For those of you who couldn’t wait to get your hands on the next version of Avid Media Composer (MC 6.0) you may have noticed the new UI, or perhaps the new in-app stock footage marketplace, or the improved color correction capabilities. But before you even got that far into the product, did any of you notice the new software activation process? Media Composer 6.0 is the first Avid product to release under our new Unified Licensing platform, and we are excited about the possibilities that this new licensing technology provides.
A little more than one year ago, Avid embarked on the journey to develop a unified licensing platform that would help us to achieve a number of key objectives:
1. Offer our customers a simplified activation experience across all of our Avid products
2. Provide our Customer Success support personnel with an improved set of tools to help assist our customers with software activation related issues
3. Offer our customers new use case opportunities with regards to how they activate our software
The Avid team that worked on the licensing project was made up of product owners, IT personnel, web designers and software developers from across the company. The objective was to design and build a platform that could address the requirements across all of our products and support all the various use cases that our customers demand, whether they were using Media Composer or ISIS storage. The platform that was developed is based on a service oriented architecture (SOA), with dozens of web services providing the necessary capabilities for authorizing activation keys, associating System IDs, validating upgrades, and delivering optional features. Each software application can now simply plug into the infrastructure and call the necessary services for activation.
There were some major changes that we implemented as part of the new Media Composer, but there were also some things that we left alone. Let’s start with what we didn’t touch.
Dongles: Some of our customers wish to activate Media Composer using a dongle. Dongles provide our customers with the portability they may need, while also giving them a sense of tangible ownership (you can actually physically touch your license). Avid still offers a dongle activation for Media Composer, so for those of you who love your dongle, there is no need to worry. We did however make a small change in how the dongle gets activated. With Media Composer 6.0, your purchase provides you with a standard software Activation ID (more about this later), but in order to activate your dongle, you now simply go to the Avid dongle redemption page, where you “trade-in” your software activation for a dongle activation. It’s that easy.
Offline Activation: If your Media Composer is not connected to the internet, not to worry. The new licensing platform allows for Offline Activations (more on this later as well).
So what is new with Media Composer licensing, and why do I care?
New Nomenclature: Remember “Serial Number” and “System ID”? Serial Numbers were used to activate your software, but we are now calling them “Activation IDs”. System IDs are still System IDs, and your old System ID can still be used as part of your upgrade to Media Composer 6.0.
Updated Avid License Control: When activating Media Composer you were able to launch Avid License Control (ALC) to manage the activation process. ALC now has a new look and feel and some new features (see screen shot). ALC will show you all the Avid editor products loaded on your system, provide you with state information (Trial, Activated, Not Activated) and allow you to perform actions on that software (Activate, Deactivate).
There is also a new tab in ALC, called the License Profile tab, which provides you with a snapshot of the entitlement state of your machine. It gives you a single place to go to check your Device ID, Activation IDs, and System ID. It also gives you information regarding the number of days left should you be running on a trial or temporary license.
Offline Activation Process: We’ve also modified our offline activation process to a method that uses a secure license file. You can go to www.avid.com/license, type in your activation credentials, and copy the license file onto your machine (using a thumb drive) without having to connect that machine directly to the internet.
Volume Licensing: If you are an Educational Institution, we are now also offering a new volume license option. This allows the administrator to deploy a volume license server on their internal network to allow for Media Composer clients to activate without typing in any Activation Keys. Just simply provide the location of the volume license server in the ALC dialog box and *POOF*, you’re activated.
There are so many other things to discuss, but we really don’t have the time. I recommend you try Media Composer 6.0, and spend some time during the activation process….on second thought…move through the activation process as quickly as possible….if you don’t even notice it, then we’ve done our job. However, do take the time to tell us what you think.
Happy Activations and we look forward to telling you more when our next Avid product releases.
Rich