The Oscar. Now what?

Everything Everywhere All at Once dominated the Academy Awards night, including winning the Best Film Editing award for Paul Rogers. The team used Adobe Premiere Pro as their NLE of choice. By extension this becomes the first editing Oscar win for Premiere. Of course, it’s the team and editor that won the award, not the software that they used. Top editors could cut with any application and get the same result.

The Academy Awards started as a small celebratory dinner for insiders to recognize each other’s achievements in film. Over the decades this has become a major cultural event. Winning or even being nominated is a huge feather in the cap for any film. This can be heavily leveraged by the marketing teams of not only the film distributors and talent agents, but also the various products used in the process – be that cameras or software.

Avid’s dominance

When it comes to editing, Avid has been the 800-pound gorilla in the modern digital era. Ever since Walter Murch won for editing The English Patient using Media Composer, the specific NLE on an Oscar-winning film has become a hot topic among editors. This was never the case when the only options were Moviola, KEM, or Steenbeck.

Even this year nine out of the ten nominees for the Oscar for Best Picture and four out of the five nominees for Best Film Editing used Media Composer. Yet, Avid’s dominance in the winner’s circle has seen some occasional cracks from competitors, like Apple’s Final Cut Pro (legacy version) and Lightworks. Nevertheless, Media Composer is still a safe bet. And let’s not forget sound, where Pro Tools has even less competition from other DAWs among film and TV sound editors and mixers. All of the nominees for the Oscar for Best Sound at this year’s Academy Awards used Pro Tools.

There are, of course, many awards competitions around the world, including the ACE Eddie Awards, BAFTA, Golden Globes, and others, including various film festivals. Many of these don’t give out specific craft awards for editors or editing; however, a lot of these winning films have been edited with other tools. For example, many award-worthy indie films, especially documentaries, have been edited with Premiere Pro. Even Final Cut Pro (the current “X” version) has had wins in such categories. This includes wins for the short films, The Silent Child and Skin at the 2018 and 2019 Academy Awards.

Stacking up the NLE competitors

The truth of the matter is that today, there are seven viable applications that might be used to cut a professional feature film or documentary: Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks, Edius X, and Vegas Pro. You could probably also factor in others, such Final Cut Pro 7 (now zombie-ware) and Media 100 (yes, still alive), not to mention consumer-oriented NLEs like iMovie or Movie Maker. Realistically, most experienced film editors are likely to only use one of the first five on the list.

Of those five, Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the app that most editors have their eyes on. Aside from its widespread use in color correction, Resolve is also a perfectly capable editing application. Although it has yet to pull off an Oscar win for editing, Resolve has been widely used in many aspects of the production and post workflow of top films. Owing to its nature as a “Swiss Army Knife” application, Resolve fits into various on-set, editing, and visual effects niches. It’s only a matter of time before Resolve gets an Oscar win for editing. But other Blackmagic Design products also shouldn’t be overlooked. In the 2023 Academy Awards, more than 20 films across the technical, documentary, short film, international feature film, and animated categories used some Blackmagic Design product.

Marketing

When an application is used on an award-winning film, I’d bet that the manufacturer’s marketing department is doing high-fives. But does this really move the sales needle? Maybe. It’s all aspirational marketing. They want you to feel that if you use the same software as an Oscar-winning film editor used, then you, too, could be in that league. Talent is always the key factor, but we can all dream. Right? That’s what marketing plays upon, but it also impacts the development of the application itself.

Both Avid and Adobe have been fine-tuning their tools with professional users in mind for years. They’ve added features based on the needs of a small, but influential (or at least vocal) market sector. This results in applications that tick most of the professional boxes, but which are also harder to learn and eventually master.

That’s a route Apple also chose to pursue with Final Cut Pro 1 through 7. Despite a heralded introduction with Cold Mountain in 2003, it took until 2010 before Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter nailed down an Oscar with The Social Network. They then reprised that in 2011 with a win for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even as late as 2020, the discontinued FCP 7 was represented by Parasite, winning Best Picture and nominated for Best Film Editing.

