Review: Avid Media Composer 7

Avid Media Composer 7 is bringing the heat to post production workflows and data management everywhere. Full disclosure: I am a huge Avid fan. I read the forums. I follow the Avid gurus on Twitter. I read all the #postchat’s, and I work with it daily, so I am very excited for this release of Media Composer.

One of the biggest drawbacks in Media Composer has been the inability to multi-task. Those days are gone with Media Composer 7. Background transcoding, consolidating, cached waveforms (worth the price of the upgrade alone), Dynamic Media Folders with new media management, and even selecting everything in a video track except the filler (Alt+Select Right/Left or Option+Select Right/Left) are here!

At home, I use an HP workstation that is a few years old, but is still hefty enough to test most equipment. I wasn’t sure that Media Composer 7 would install properly on my older system, but to my surprise, it did. Tip: Make sure that before installing, you deactivate and uninstall all previous versions of Media Composer, as that may cause some hiccups. And to really accelerate background services, I would maximize the amount of RAM in your system.