Link via Macworld
While not an earth-shattering upgrade, Avid Media Composer 3.0.5 is indeed a must-have if you or anyone in your facility work with the emerging HD formats popularized by card-based camera systems. Corporate, editorial, and prosumer users will love this upgrade’s functionality, especially if they’re working with JVC’s 720pHDV, Panasonic’s AVC-Intra codec, or Sony’s EX cameras. Media Composer 3 allows users the same interface and working options on location that they’ve had in their edit bays, simplifying the workflow by maintaining a single user interface in both the desktop and the laptop versions.
Avid Media Composer 3.5 is available at an education discount price of $295.
Link via Digital Arts
When Avid released version 3 of Media Composer in mid-2008, it clearly intended to head off competition from the likes of Apple Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium. A much keener price and a huge software bundle showed the company was not resting on its laurels anymore. So now we have the half-point update: it may not herald the huge policy change of version 3, but 3.5 still has some significant improvements over its predecessor.
Avid Media Composer 3.5 is available at an education discount price of $295.
Link via Broadcasting & Cable
Avid Technology has opened a new 137,000 square foot School of Cinematic Arts at University of Southern California. The state-of-the-art complex features over 260 Avid audio and video systems, the largest Avid workflows in any U.S. film school.
The new facility contains Pro Tools LE and HD systems as well as six ICON digital consoles that allows students hands-on mixing capabilities. For editing, there are more than 140 Media Composer systems including Media Composer software, Mojo DX, Nitris DX, and Symphony Nitris systems. The Avid Unity ISIS shared storage network allows students, faculty, and staff to access media across a range of applications from workstations all across the network.
“Avid is committed to serving students, educators, and institutions with competitively priced, world class solutions that allow them to unleash their creative talents at an early age and then go on to create some of tomorrow’s most watched and loved media,” said Kirk Arnold, GM and EVP of customer operations at Avid.
Avid Media Composer 3.5 is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Link via BostonHerald.com
Cambridge actor Ben Affleck credits Avid Technology for easing his directing turn in “Gimme Shelter,” a documentary on the humanitarian crisis in the Congo.
Affleck touts the Avid Media Composer software in a new podcast on the Tewksbury company’s Web site. It’s the latest installment of Avid’s “The Rough Cut” series of interviews with industry pros sharing their stories about working with its products.
The technology allowed Affleck to view and edit footage in a hotel room each night after shooting the film in November in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Avid Media Composer 3.5 is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Link via CNNMoney.com
Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that creative teams behind all of 2008’s most loved and most watched films worldwide used one or more Avid products in the production process of the film. According to Box Office Mojo, these films were at the top of the worldwide box office in 2008, with combined revenue of more than $6 billion.
Tasked with simultaneously delivering IMAX and conventional versions of the film, the post production team for “The Dark Knight” created a collaborative work environment with a solution comprised of Avid Media Composer editing systems running on an Avid Unity shared storage system. As a result, editors had shared access to more than three terabytes of media, including resources from the earlier Batman film, “Batman Begins,” to enhance the storytelling process. The film’s complex sound production, which included more than 1,000 audio tracks, was completed using six Pro Tools|HD® systems.
“The Dark Knight” Picture Editor Lee Smith, who was recently nominated for both an Academy Award® and A.C.E. Eddie Award for best editing, said, “We try to keep technology as bulletproof as possible. These films are so complicated. We need the equipment to just be humming along. With a story like this, we had access to some of the most brilliant performances and had to be assured that when we tried something creatively that we weren’t limited by the technology. Avid makes it easy for us to make the best cut possible, every time.”
Avid Media Composer 3.0 is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Link via Broadcasting & Cable
NBC will have more than 100 Sony cameras in Beijing, but the lion’s share of coverage will come from BOB, which is using some 60 mobile units and a mix of HD cameras, including Thomson LDK hard cameras and Panasonic P2 solid-state camcorders, to cover every sport in 1080-line-interlace HD at 50 hertz. NBC will mainly use its cameras to supplement BOB’s coverage of major sports such as track and field.
Avid is supplying a Unity ISIS shared storage system with some 224 terabytes of storage, Interplay work-flow-management software and 34 seats of Symphony Nitris and Media Composer nonlinear editing software. The Avid systems will connect to XT servers from EVS, which will be used by NBC to ingest live feeds (NBC has a total of 48 XT servers).
Avid has engineered a work flow that will allow the 100-mbps HD video from the EVS units to be seamlessly converted to Avid’s DNxHD mezzanine compression format (operating at 120 mbps for 50 Hz production, instead of the typical 145 mbps). This allows EVS’ IPDirector systems to transfer EVS clips directly to the Avids for editing and for finished Avid clips to be pushed to EVS for playback to air.
Avid Media Composer 3.0 is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Link via HDFilmtools.com
I start putting 3.0 through it’s paces and at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, it is ROCKING. No latency, no glitchiness, (my word, Colbert) picture quality is noticeably and substantially better and the playhead is slicing through multi-layer, real-time effects and title comps like “butta”. I’ve got reels with 20 audio tracks, 3-5 video tracks, I’m deleting, re-patching, copying and pasting, I make tons of cuts and changes and Media Composer doesn’t flinch once. I start getting a warm and fuzzy feeling and think, this is a beautiful thing. These guys have really done their homework.
Yes, Media Composer 3.0 is solid. Yes, it’s fast. Yes it works on Leopard which really gooses the (Mac) editor satisfaction meter (Mac heads rejoice!) but one feature I immediately found worth the price of the upgrade is the new real-time “Timecode Generator” effect. This feature gives you the ability to generate window burn with a variety of options. No more Horita boxes, no more rendering, this seemingly minor addition works perfectly, and will save editors and assistants countless hours and headaches when having to make outputs for collaborators on the post production team. 3.0 includes many other new enhancements and features but that’s beyond the scope of this “First Look”, and I will cover them in depth in future video segments.
It has taken the company some time but with it’s executive makeover, lower price structure and now the release of Media Composer 3.0, Avid seems to be regaining its footing. Filmmakers of every level will enjoy working with the application’s time and battle tested editing interface. The fact that it runs flawlessly on Apple’s latest operating system and hardware is the ice cream on top of the pie. From my first week of working with it, Media Composer 3.0 is a winner.
Avid Media Composer 3.0 is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Pinnacle Studio Video Editing Software Turns Gaming Sessions Into Video Masterpieces Ready To Be Shared
Pinnacle Systems, Inc., the consumer division of Avid Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID), reported today that Pinnacle Studio™ 11, its award-winning video editing software, is attracting customers from the booming game market. Coupled with video capture devices such as Pinnacle Video Transfer, Pinnacle Studio lets game enthusiasts have a fast, easy way to create and post videos that prove their record-breaking achievements and share their techniques for improved scores.
As Benoit Boudreau, who uses Pinnacle Studio to create and post videos of his record-breaking game scores on the Web explains, “Video is the most widely accepted method of proof. But I also use it to create how-to videos, showing my hand movements in slow-motion to help others learn how to improve their scores. High-quality videos tend to get more views than lower quality videos, so Studio is great for that.”
Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 is available at an academic discount price of $74.
Avid has changed their policy regarding sale of single copies of Media Composer. Previously this product was limited to purchase order only sales from schools. Now this product may be sold to all students and faculty.
Avid Media Composer is available at the academic price of $295 from Creation Engine.
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