Apple and Final Cut Pro’s trajectory unexpectedly changed course with the introduction of Final Cut Pro X. This shift coincided with the growth of social media and a new market of many non-traditional video editors. Final Cut Pro in its current iteration is the ideal application for this market and has experienced a huge growth in users. But, it still gets labelled as being not ready for professional users, even though a ton of professional content is posted using the app. Apple took the platform approach – opting to leave out many advanced features and letting third party developers fill in the gaps where needed. This is the core of much of the criticism.

How advanced/complex does a professional NLE really need to be?

In the case of FCP, it’s certainly capable of Hollywood-level films along with a range of high-end, international dramas. Witness the many examples I’ve written about, like Focus, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Voice from the Stone, The Banker, Jezebel, and Blood Red Sky.  However, a wide range of professional editors would like to see more.

The internal corporate discussion goes like this. Marketing asks, “What do we have to do to get broader adoption among professional film editors?” Engineering answers, “It will take X dollars and X amount of time.” Top management asks, “What’s the return if we do that?” And that’s usually where the cycle stops, until the next year or awards season.

The truth is that the traditional high-end post market is extremely small for a company like Apple. The company is already selling hardware, which is their bread and butter. Will a more advanced version of FCP sell more hardware? Probably not. Avid, Adobe, and Blackmagic Design are already doing that for them. On the other hand, what is more influential for sales in today’s market – Oscar-winning professional editors or a bevy of YouTube influencers touting your product?

I’m not privy to sales numbers, so I have no idea whether or not going after the very small professional post market makes financial sense for either Blackmagic Design or Adobe. In the case of Avid, their dominance pays off through their ecosystem. Avid-based facilities are also likely to have Avid storage and Pro Tools audio facilities. Hardware most likely covers the development costs. Plus, both Avid and Adobe have shifted to subscription models (Adobe fully, Avid as an option). This seems to be good for both companies.

Blackmagic Design is also a hardware developer and manufacturer. Selling cameras and a wide range of other products enables them to offer DaVinci Resolve for as little as free. You’d be hard-pressed to find a production company that wasn’t using one or more Blackmagic products. Only time will tell which company has taken the approach that a) ensures their long term survival, and b) benefits professional film editors in the best way. In the case of Apple, it’s pretty clear that adding new feature to Final Cut Pro will generate more revenue in an amount that many competitors would envy. Yet, it would be small by Apple’s measurement.

In the end, awards are good for a developer’s marketing buzz, but don’t forget the real team that won the award itself. It’s wonderful for Paul Rogers and Adobe that Everything Everywhere All at Once was tapped for the Oscar for Best Film Editing. It’s an interesting milestone, but when it comes to software, it’s little more than bragging rights. Great to have, but remember, it’s Rogers that earned it, regardless of the tools he used.

©2023 Oliver Peters

What is a Finishing Editor?

To answer that, let’s step back to film. Up until the 1970s dramatic television shows, feature films, and documentaries were shot and post-produced on film. The film lab would print positive copies (work print) of the raw negative footage. Then a team of film editors and assistants would handle the creative edit of the story by physically cutting and recutting this work print until the edit was approved. This process was often messy with many film splices, grease pencil marks on the work print to indicate dissolves, and so on.

Once a cut was “locked” (approved by the director and the execs) the edited work print and accompanying notes and logs were turned over to the negative cutter. It was this person’s job to match the edits on the work print by physically cutting and splicing the original camera negative, which up until then was intact. The negative cutter would also insert any optical effects created by an optical house, including titles, transitions, and visual effects.

Measure twice, cut once

Any mistakes made during negative cutting were and are irreparable, so it is important that a negative cutter be detail-oriented, precise, and works cleanly. You don’t want excess glue at the splices and you don’t want to pick up any extra dirt and dust on the negative if it can be avoided. If a mistaken cut is made and you have to repair that splice, then at least one frame is lost from that first splice.

A single frame – 1/24th of a second – is the difference in a fight scene between a punch just about to enter the frame and the arm passing all the way through the frame. So you don’t want a negative cutter who is prone to making mistakes. Paul Hirsch, ACE points out in his book A long time ago in a cutting room far, far away…. that there’s an unintentional jump cut in the Death Star explosion scene in the first Star Wars film, thanks to a negative cutting error.

