Media Composer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Avid Media Composer | |
|---|---|
 Media Composer running on a dual-monitor setup. |
|
| Developed by | Avid |
| Latest release | 2.8.3 |
| OS | Windows XP SP2, Mac OS X v10.4 |
| Genre | Video editing software |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | http://www.avid.com/products/media-composer/ |
Media Composer, frequently referred to as "The Avid", is a non-linear editing system. It is the flagship product of Avid Technology. It was released in 1989 on the Macintosh II as offline editing system. Since that time, the application features have increased to allow for film editing, uncompressed standard definition (SD) video and high definition editing and finishing. Since the early 1990s, Media Composer has been the dominant non-linear editing system in the film and television industry, although its competitor Final Cut Pro has taken away some of its market share since the early 2000s.
[edit] Current Version
There is one version of Media Composer, to which you can add different external DNA (Digital Nonlinear Accelerator) input/output interfaces.
Avid Mojo: includes Composite and S-Video with two channels of RCA audio. There is an optional component video cable that can be added to this interface.
Avid Mojo SDI: includes Composite, S-Video, Component and SDI video, with 4 channels RCA, 4 channels AES and 2 channels optical S/PDIF audio.
Avid Adrenaline: rack mountable interface which includes Composite, S-Video, Component and SDI video, 4 channels of XLR, 4 channels of AES, 2 channels of S/PDIF and 8 channels of ADAT audio. This interface also has an expansion slot for the DNxcel card which adds HD-SDI input and output as well as a DVI and HD component outputs. The DNxcel card uses Avid’s DNxHD compression which is available in 8-bit color formats at 145mb and 220mb as well as a 10-bit color format at 220mb. The DNxcel card also adds real-time SD down-convert and HD cross-convert.
[edit] Features
The Current version of Media Composer (MCSoft) has the following important features
- Animatte
- 3D Warp
- Paint
- Live Matte Key
- Tracker
- Timewarps with motion estimation (FluidMotion)
- SpectraMatte (high quality chroma keyer)
MCSoft differentiates itself from Symphony because it is missing a Secondary Color Corrector and Uncompressed HD support.
The software is protected by a USB dongle that will operate on either Mac or Windows.
Also included with Media Composer is the following 3rd party software.
- Boris BCC 4 - Special effect filters that run directly in the Avid effect palette
- Sorenson Squeeze 4.5 - Compression software to create, Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG 1/2, MPEG 4 or Flash video
- SonicFire Pro 4 - music creation software (includes 2 CDs of music tracks)
- Sonic DVDit 6 - DVD creation software (Windows only)
- Noise Factory (trial version) - Special effect filters that run directly in the Avid effect palette (Mac only)
Except for the Noise Factory software, the other software packages are full versions with online manuals.
[edit] History
| Year | OS | Version | Notes/Major Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Macintosh | Avid/1 | First Avid. Becomes Media Composer |
| 1995 | Mac OS 7.5 | 5.5 | Last version to run on Macintosh 68K hardware |
| 1999 | Mac OS 7.6 to 8.6 | 7.2 | Last version on ABVB hardware. |
| 1999 | Mac OS 8.5.1 | 8.0 | First version based on Meridien hardware. Uncompressed SD video. |
| 1999 | Windows NT | 9.0 | First Media Composer release on Windows NT 4.0 (Meridien) |
| 2000 | WinNT/Mac OS9 | 10.0 | SD 24p support |
| 2001 | Win2K/Mac OS9 | 10.5 | Support for Windows 2000 |
| 2002 | Win2K/Mac OS9 | 11.0 | Marquee integrated (Windows only) |
| Feb 2003 | Mac OS X | 11.7 | First version to support Mac OS X |
| May 2003 | WinXP/Mac OS X | 1.0 | First version of Media Composer Adrenaline |
| Nov 2003 | Win2K/Mac OS X | 12.0 | Last version of Media Composer on Meridien hardware |
| Sept 2004 | WinXP/Mac OS X | 1.5 | MXF support, Marquee on Mac |
| Dec 2004 | WinXP | 2.0 | HD support, 10-bit video, SpectraMatte keyer, AVX2 |
| March 2005 | WinXP | 2.1 | P2 support, XDCam support |
| Dec 2005 | WinXP | 2.2 | HDV support |
| June 2006 | WinXP/Mac OS X | 2.5 | HD on Mac, Media Composer soft, Mojo and Mojo SDI support, XDCam HD, Tracker |
| Sept 2006 | WinXP/Mac OS X | 2.6 | Interplay, Color Safe Limiter effect |
| May 2007 | WinXP/Mac OS X | 2.7 | MacPro (Intel) support, ScriptSync, P2 / XDCam writeout |
| Dec 2007 | WinXP/Mac OS X | 2.8 | VC-1/MXF (SMPTE 421M) support |
| June 2008 (Estimated) | WinXP & Vista / Mac OS X |
3.0 | 'DX' hardware support, new render engine (better multi-threading and GPU support), RT timecode generator, SubCap effect, AVC-I codec support |
