Tej Babra reviews Avid Media Composer 7

Tej's Tech Blog by Tej Babra

Well, this one has been a long time coming. I have actually been working on Avid Media Composer 7 since launch. It has become my main editing platform since then. Mainly because I have been happy with Avid Media Composer since the major changes in 5.0, but even more so, since most of the edit suites I work in are Avids anyways.

First, I would like to mention that many of my readers and colleagues have reported to me several issues with Avid Media Composer 7. Mostly, I have been able to trouble shoot, as they are related to workflows. However, there seems to be some crashing issues that have come up on MacPro towers 3.1; since many of these machines are quiet old, and are running either older OS or even older graphics cards. It has not been so easy to troubleshoot. Also, I am running Avid Media Composer 7 on the latest generation of Intel machines both PC and Mac. On my installs I was not able to recreate the crashes. This causes me to deduce that older machines are having issues running this latest version. However, it’s quiet difficult for Avid to trouble shoot these issues if they are not being reported. So I always ask “ did you report this to Avid’ and it seem most of them time I get a “No”. Please help the community by reporting in your issues, so Avid can come with a solution.

Avid Media Composer 7 Brings a slew of new features over the old version. Some of these include:

• Frame Flex Controls for Hi-Res 1080p workflows
• Background Transcoding and consolidating
• Edit, Sync and share media with Interplay Sphere
• Master the overall audio mix using RTAS plug-ins on an Master Audio Fader.
• Symphony for advanced color and effects is now available as an add on feature
• New lower pricing at $999

All this sounds fantastic especially since the lower price really makes it competitive with other NLE’s. But launching Avid Media Composer 7 and running it on my SSD PC , and MacBook Pro I was really amazed at the speed of the system. This SSD’s do contribute to this and the MacPro’s are aging. But it really makes older versions I have running seem slower in every aspect. (The oldest version that I currently edit on is 5.5 on a MacPro) read more...

Check out these items featured in this post and available to BUY NOW at Videoguys.com.
	Avid Media Composer 7 $999.00			Avid Media Composer 7 Upgrade from MC 6.5 $299.00			Avid Media Composer 7 Upgrade from MC6 or older $399.00