In the last phase of the film post workflow, the cut negative goes to the lab’s color timer (the precursor to today’s colorist), who sets the “timing” information (color, brightness, and densities) used by the film printer. The printer generates an interpositive version of the complete film from the assembled negative. From this interpositive, the lab will generally create an internegative from which release prints are created.

From the lab to the linear edit bay

This short synopsis of the film post-production process points to where we started. By the mid-1970s, video post-production technology came onto the scene for anything destined for television broadcast. Material was still shot on film and in some cases creatively edited on film, as well. But the finishing aspect shifted to video. For example, telecine systems were used to transfer and color correct film negative to videotape. The lab’s color timing function was shifted to this stage (before the edit) and was now handled by the telecine operator, who later became known as a colorist.

If work print was generated and edited by a film editor, then it was the video editor’s job to match those edits from the videotapes of the transferred film. Matching was a manual process. A number of enterprising film editors worked out methods to properly compute the offsets, but no computerized edit list was involved. Sometimes a video offline edit session was first performed with low-res copies of the film transfer. Other times producers simply worked from handwritten timecode notes for selected takes. This video editing – often called online editing and operated by an online editor – was the equivalent to the negative cutting stage described earlier. Simpler projects, such as TV commercials, might be edited directly in an online edit session without any prior film or offline edit.

Into the digital era

Over time, any creative editing previously done on film for television projects shifted to videotape edit systems and later to digital nonlinear edit systems (NLEs), such as Avid and Lightworks. These editors were referred to as offline editors and post now followed a bifurcated process know as offline and online editing. This was analogous to film’s work print and negative cutting stages. Likewise, telecine technology evolved to not only perform color correction during the film transfer process, but also afterwards working from the assembled master videotape as a source. This process, known as tape-to-tape color correction, gave the telecine operator – now colorist – the tools to perform better shot matching, as well as to create special looks in post. With this step the process had gone full circle, making the video colorist the true equivalent of the lab’s color timer.

As technology marched on, videotape and linear online edit bays gave way to all-digital, NLE-based facilities. Nevertheless, the separation of roles and processes continued. Around 2000, Avid came in with its Symphony model – originally a separate product and not just a software option. Avid Symphony systems offered a full set of color-correction tools and the ability to work in uncompressed resolutions.

It became quite common for a facility to have multiple offline edit bays using Avid Media Composer units staffed by creative, offline editors working with low-res media. These would be networked to an Avid shared storage solution. In addition, these facilities would also have one or more Avid Symphony units staffed by online editors.

A project would be edited on Media Composer until the cut was locked. Then assistants would ingest high-res media from files or videotape, and an online editor would “conform” the edit with this high-res media to match the approved timeline. The online editor would also handle Symphony color correction, insert visual effects, titles, etc. Finally, all tape or file deliverables would be exported out of the Avid Symphony. This system configuration and workflow is still in effect at many facilities around the world today, especially those that specialize in unscripted (“reality”) TV series.

The rise of the desktop systems

Naturally, there are more software options today. Over time, Avid’s dominance has been challenged by Apple Final Cut Pro (FCP 1-7 and FCPX), Adobe Premiere Pro, and more recently Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve. Systems are no longer limited by resolution constraints. General purpose computers can handle the work with little or no bespoke hardware requirements.

Fewer projects are even shot on film anymore. An old school, film lab post workflow is largely impossible to mount any longer. And so, video and digital workflows that were once only used for television shows and commercials are now used in nearly all aspects of post, including feature films. There are still some legacy terms in use, such as DI (digital intermediate), which for feature film is essentially an online edit and color correction session.

Given that modern software – even running on a laptop – is capable of performing nearly every creative and technical post-production task, why do we still have separate dedicated processes and different individuals assigned to each? The technical part of the answer is that some tasks do need extra tools. Proper color correction requires precision monitoring and becomes more efficient with specialized control panels. You may well be able to cut with a laptop, but if your source media is made up of 8K RED files, a proxy (offline-to-online) workflow makes more sense.

The human side of the equation is more complex

Post-production tasks often involve a left/right-side brain divide. Not every great editor is good when it comes to the completion phase. In spite of being very creative, many often have sloppy edits, messy timelines, and their project organization leaves a lot to be desired. For example, all footage and sequences just bunched together in one large project without bins. Timelines might have clips spread vertically in no particular order with some disabled clip – based on changes made in each revision path. As I’ve said before: You will be judged by your timelines!

