Next month, Media Composer 3.0 will launch an exciting performance-boosting feature to streamline your HD workflow and stream count. Introducing Native Thin Raster Support:
The background
When playing back HD media, Avid’s real-time performance is not only affected by the number of streams it must play back, but also by the raster size of media it must play back.
The standard raster for HD video is 1920 pixels x 1080 pixels. However, not all flavors of HD match this raster size. Below is a list of several different HD formats and their raster sizes.
Standard HD 1920 x 1080
DVCPro HD 1280 x 1080
XD Cam 1440 x 1080
HDV 1440 x 1080
With prior versions of Media Composer (pre 3.0), the Standard 1920 x 1080 was the default raster size for an HD project type.* Therefore, any non-standard formats would have to “raster up” before playing out. This extra step often prevented the Avid system from playing back the maximum number of streams, and would also inhibit this media from being previewed on a client monitor. Indeed, to do this, you first needed to transcode the non-standard HD media to Avid's DNxHD codec.
The upgrade
With Media Composer 3.0 (Software-only, Mojo DX and Nitris DX), native thin raster support makes it possible to switch to the raster size of the media within a given project. For example, if you’re working with primarily Panasonic P2 media, you can import the P2 media (DVCPro HD) and then switch to the DVCPro HD raster type. This will allow the Avid to play back the maximum number of streams, as well as play out to a client monitor.
The "Raster Type" pulldown menu now accompanies "Project Type" under the Format tab.
The user can easily switch between different raster types via the Raster Type pulldown menu.
Also, keep in mind that it takes less work for the Avid to raster down than raster up. So if you have a mixture of raster sizes in similar ratios, you may want to choose the smallest raster size so that the media is either in its native environment, or rastering down.
*There was also an HDV 1440 x 1080 Project type in pre-3.0 Avid versions.