Avid Media Composer 3.0 Video Editing Software Review (page 2)

It's Still an Avid

This review is focused on the new enhancements of this release, but Media Composer still comes with all the features that have made Avid such a formidable editor, such as top-shelf media management and editing workflow focused on time savings and increased productivity. The elegance of the Trim mode and JKL editing are again refined by years of input from top editors. This release includes the remarkable script-sync software. It can analyze your text script and automatically link it to the audio track in your video files, allowing you to pull up any part of any scene, just by selecting the line in your script.

Avid's annoyances are still here, including the draconian dongle-based copy-protection system. It does make it easy to move from computer to computer, but you can't back up a hardware dongle, and, if it gets lost or stolen, you need to purchase a new copy of the software. The software is still picky about hardware and other software, often needing specific Quicktime versions. Updating your OS can cause Avid to malfunction. Most users end up creating a "blessed OS" hard drive partition just for Avid and run their main systems on another partition.

Conclusion

Avid is on the right track by focusing updates on stability and speed, rather than just new features. Editors live in these applications daily and appreciate refining the fundamentals more than adding the latest whiz-bang effect.

Media Composer 3.0 is a solid release from Avid, and, with the 50% price drop, is much more accessible to independents and small studio owners. If you've always wondered what it's like to drive an Avid, there's never been a better time to find out.

TECH SPECS

System Requirements: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 (32-bit), Microsoft Windows Vista Business SP1 (32- & 64-bit), Apple Mac OSX 10.5.3 (Leopard)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz
Video Card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 560 or higher
Memory: 2GB of RAM
Hard Disk Space: 40GB minimum

Strengths

• Speed
• Stability
• 50% price drop
• Editing workflow

Weaknesses

• Picky system requirements
• Dongle-based copy protection
• No audio editing app included in bundle

SUMMARY

A great editor, focused on speed, stability and workflow.

John Burkhart is Videomaker's Editor-in-Chief.

Avid Technology, Inc.
One Park West
Tewksbury, MA 01876
www.avid.com
$2,495