The bottom line is that the kind of personality that makes a good creative editor is different than one that makes a good online editor. The latter is often called a finishing editor today within larger facilities. While not a perfect analogy, there’s a direct evolutionary path from film negative cutter to linear online editor to today’s finishing editor.

If you compare this to the music world, songs are often handled by a mixing engineer followed by a mastering engineer. The mix engineer creates the best studio mix possible and the mastering engineer makes sure that mix adheres to a range of guidelines. The mastering engineer – working with a completely different set of audio tools – often adds their own polish to the piece, so there is creativity employed at this stage, as well. The mastering engineer is the music world’s equivalent to a finishing editor in the video world.

Remember, that on larger projects, like a feature film, the film editor is contracted for a period of time to deliver a finished cut of the film. They are not permanent staff. Once, that job is done the project is handed off to the finishing team to accurately generate the final product working with the high-res media. Other than reviewing the work, there’s no value to having a highly paid film editor also handle basic assembly of the master. This is also true in many high-end commercial editorial companies. It’s more productive to have the creative editors working with the next client, while the staff finishing team finalizes the master files.

The right kit for the job

It also comes down to tools. Avid Symphony is still very much in play, especially with reality television shows. But there’s also no reason finishing and final delivery can’t be done using Apple Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro. Often more specialized edit tools are assigned to these finishing duties, including systems such as Autodesk Smoke/Flame, Quantel Rio, and SGO Mistika. The reason, aside from quality, is that these tools also include comprehensive color and visual effects functions.

Finishing work today includes more that simply conforming a creative edit from a decision list. The finishing editor may be called upon to create minor visual effects and titles along with finessing those that came out of the edit. Increasingly Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve is becoming a strong contender for finishing – especially if Resolve was used for color correction. It’s a powerful all-in-one post-production application, capable of handling all of the effects and delivery chores. If you finish out of Resolve, that cuts out half of the roundtrip process.

Attention to detail is the hallmark of a good finishing editor. Having good color and VFX skills is a big plus. It is, however, a career path in its own right and not necessarily a stepping stone to becoming a top-level feature film editor or even an A-list colorist. While that might be a turn-off to some, it will also appeal to many others and provide a great place to let your skills shine.

©2023 Oliver Peters

Avid’s Hidden Gems

Avid Media Composer offers a few add-on options, but two are considered gems by the editors that rely on them. ScriptSync and PhraseFind are essential for many drama and documentary editors who wield Media Composer keyboards every day. I’ve written about these tools in the past, including how you can get similar functionality in other NLEs. New transcription services, like Simon Says, make them more viable than ever for the average editor.

Driven by the script

Avid’s script-based editing, also called script integration, builds a representation of the script supervisor’s lined script directly into the Avid Media Composer workflow and interface. While often referred to as ScriptSync, Avid’s script integration is actually not the same. Script-based editing and script bins are part of the core Media Composer system and does not cost extra.

The concept originated with the Cinedco Ediflex NLE and migrated to Avid. In the regular Media Composer system, preparing a script bin and aligning takes to that script is a manual process, often performed by assistant editors that are part of a larger editorial team. Because it is labor-intensive, most individual editors working on projects that aren’t major feature films or TV series avoid using this workflow.

Avid ScriptSync (a paid option) automates this script bin preparation process, by automatically aligning spoken words in a take to the text lines within the written script. It does this using speech recognition technology licensed from Nexidia. This technology is based on phonemes, the sounds that are combined to create spoken words. Clips can be imported (transcoded into Avid MediaFiles) or linked.

Through automatic analysis of the audio within a take, ScriptSync can correlate a line in the script to its relative position within that take or within multiple takes. Once clips have been properly aligned to the written dialogue, ScriptSync is largely out of the picture. And so, in Avid’s script-based editing, the editor can then click on a line of dialogue within the script bin and see all of the coverage for that line.

Script integration with non-scripted content

You might think, “Great, but I’m not cutting TV shows and films with a script.” If you work in documentaries or corporate videos built around lengthy interviews, then script integration may have little meaning – unless you have transcripts. Getting long interviews transcribed can be costly and/or time-consuming.  That’s where an automated transcription service like Simon Says comes in. There are certainly other, equally good services. However, Simon Says, offers export options tailored for each NLE, including Avid Media Composer.

