Hi All,

Could someone explain to me what the benefits will be when I upgrade my AXP (no Mojo) to Media Composer? And will it be worth the cost?

Up until now I have been running AXP quite happily. Although AXP and FCP work for me personally, I do get regular requests from people who want to hire my editing suite with MC. Although this is not on a daily basis, I am wondering if it will be worth the investment, provided there are logical benefits to the upgrade.

Thanks in advance!

Richard.

Hi Richard,

Here is a link to a AXP v MC comparison chart so you can see for yourself what the differences are.

As for whether you should upgrade, Avid has hinted that they have a major announcement to make soon - probably before the NAB convention, but possibly as soon as this week - so I would wait to see what they say before making any decisions about upgrading.

good luck,
Carl

Hi Carl,

thanks for that! This was just what I was looking for. Might be my non-native English that I wasn't able to find this on the website...

And your advice to wait for that anouncement might be a good idea. I would only invest in a possible MC upgrade in the next quarter (VAT / revenue service wise that would be more economical for me).

Cheers!
Richard.

the pdf file says that MC doesn't have Ultimatte. I always understood it had....(?)

It does. It's called Spectramatte now.

Check the link at the bottom of the FAQ posted at the top of this forum for more info on the MC Advantage.

the pdf file says that MC doesn't have Ultimatte. I always understood it had....(?)

.- Avid Media Composer doesn't bundle Ultimatte since the Meridian days.

They now have their own Spectramatte, which is as good as Ultimatte.

Media Composer has several other features that aren't on AXP and aren't listed on that --very useful-- document. While not as exciting as Animatte (a feature worth the upgrade on its own IMO) they really can help workflow. I'm stuck on FCP right now so I'll just mention the ones that come to mind.

• More sophisticated sorting and sifting. Certain features like Sift Selected have been left out of the database aspect of AXP. They can be really useful when wrangling projects with lots of media.
• Find Frame. As we move more and more into a tapeless environment and storage becomes cheaper, this becomes a less valuable feature. But if you've only loaded part of your tape-originated show and want to get more footage from near a given masterclip or if you want to check full-rez focus of a lo-rez capture, this can be a huge time saver.
  
• Locator Tool. I don't think this is in AXP. This window shows you all the locators in the selected clip or sequence (said clip or sequence needs to be in the composer window) and all the text associated with those locators. You can double click on a given locator and be taken to that point in the sequence and you can sort by color if you've assigned certain colors to certain purposes. I use this a lot.
• Second line of info above source and record windows and center counter. Very useful.

I seem to remember there are a lot of other little features like these that make MC just a more fluid, more robust big brother to AXP.

Martin

 Thanks for the info!

So Spectramatte is as good as www.ultimatte.com?

sjon:

 Thanks for the info!

So Spectramatte is as good as www.ultimatte.com?

.- Well, it was inherited from the expensive Simphony, and, yes, is excellent.

But a good Key plugin is just half of the job, maybe less, you know what I mean.

Question to

<Cite>

Archive to Tape
Allows a user to store the source media associated with sequences, master clips, sub clips, and group clips to video tape. Users can use this to dramatically reduce the amount of tapes necessary to restore a project as well as transfer to a more robust format that is less susceptible to dropout.

</Cite>

Does this mean, that I can archive everything to a Video Tape and restore from this Tape again?After a restore will the desktop layout etc  look like the last time I was working on the project?

Is this something people use often? The citation makes me think that this is a robust long time archive format. BUt it is still magnetic data written as video (eg MPEG2 format for HDV) frames to tape with all its long time archive issues. Or does it mean that we can "archive to tape" as say DigiBeta (which is more robust than HDV tapes).

I posted this in the general discussion area, but I think it's a good addition to this thread.

We’ve been getting lots of questions from X Pro owners on why they should upgrade for $495. This is from our new Avid page on our website

Media Composer is more then just the world’s best video editor, it is an integrated post production solution! Here are some of our favorite integrated plug-ins and feature included with Media Composer:

- FluidFilm™ and FluidMotion™ - Create incredibly smooth slow-motion effects and “fit-to-fill” video using patented FluidMotion pixel morphing technology while you control speed and position using intuitive curve-based keyframing.

- 8-point Motion Tracker system for advanced tracking operations including offset tracks, applicable to most real-time and non-real-time effect operators

- Patented SteadyGlide™ technology to remove image shakiness while preserving desirable camera motion like pans and tilts.

- Real-time 16-bit SpectraMatte™ keying featuring SpectraGraph™ Viewer Chroma keying is a fundamental element in compositing and everybody needs it.

- AniMatte™ toolset for fast matte key creation within the editor

- Scratch Removal – remove unwanted imperfections in your footage

- Fully customizable TimeWarp effects

- Multicamera Editing with Multigroup capability for grouping multiple “banks” of camera angles. Multicam is available at any Avid resolution from single field to uncompressed.

- ScriptSync™ for incredibly fast matching of source clips to a text script or transcript.

- Blend Effects including Real-time 3D warp with 23 customizable parameters and Blur effect for deep defocus of images and keys with alphas

When you order Media Composer (full version $2495 or Upgrade $495) you also get these fantastic 3rd party software titles to make your post production workflow even stronger! Academic version ($295) does not include 3rd party software.

1) Boris Continuum Complete AVX – A powerful add-on package with more than 160 filters, including: Lens Flare, Glint, Match Grain, DeInterlace, Optical Flow, Motion Blur, Wire Remover, and Witness Protection effects.

2) SmartSound Sonic Fire Pro 4 with Mood Mapping. Create rich, multi-layered royalty free soundtracks for your productions. You also get 2 Strata Series Multi-track Libraries Core Foundations and Core Sessions.

3) Sorenson Squeeze Compression Suite 4.5 with Sorenson Video 3 Pro, Sorenson Spark Pro, Sorenson MPEG-4 Pro & Sorenson AVC Pro. Easily encode your videos into multiple formats while maintaining the highest possible video quality.

4) Sonic DVDit6 authoring software. Create standard definition DVDs with motion menus and interactive navigation. DVDit6 is Windows only.

VIDEOGUYS’ TECH NOTE: Avid Media Composer is currently compatible with Windows XP Professional and Mac OSX (Tiger). We strongly recommend a Quadro FX graphics card FX1400/1500/1700 or higher. Windows Vista and Mac OSX Leopard are not supported but are in development.

Gary
http://www.videoguys.com/avid.html