Avid Execs At Editors Lounge: MC5 is a game changer

Studio Daily by Debra Kaufman

Avid execs Gary Greenfield, CEO, and Kirk Arnold, COO, attended Editors Lounge at AlphaDogs Editorial in Burbank to engage editors in discussion about Avid products and what the company needs to do to keep meeting their needs and expectations.

The monthly Editors Lounge, founded by AlphaDogs owner, editor Terence Curren, drew an overflow audience of 200 people to this event. It was also an opportunity for those who had not been able to attend NAB 2010 to see a demonstration of Avid Media Composer 5, as well as web-based editing.

Avid senior product designer Doug Hansel, who was on the design teams for Adrenaline and Mojo, showed beta version 3 of MC5, running on his laptop. “There’s no hard drive hiding any more,” he said. “We could be running a Matrox box–one new option announced at NAB—to get HDMI out. That’s a cool option.” Hansel went over the features of Avid Media Access (AMA) and its ability to directly access file-based media. To attendees, one of the most exciting new characteristics of AMA is that other companies can write plug-ins to support their media. “Here’s where it gets interesting,” said Hansel, who showed access to 4K RED files among other types of files. “Instant access to ProRes media. If the Quicktime player can play it, we can play it. Canon has a new media format called SX – we had support for it the day it was announced–and it hasn’t even shipped yet.” read more...