With a transcription available on a fast turnaround, it becomes easy to import an interview transcript into a Media Composer script bin and align clips to it. ScriptSync takes care of the automatic alignment making script-based editing quick, easy, and painless – even for an individual editor without any assistants.

Finding that needle in the haystack

The second gem is PhraseFind, which builds upon the same Nexidia speech recognition technology. It’s a tool that’s even more essential for the documentary editor than script integration. PhraseFind (a paid option) is a phonetic search tool that analyzes the audio for clips within an Avid MediaFiles folder. Type in a word or phrase and PhraseFind will return a number of “hits” with varying degrees of accuracy.

The search is based on phonemes, so the results are based on words that “sound like” the search term. On one side this means that low-accuracy results may include unrelated finds that sound similar. On the other hand, you can enter a search word that is spelled differently or inaccurately, but as long as it still sounds the same, then useful results will be returned.

PhraseFind is very helpful in editing “Frankenbites.” Those are edits were sentences are ended in the middle, because a speaker went off on a tangent, or when different phrases are combined to complete a thought. Often you need to find a word that matches your edit point, but with the correct inflection, such as ending a sentence. PhraseFind is great for these types of searches, since your only alternative is scouring through multiple clips in search of a single word.

Working with the options

Script-based editing, ScriptSync, and PhraseFind are unique features that are only available in Avid Media Composer. No other NLE offers similar built-in features. Boris FX does offer Soundbite, which is a standalone equivalent to the PhraseFind technology licensed to them by Nexidia. It’s still available, but not actively promoted nor developed. Adobe had offered Story as a way to integrate script-based editing into Premiere Pro. That feature is no longer available. So today, if you want the accepted standard for script and phonetic editing features, then Media Composer is where it’s at.

These are separate add-on options. You can pick one or the other or both (or neither) depending on your needs and style of work. They are activated through Avid Link. If you own multiple seats of Media Composer, then you can purchase one license of ScriptSync and/or PhraseFind and float them between Media Composers via Avid Link activation. While these tools aren’t for everyone, they do offer a new component to how you work as an editor. Many who’ve adopted them have never looked back.

©2020, 2021 Oliver Peters

Avid Media Composer 2020

Avid Media Composer has been at the forefront of nonlinear, digital video editing for three decades. While most editors and audio mixers know Avid for Media Composer and Pro Tools, the company has grown considerably in that time. Whether by acquisition or internal development, Avid Technology encompasses such products as storage, live and post mixing consoles, newsroom software, broadcast graphics, asset management, and much more.

In spite of this diverse product line, Media Composer, as well as Pro Tools, continue to be the marquee products that define the brand. Use the term “Avid” and generally people understand that you are talking about Media Composer editing software. If you are an active Media Composer editor, then most of this article will be old news. But if you are new to Media Composer, read on.

The Media Composer heritage

Despite challenges from other NLEs, such as Final Cut Pro,  Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci Resolve, Media Composer continues to be the dominant NLE for television and feature film post around the world. Even in smaller broadcast markets and social media, it’s not a given that the other options are exclusively used. If you are new to the industry and intend to work in one of the major international media hubs, then knowing the Media Composer application is helpful and often required.

Media Composer software comes in four versions, ranging from Media Composer | First (free) up to Media Composer Enterprise. Most freelance editors will opt for one of the two middle options: Media Composer or Media Composer | Ultimate. Licenses may be “rented” via a subscription or bought as a perpetual license. The latter includes a year of support with a renewal at the end of that year. If you opt not to renew support, then your Media Composer software will be frozen at the last valid version issued within that year; but it will continue to work. No active internet connection or periodic sign-in is required to use Media Composer, so you could be off the grid for months and the software works just fine.

A Media Composer installation is full-featured, including effects, audio plug-ins, and background rendering software. Depending on the version, you may also receive loyalty offers (free) for additional software from third-party vendors, like Boris FX, NewBlueFX, iZotope, and Accusonus.

