Avid’s New Thinking and the DX Hardware

Digitalfilms by by Oliver Peters
Right on schedule, Avid rolled out its new DX product line in June. This was previewed at customer events before and during NAB as the tangible part of the company’s “New Thinking” campaign. It is typified by new hardware, lower prices and a simplification of the core editing product line, including the end-of-life for most of its DNA (digital nonlinear accelerator) products, launched in 2003. With DX, Avid has abandoned the use of the FireWire bus and older PCI-X slots for the much wider data path offered by the PCI Express (PCIe) computing architecture favored by Apple and HP. The new editing family now consists of the Media Composer software, two hardware/software bundles (Mojo DX and Nitris DX) and the turnkey Symphony Nitris DX system.

Avid Media Composer 3.0 hit the street at a price of under $2500 – literally half off of the previous MSRP. As a software product, it begs direct comparison to the suites offered by Adobe and Apple. read more...