1/20/2012
1/10/2012
TECH TALK: MEDIACOMPOSER 6.0 - A quick review
Mediacomposer 6.0 - A Quick Review
It's the first week of the year and my first job with the new Avid Mediacomposer 6.0
There are a bunch of new great additions to this software, but as for every .0 version there are a bunch of bugs as well. I love working with Mediacomposer and I prefer it over Final Cut Pro. This is just a quick review and my own opinions that I could experience in working with it thoroughly for the last four days.
The biggest change with this new version is definitely the new open hardware option. From now on you're not limited to the Avid hardware but you can use Blackmagic cards for instance (which have a pretty nice pricetag by the way).
Another change is the GUI. I'm not too fond of the buttons, but the feature to tab a bunch of bins into one window is pretty nice.
But I guess the new features are pretty much known more or less. So let's get to the bugs, that I found so far (DISCLAIMER: My findings after four intensive days are just my personal opinions and my experiences for now.)
Audio scrubbing:
Major flaw in my opinion. You can use audio scrubbing in the timeline or in the source window with video files that include audio. But if you load an audiofile into the source window, you'll not be able to use audio scrubbing. Looking around several forums this seems to be hardware related. Though I could not verify this yet.
AMA:
In a fast workflow AMA is (in theory) pretty nice. BUT I was and probably never will be a fan of AMA editing. The main reason probably is that many people aren't organised enough. This is the same problem in FCP as well: After finishing a project or even worse during a project, people might change file or folder names, move things around or delete something. This will render your clips offline of course and renamed files will make it quite hard to relink properly. Relinking does not work well either sometimes even if the names are correct. We needed to move the project to another workstation. The drivename and folderstructures stayed the same, nevertheless relinking did only work with the masterfiles. The subclips were messed up.
If you physically load something from tape or import/transcode files to the MediaFolder, the original source files wont be changed and it will be easier to go back to.
In addition to that I do believe the system is "snappier" when using transcoded Avid DNxHd or other Avid codes (inside the MediaFiles folder). Everytime I edit AMA files there seems to be a half second lag when pushing play or stop.
Exporting:
For some reason I had difficulties exporting Quicktimes, AAF files and EDLs. I have no Idea what the problem was. It just said "Serious Problem. Restart." I believe it was due to the AMA problem.
Enter & Return:
The Enter and the return button do the same thing. In the "old" Mediacomposer versions you were able to push enter when naming files or for clicking ok in the locators window. This is not possible. Instead you jump to the next clip after naming a clip (just like using return). This is probably not a big deal for everyone, but I edit 90% with the keyboard and now I have to rely on the mouse a little more. Moreover the up and down cursors don't move the cursor to the beginning or end whilst in typing mode. (In the Avid Forum this is claimed to be a known bug as well)
Font:
The font in the timeline seems to be messed up. They are too big, so they look distorted. This might be a setting that I just can't seem to find.
F1-Key:
The F1 key: I was working on a mac workstation. The keyboard settings allowed me to apply any setting to that key. Nevertheless pushing F1 brings me to the help menu.
Keyboard:
The keyboard is set to american keyboard. It does not adjust to different language settings of the system.
During this weekend I had just one major crash due to an audio problem. I believe that this is (just like the audio scrubbing) a hardware related problem. And overall most of these bugs are minor and I can work around them. Every software has some bugs, and Mediacomposer is not perfect. None the less it is a great tool, it gets the job done and I love working with it.
Comment or more Info? Click me.