Avid only offers three add-on options for Media Composer itself: ScriptSync, PhraseFind, and Symphony. Media Composer already incorporates manual script-based editing. Plain text script documents can be imported into a special bin and clips aligned to sentences and paragraphs in that script. Synchronization has to be done manually to use this feature. The ScriptSync option saves time – automating the process by phonetically analyzing and syncing clips to the script text. Click on a script line and any corresponding takes can be played starting from that point within the scene.

The PhraseFind option is a phonetic search engine, based on the same technology as ScriptSync. It’s ideal for documentary and reality editors. PhraseFind automatically indexes the phonetics of the audio for your clips. Search by a word or phrase and all matching  instances will appear, regardless of actual spelling. You can dial in the sensitivity to find only the most accurate hits, or broader in cases where dialogue is hard to hear or heavily accented.

Media Composer includes good color correction, featuring wheels and curves. In fact, Avid had this long before other NLEs. The Symphony option expands the internal color correction with more capabilities, as well as a full color correction workflow. Grade clips by source, timeline, or both. Add vector-based secondary color correction and more. Symphony is not as powerful as Baselight or Resolve, but you avoid any issues associated with roundtrips to other applications. That’s why it dominates markets where turnaround time is critical, like finishing for non-scripted (“reality”) TV shows. A sequence from a Symphony-equipped Media Composer system can still be opened on another Media Composer workstation that does not have the Symphony option. Clips play fine (no “media offline” or “missing plug-in” screen); however, the editor cannot access or alter any of the color correction settings specific to Symphony.

Overhauling Media Composer

When Jeff Rosica took over as CEO of Avid Technology in 2018, the company embraced an effort to modernize Media Composer. Needless to say, that’s a challenge. Any workflow or user interface changes affect familiarity and muscle memory. This is made tougher in an application with a loyal, influential, and vocal customer base.  An additional complication for every software developer is keeping up with changes to the underlying operating system. Changes from Windows 7 to Windows 10, or from macOS High Sierra to Mojave to Catalina, all add their own peculiar speed bumps to the development roadmap.

For example, macOS Catalina is Apple’s first, full 64-bit operating system. Apple dropped any 32-bit QuickTime library components that were used by developers to support certain codecs. Of course, this change impacted Media Composer. Without Apple rewriting 64-bit versions of these legacy components, the alternative is for a developer to add their own support back into the application, which Avid has had to do. Unfortunately, this introduces some inevitable media compatibility issues between older and newer versions of Media Composer. Avid is not alone in this case.

Nevertheless, Media Composer changes aren’t just cosmetic, but also involve many “under the hood” improvements. These include a 32-bit float color pipeline, support for ACES projects, HDR support, dealing with new camera raw codecs, and the ability to read and write ProRes media on both macOS and Windows systems.

Avid Media Composer 2020.10

Avid bases its product version numbers by the year and month of release. Media Composer 2020.10 – the most recent version as of this writing – was just released. The versions prior to that were Media Composer 2020.9 and 2020.8, released in September and August respectively. But before that it was 2020.6 from June, skipping .7. (Some of the features that I will describe were introduced in earlier versions and are not necessarily new in 2020.10.)

Media Composer 2020.10 is fully compatible with macOS Catalina. Due to the need to shift to a 64-bit architecture, the AMA framework – used to access media using non-Avid codecs – has been revamped as UME (Universal Media Engine). Also the legacy Title Tool has been replaced with the 64-bit Titler+.

If you are a new Media Composer user or moving to a new computer, then several applications will be installed. In addition to the Media Composer application and its built-in plug-ins and codecs, the installer will add Avid Link to your computer. This is a software management tool to access your Avid account, update software, activate/deactivate licenses, search a marketplace, and interact with other users via a built-in social component.

The biggest difference for Premiere Pro, Resolve, or Final Cut Pro X users who are new to Media Composer is understanding the Avid approach to media. Yes, you can link to any compatible codec, add it to a bin, and edit directly with it – just like the others. But Avid is designed for and works best with optimized media.

This means transcoding the linked media to MXF-wrapped Avid DNxHD or HR media. This media can be OPatom (audio and video as separate files) or OP1a (interleaved audio/video files). It’s stored in an Avid MediaFiles folder located at the root level of the designated media volume. That’s essentially the exact same process adopted by Final Cut Pro X when media is transcoded and placed inside an FCPX Library file. The process for each enables a bullet-proof way to move project files and media around without breaking links to that media.

