I'm looking for a guide to computer optimizations, specific to using Media Composer on a PC running Windows 11 Pro. I found one for Pro Tools on the Avid KB, and while I assume these might be useful I was hoping for something more specific to MC. Either Avid KB or 3rd-party site? Google searches have proved fruitless.

There used to be guides issued about hardware & software configurations for workstations like the HP Z840. This was around 10 years ago and covered BIOS and software settings for things like NIC ports and Windows firewall.

This was in the days of Nitris hardware and since then, I've not really seen any specific documentation outside of the Readme documents, which cover some settings recommended for Nvidia etc. If I rmember right, Avid also checks your power settings and recommends you use 'best performance'. For some laptops, this means being connected to your PSU.

It's always been good practice to have your main editing machine off the internet and to not allow any updates to Windows or specific hardware drivers during a project. You may need to connect occasionaly for Avid Link to assign/verify your licence, but for the the most part, it's safer to be disconnected.

Also, removing bloatware and other unnecessary background services will help free up resources for Avid. If your computer is not exposed to the web/collecting email, then you don't really need virus scanners, which can often slow things down. Just make sure any drive you connect has been virus-scanned on another computer beforehand.

Occasionally, I see threads on these forums about users experimenting with settings like the video caches to improve performance, but it would be good to have an official Avid guide.

Although Avid don't seem to offer such a guide, there's lots of articles/videos about generally 'debloating' Windows machines. Just keep a note of what you've done, in case something 'breaks' MC's ability to run properly.

Chris Bové has an interesting article you might also want to read...

https://alwaysediting.com/avid-blogs-by-chris-bové/f/avid-media-composer-how-it-uses-computers

 

Thanks Bruno. I reckon I was hoping Avid still had guides like the ones for the HP workstations...

Great tips in your reply, and wasn't aware of the alwaysediting site, great resource! Chris Bové's article on how MC uses computers is excellent. 

So much MC stuff never comes up in web searches! Or if it does, it's from 2011. Perhaps Chris could write an article on why that happens :)

I am not sure if this is what you are looking for but there was a program called ASDT later renamed to Collection Suite that can be used to confirm that a platform is optimally configured for use in Avid environments.  The Base Analizer will scan for changes needed.

https://kb.avid.com/pkb/articles/en_US/troubleshooting/Avid-Collect-Suite-for-Windows#mce_temp_url#