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.

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TECH TALK: Final Cut Pro X (Some other editor's thoughts)

I found an interesting blogpost about the upcoming FCPX. Check it out if you like. Link. (It might redirect you to your country's Gizmodo. Just change it to US and you'll find the post)

Here some keypoints, that I like to point out:

"…instead of fixing them, they just decided to change everything."

"This all seems well and good, except it's completely unimportant for professional editors who aren't finishing in Final Cut. Some of us color correct in a da Vinci with a professional colorist and then conform in a Flame. Steinauer's point proves the underlying key of FCPX: that it really isn't for professional editors."

"The biggest, most apparent change is the absence of the source monitor: it's the iMovie-ing of non-linear editing."

"Editing, for me, is still where the magic is. It's one thing to make changes for the sake of the people you claim are your clients and quite another to make changes for the sake of people who aren't. That's what these changes are, they are changes for the sake of making editing more accessible, not more functional."

Edit: Here is another interesting blogpost. Link.

"Apple is approaching other markets with FCP X, chiefly photographers. Adobe and Apple beat each-other up for these users, as the pro-sumer photography market is huge and growing by the day....Apple sees the future and it's got the software to lead these users into a new area where the lines clearly blur from editor, to photographer, to the two-guy shop speeding through web productions. "
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TECH TALK: Final Cut Pro X Preview (My thoughts)

Yesterday Final Cut Pro X was previewed. You can read about some of the facts in this post by Larry Jordan. I will not go into the facts, but I wanted to write down some of my thoughts and wonderings about this new upcoming release.

First and foremost I must say, that I started my career as a film editor with Final Cut Pro. It was easy to learn and quite fun to work with. A couple of years later I realized the flaws in Final Cut Pro. Moreover I started working with Avid (since that is mostly used in commercial film productions here in Germany).

By no means do I believe that Avid is flawless and perfect, but it feels more solid in my opinion. At least in the "classic" post-production workflow. I would say that FCP is like a swiss army knife that can do a lot of things, but Avid acts like a real tool. And I rather build a house with the proper tool than a swiss army knife.

The new Final Cut Pro X does look promising at first glance. I can understand that just reading about the new features, can make this new release pretty exciting. But I can't help but wonder if the mayor gripes that at least I do have with all the versions up to now are resolved.

I always hate FCP for the way it deals with render files. For instance: Why do I have to re-render a sequence just because I just switched the visibility of a video track on and off? I did not change anything, just find the old render files!

Another thing about the recent FCP is the gamma shift problem. Exporting files always ends with having slightly brighter files. I read that this has something to do with the way FCP handles RGB and 601 color spaces, although I'm not quite sure if that is the real reason.

File handling and moving files is also a little cumbersome in my opinion. If you move the files from one place to another (Backup reasons), sometimes during relink process I get error messages like "file X has different Timecodes. Can't relink!" I still don't have any clue why FCP does have such problems, but in Avid you just (because of the proprietary filesystem) copy the Mediafolder and it's more or less done. Ok with the introduction of the AMA file system, you could run into the same problems, but up to now I've been able to stay clear of that new feature.

These are just a couple of things that make me choose Avid over Final Cut Pro, nevertheless I am looking forward to see what Final Cut Pro X has to offer and how the pricetag of $299.- will change the game. By the way the pricetag leaves me skeptical about how mature the new release will be, but on the other hand FCP Studio was always quite affordable.

I would love to hear what others have to say about the new FCP X or what you think about my thoughts. Comment below...

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