The second difference is that each Avid bin within the application is also a dedicated data file stored within the project folder on your hard drive. Bins can be individually locked (under application control). This facilitates multiple editors working in a collaborative environment. Adobe adopted an analog of this method in their new Adobe Productions feature.

The new user interface

Avid has always offered a highly customizable user interface. The new design, introduced in 2019, features bins, windows, and panels that can be docked, tabbed, or floated. Default workspaces have been streamlined, but you can also create your own. A unique feature compared to the competing NLEs is that open panes can be slid left or right to move them off of the active screen. They aren’t actually closed, but compacted into the side of the screen. Simply slide the edge inward again to reveal that pane.

One key to Avid’s success is that the keyboard layout, default workspaces, and timeline interactions tend to be better focused on the task of editing. You can get more done with fewer keystrokes. In all fairness, Final Cut Pro X also shares some of this, if you can get comfortable with their very different approach. My point is that the new Media Composer workspaces cover most of what I need and I don’t feel the need for a bunch of custom layouts. I also don’t feel the need to remap more levels of custom keyboard commands than what’s already there.

Media Composer for Premiere and Final Cut editors

My first recommendation is to invest in a custom Media Composer keyboard from LogicKeyboard or Editors Keys. Media Composer mapping is a bit different than the Final Cut “legacy” mapping that many NLEs offer. It’s worth learning the standard Media Composer layout. A keyboard with custom keycaps will be a big help.

My second recommendation is to learn all about Media Composer’s settings (found under Preferences and Settings). There are a LOT of them, which may seem daunting at first. Once you understand these settings, you can really customize the software just for you.

Getting started

Start by establishing a new project from the projects panel. Projects can be saved to any available drive and do not have to be in a folder at the root level. When you create a new project, you are setting the format for frame size, rate, and color space. All sequences created inside of this project will adhere to these settings. However, other sequences using different formats can be imported into any project.

Once you open a project, Media Composer follows a familiar layout of bins, timeline, and source/record windows. There are three normal bin views, plus script-based editing (if you use it): frame, column, and storyboard. In column view, you may create custom columns as needed. Clips can be sorted and filtered based on the criteria you pick. In the frame view, clips can be arranged in a freeform manner, which many film editors really like.

The layout works on single and dual-monitor set-ups. If you have two screens, it’s easy to spread out your bins on one screen in any manner you like. But if you only have one screen, you may want to switch to a single viewer mode, which then displays only the record side. Click a source clip from a bin and it open its own floating window. Mark in/out, make the edit, and close. I wish the viewer would toggle between source and record, but that’s not the case, yet

Sequences

Media Composer does not use stacked or tabbed sequences, but there is a history pulldown for quick access to recent sequences and/or source clips. Drag and load any sequence into the source window and toggle the timeline view between the source or the record side. This enables easy editing of portions from one sequence into another sequence.

Mono and stereo audio tracks are treated separately on the timeline. If you have a clip with left and right stereo audio on two separate channels (not interleaved), then these will cut to the timeline as two mono tracks with a default pan setting to the middle for each. You’ll need to pan these tracks back to left and right in the timeline. If you have a clip with interleaved, stereo audio, like a music cue, it will be edited to a new interleaved stereo track, with default stereo panning. You can’t mix interleaved stereo and mono content onto the same timeline track.

Effects

Unlike other NLEs, timeline clips are only modified when a specific effect is applied. When clips of a different format than the sequence format are cut to the timeline, a FrameFlex effect is automatically applied for transform and color space changes. There is no persistent Inspector or Effects Control panel. Instead you have to select a clip with an effect applied to it and open the effect mode editor. While this may seem more cumbersome, the advantage is that you won’t inadvertently change the settings of one clip thinking that another has been selected.

Media Composer installs a fair amount of video and audio plug-ins, but for more advanced effects, I recommend augmenting with BorisFX’s Continuum Complete or Sapphire. What is often overlooked is that Media Composer does include paint, masking, and tracking tools. And, if you work on stereo 3D projects, Avid was one of the first companies to integrate a stereoscopic toolkit into Media Composer

The audio plug-ins provide a useful collection of filters for video editors. These plug-ins come from the Pro Tools side of the company. Media Composer and Pro Tools use the AAX plug-in format; therefore, no AU or VST audio plug-ins will show up inside Media Composer.

