Why you should consider Avid Media Composer 7

Production Apprentice by John DeMaio

I’d like to start off this review by saying that I haven’t used Avid as much lately as I have in the past. This is not by choice, but by demand from many of my clients. I live and work out of Orlando, Florida – not exactly the hotbed of TV and Film production. However, I do own a copy of Media Composer 6 and I was given a review copy of Media Composer 7 for the purpose of this article. I’m not here to promote anything. In fact, I’m not currently happy with any edit system that’s out there. They all fall short in some major way, in my opinion. Even worse…I now have to know (and be proficient) with three different systems, because there is no “best” solution. As an editor of 17 years, this is what drives me crazy. I just want to be creative and edit…I’m tired of functionality getting in my way.

This post is going to point out why Avid Media Composer 7 has some advantages over its competition. YOU must decide which system is right for you. Hopefully, this article will shed some light on your decision.
Avid stands the test of time

If you asked me which system to use two years ago I would have had a hard time saying Avid is better than Final Cut Pro 7 or vice versa. We all got sucked into the FCP world and version 7 was as rock-solid as they come. I’m not going to lie either, FCP 7 is my favorite platform to date.

Unfortunately, FCP 7 died for me when I had to upgrade to OS X Lion. Of course, I had to update to Lion to accomodate Premiere Pro (which became the NLE of choice for one of my clients) so now I’m stuck. I can’t have FCP 7 projects open for longer than a few minutes without hang-ups or a program crash. So where do we go? FCP X? It doesn’t even include color bars and tone – a basic necessity to deliver to networks. Adobe Premiere is much closer, however it has a few growing pains that cause me stress, specifically audio playback. So what’s left? The answer could be Avid Media Composer 7.
Right out of the “box” (or fresh out of my downloads folder) Media Composer 7 is up and running within a few minutes. I guess I can say the same is true for some of the other systems out there, but for those of us who dabbled in Avid Xpress DV on a PC years ago – this experience is much more pleasurable. rea

MC7 works just fine on my older 2008 Mac Pro, too. In fact, it works so well on my older computer, I was slightly amazed – considering the heavy lifting that this thing can do. I would have thought that it would be a burden on my system but I found that I was able to have Media Composer open and still work with Photoshop and Google Earth Pro (which in itself is a system hog) simultaneously. read me...

Check out these items featured in this post and available to BUY NOW at Videoguys.com.
	Avid Media Composer 7 $988.00			Avid Media Composer 7 Student Version with 4 years FREE Upgrades $288.00			$388.00