NAB 2010: Avid 5.0

Little Frog in High Def by Shane Ross

Avid just isn’t slowing down. I advised them that they just needed to slow down. But did they listen? Nope. Why slow down? Because just as soon as you get used to one version, another version comes along and has tons more features that you want. And when you JUST CONVINCE a company to upgrade to one version of Media Composer, you might be hard pressed to get them to do it again. Many large facilities don’t upgrade often, so when Avid keeps hitting us with new release after new release, we might not be able to benefit from those as many companies won’t upgrade because they just did. But us independents? We like upgrading, when the new features call for it.

And boy, will the new features of Avid Media Composer 5.0 call for it.

First let me mention hardware. And no, this hardware isn’t something Avid makes. They are now opening up to third party vendors…specifically Matrox. Avid Media Composer 5.0 now works with the Matrox MXO2 Mini. But not for capture, but for monitoring on a large monitor. This is so you can save money on multiple systems. You can have the one or two bays that you use to capture/output, and the rest…say the other 8 – 30 bays… can utilize the MXO2 mini to throw that image on the nice big client monitor. Before, if you wanted this, you’d have to equip each bay with Nitris DX or Mojo DX boxes, and that can be VERY expensive. Especially if you don’t utilize those machines as capture machines. There are many places that have Mojos just for monitoring, and that is a tad much. Add the MXO2 mini for roughly $450 and BAM! There’s your inexpensive monitoring. read more...