Avid Dramatically Improves Workflow Speed and Openness with Media Composer 6.5 Family of Products

New features streamline project mastering and archiving, and advance editing efficiency

Avid® today announced the latest release of its industry-leading video editing tools, Media Composer® 6.5, Symphony® 6.5, and NewsCutter® 10.5, providing fast, open workflows that greatly advance editing efficiency. The new releases of Media Composer and NewsCutter are also the first work in conjunction with Avid Interplay® Sphere to support universal connectivity and collaborative production, giving contributors the freedom to work in a distributed environment that spans multiple locations and time zones. With support for new standards that help streamline media mastering and archiving, plus new audio features and relink capabilities, these latest releases enable customers to further enhance their creativity and productivity.

“We’re pleased to unveil new capabilities in Avid Media Composer that provide customers with the innovation and flexibility they need to achieve their creative vision,” said Chris Gahagan, senior vice president of products at Avid. “Our customers have told us that they are looking to eliminate bottlenecks and open up new workflows. The latest updates to the Media Composer family of products help them to do just that.”

What’s new in the Media Composer Family

Media Composer 6.5, Symphony 6.5, and NewsCutter 10.5 offer key enhancements that enable customers to speed up their workflow efficiency:

Avid Media Authoring — Customers in facilities who handle a variety of input formats and deliver multiple output formats can now master and archive projects more efficiently with Avid Media Authoring. 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-production facilities simplify efficient media management for versioning of programs and streamline delivery to a variety of platforms and devices. And with the addition of natively supporting the JPEG 2000 codec, customers can 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.

I/O Hardware Release — With the 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 simply 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.

Audio enhancements — The industry leading audio tools in Media Composer, Symphony and NewsCutter take a leap forward with significant new enhancements. 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.

Advanced relink support — Editors gain more flexibility to interact with media from third-party applications, such as DaVinci Resolve, through expanded relink support, enabling them to dynamically reconnect clips to new or the original media using a wide variety of common metadata fields.

What customers are saying

“Working together with Avid, we’re pleased to see innovation and support for JPEG 2000 and AS-02 in Media Composer,” said Chris Dee, VP of production engineering at HBO. “It will allow HBO—and our partners—to edit and track multiple versions and languages for audio and video project deliverables worldwide.”

“At HBO we’re leading the way in leveraging JPEG 2000 as our mezzanine file standard and AMWA AS-02 to enable content delivery and interchange for HBO and for our partners,” said Elmer G. Musser, SVP of engineering at HBO. “Finished sequences from Media Composer will be represented in a structure where derivative processing for both on-air and IP platforms can be created with efficiency and a high degree of quality.”

Pricing and Availability

Media Composer 6.5, Symphony 6.5, and NewsCutter 10.5 are available now. Pricing is as follows:

• Media Composer 6.5 starts at $2,499 USD
• Media Composer 6.5 upgrades start at $499 USD
• NewsCutter 10.5 starts at $2,499 USD
• NewsCutter 10.5 upgrades start at $499 USD
• Symphony 6.5 starts at $5,999 USD
• Symphony 6.5 upgrades start at $499 USD