Due to the 64-bit transition, Avid dropped the legacy Title Tool and Marquee titler, and rewrote a new Titler+. Honestly, it’s not as intuitive as it should be and took some time for me to warm up to it. Once you play with it, though, the controls are straight-forward. It includes roll and crawl options, along with keyframed moves and tracking. Unfortunately, there are no built-in graphics templates.

Trimming

When feature film editors are asked why they like Media Composer, the trim mode is frequently at the top of the list. The other NLEs offer advanced trimming modes, but none seems as intuitive to use as Avid’s. Granted, you don’t have to stick with the mouse to use them, but I definitely find it easier to trim by mouse in Premiere or Final Cut.

Trimming in Media Composer is geared towards fluid keyboard operation. I find that when I’m building up a sequence, my flow is completely different in Media Composer. Some will obviously prefer the others’ tools and, in fact, Media Composer’s smart keys enable mouse-based trimming, too. It’s certainly preference, but once you get comfortable with the flow and speed of Media Composer’s trim mode, it’s hard to go to something else.

Avid’s journey to modernize Media Composer has gone surprisingly well. If anything, the pace of feature enhancements might be too incremental for users wishing to see more radical changes. For now, there hasn’t been too much resistance from the old guard and new editors are indeed taking a fresh look. Whether you are cutting spots, social media, or indie features, you owe it to yourself to take an objective look at Media Composer as a viable editing option.

To get more familiar with Media Composer, check out Kevin P. McAuliffe’s Let’s Edit with Media Composer tutorial series on YouTube.

Originally written for Pro Video Coalition.

©2020 Oliver Peters

Video Technology 2020 – Editing Software

Four editing applications dominate the professional market: Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer, and Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve. Established facilities are still heavy Avid users, with Adobe being the up-and-coming choice. This doesn’t mean that Final Cut Pro X lost out. Going into 2020, Apple can tout FCPX as the best-selling version of its professional editing tool. It most likely has three million users after nearly nine years on the market. While pro editors in the US are often reluctant to adopt FCPX, this innovative application has earned wider acceptance in the broader international market.

The three “A”s have been battling for editing market share, but the wild card is Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve. It started as a high-end color correction application, but through Blackmagic’s acquisitions and fast development pace, Resolve is becoming an all-in-one application rivaling Autodesk Smoke or Avid DS. Recent versions bring enhanced creative editing tools, making it possible to edit, mix, composite, grade, and deliver entirely from Resolve. No need to roundtrip with other applications. Blackmagic is so dedicated to Resolve as an editor that they introduced a special editor keyboard.

Is Resolve attractive enough to sway editors to shift away from other tools? The answer for most in 2020 will still be “no.” Experienced editors have made their choice and all of the current options are quite good. However, Resolve does make the most sense for new users with no prior allegiances. The caveat is advanced finishing. Users may edit in an editing application, but then roundtrip to Resolve and back for grading. Unfortunately these roundtrips can be problematic. So I do think that many will opt to cut creatively in their NLE of choice, but then send to Resolve for the final grade, mix, and VFX work. Expect to see Resolve’s finishing footprint expand in 2020.

Two challenges confront these companies in 2020: multi-user collaboration and high dynamic range (HDR) delivery. Collaboration is an Avid strength, but not so for the other three. Blackmagic and Adobe have an approach to project sharing, but still not what Avid users have come to expect. Apple offers nothing directly, but there are some third-party workarounds. Expect 2020 to yield collaboration improvements for Final Cut Pro X and Premiere Pro.

HDR is a more complex situation requiring specialized hardware for proper monitoring. There simply is no way to accurately view HDR on any computer display. All of these companies are developing software pipelines to deal with HDR, but in 2020, HDR delivery will still require specific hardware that will remain the domain of dedicated color correction facilities.

Finally, as with cameras, AI will become an increasing aspect of post hardware. You already see that in Apple’s shape recognition within FCPX (automatic sorting of wides and close-ups) or Adobe Sensei for content replacement and automatic music editing. Expect to see more of these features introduced in coming software versions.

Originally written for Creative Planet Network.

©2020 Oliver Peters