm glad to say that they have listened, and Media Composer 2019 is certainly a fantastic step in the right direction.

People have been using Avid since the program was first introduced. Like me, they might not like this new change. So Avid has now decided to listen to them and take their feedback to help advance media Composer into the future.

Adobe

This year the Content Aware Fill was announced, and it was certainly the most exciting thing from their panel.

Using an AI, Content Aware Fill allows you to take out a pesky boom that got into a shot, or crew in the background, or even a car moving down the road and doing so frame by frame using what you designated to be removed. It replaces the pixels with whats around it creating a smooth effect.

Somebody made a video just yesterday using Friends footage from the TV show where, in four and a half minutes, they took complete characters out of the scene. That can take days, right? Just days of going frame by frame by frame and trying to do a mask track and it’s hard to do. So that’s why we’re getting such a positive response with that feature.

Steve Forde - General Manager, Emerging Products, Digital Video and Audio

Rendering and processing in After Effects has also been a priority. Making them quicker to produce is something all editors want. So expect to see some great improvements here in the near future.

To switch gears, Black Magic announced a predictive clip trimming AI. Steve Forde had this to say.

Content Aware Fill, again, is really hard to do. You can do it, you could do it before we shipped this feature, but it was so time consuming. It’s not that you couldn’t get to a great result before, but it’s where we’re focusing using a AI and machine learning algorithms to really try to take that tediousness away. And I think that’s the moral of the story for any machine learning and AI technology.

Steve Forde

Black Magic Design

Black Magic Design has never built something from the ground up. What they're good at is looking at what other companies or editing software contain, then trying it themselves to perfect it. And let's be honest... they've been pretty good at it.

They've introduced a new Cut Page to do things like multi point editing. An AI is basically taking edits you have done before and making a best guess as to what you'd do in the future.

So that whether I’ve been on a big shoot all day and I’m just getting on the train and I want to do a quick edit on the train ride home. Or whether I’m some thirteen year old kid that did a bunch of streaming stuff and I want to cut it up really quickly. How can we make that useful to everybody? But also not forcing it on them, saying you have to do it this particular way.

Dan May - President of Blackmagic Design

Source Tape allows us to now see the whole timeline from beginning to end. What a useful tool. Whenever I finish an edit, something like this will help me out tremendously. Seeing the timeline in full can let me see any gaps in the audio, missing clips, missing text, even effects as a whole. We're never perfect, and this will eliminate some of the natural hassles of editors.

One of the big concerns we have about that is some of these labels. What does it actually mean that you’re a new person? Or that you’re an experienced person?

Let’s say you’re a student film maker, well we don’t want to make presumptions that you either don’t use certain functions or they don’t need certain functions. The other theory is if someone’s just starting out, they might be missing out on some of the incredible tool sets that are available to them.

Dan May

Read the full article HERE!

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