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Filed under: Editing •Post Production •Software •Final Cut Pro •

Avid Media Composer 5.0, one month later

All of these timeline changes might be a bit unnerving to the veteran Avid editor ... in fact I talked to one older Avid editor (who had never touched Final Cut Pro btw) at NAB back in April of this year who had been testing the beta version. He basically hated some of these new changes.

He loved the RTAS audio plugins but didn’t like the drawer that opened in the timeline for their application as well as the waveform and keyframe overlay buttons. The only reason I can think that someone wouldn’t like this new feature has to be that they are sitting on a comfort zone with the product and don’t really want anything to change. He also didn’t like the Smart Tool even though it can be turned off. At that point the only real difference in MC5 and MC4 would be the placement of the Segment Mode arrows. At the time I had this discussion I hadn’t seen or used the new MC5 (other than a demo at the Avid booth) so I pressed him on why he didn’t like the Smart Tool as to me it seemed like the best of both worlds. After a bit of conversation he admitted that he hadn’t really used the Smart Tool as much as he should, only toggling it on a time or two. But he wasn’t going to use it anymore as he was always confused by what happened when he moved his cursor around over the timeline.

It is a totally new way of working with the Media Composer timeline so it does take some getting used to as the cursor itself can change quickly and change often depending on your timeline, the size of your tracks and how many edits you might have. My worry is that seasoned Avid editors might dismiss this new Smart Tool and its way of working since they’ve used the application for years without it. They also might dismiss it as being a Final Cut Pro feature Avid added to appease FCP editors and the pro-FCP voices on the Internet. That’s probably only partly true since Avid DS uses the same idea with direct timeline manipulation that can be turned on and off. Plus the name Smart Tool even comes from Avid’s own Pro Tools.

Above is an Avid demo of the new Media Composer 5.0 Smart Tool.

Compare that to the Pro Tools Smart Tool and you can see where it came from.

It was inevitable that this would make it into Media Composer if the software continued to evolve. My suggestion to Avid editors unsure about the Smart Tools is to take your time, read the manual to understand exactly how it works and give it a chance. Don’t try to integrate into an edit under a tight deadline or at the last minute. Ease into it when you have time to be able to stop and really understand how it works and what these new operations in the timeline are all about. And besides, you shouldn’t be upgrading a major piece of software in the middle of an edit an anyway! I would even go so far as to say there are some veteran Avid-only editors who will upgrade to MC5.0 and, even after trying it out, won’t make much use of the Smart Tool and the drag and drop timeline functionality. They’ve been just fine without it all these years. But for me, the simple fact that it can be toggled on and off makes it a very powerful tool that one can adapt to their current way of working in addition to developing entirely new editing techniques. I can only see it increasing my productivity.

My MC5 Jobs Thus Far

The first job I cut on MC 5.0 was a small EPK. I left the Smart Tool turned off completely as I was piecing together my radio edit to tell the story of a particular song being recorded. I was able to string out sound bites with the speed I was used to, jumping into Trim mode with a key stroke, like I have always done in Avid. But as I was beginning to work with multiple layers of video, graphics and titles the ability to turn the Smart Tool on grab edits, clips and graphics without an additional keystroke really sped that part of the edit along .... like it does in FCP. It was a great feeling to have BOTH options, finally, in one editing application.

As I’ve been working with MC 5.0 even more, cutting a couple of music videos and a demo reel I’ve found myself doing something similar, leaving the Smart Tool off as I’m building an early cut and turning it on more and more as I’m fine tuning the edit. But one of the best things about MC 5.0 is still having the traditional Avid Trim Mode available that I can jump into with a keystroke and get that playback and interactivity that only the Avid Trim Mode can provide.

There’s a lot left to discover in this new version of Media Composer as it’s a big update, worthy of the entire number increase from 4.0 to 5.0 and has only been out in the world for just over a month now. I feel I haven’t really given the new drag and drop timeline the real workout that it is due since as I mentioned several of my projects have been music video-like edits. They are more single-layer, cuts only types of projects. While I’ve used the Smart Tools quite extensively on these edits I feel like a much more graphics heavy, multi-layer timeline will be a place where it can really shine and I plan on doing just that soon.

Are you a veteran Avid editor who’s now using Media Composer 5.0 and the new Smart Tool? If so please post your reactions and comments below?

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Though to be fair to the article, I’ve not tried it yet.  If it helps working with audio rubber bands, then I’ll be delighted.  I normally default to H\ click > length/center > num-pad clackity to make audio tweaks because the audio rubberbands are kind of lame.  Later using pro-tools to deal with that anyway though.

We’ll see, its on my purchase list next month.

Posted by praxisseizure  on  07/20  at  12:41 AM

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“It baffles me..  who does this?”

praxisseizure, are you talking about moving the non-adjacent clips in the timeline via segment mode? I think there’s a lot of reasons to do this but I have to agree that Avid lets you be much more keyboard driven overall and that’s a good thing as you can work faster. Faster is better!

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  07/20  at  09:03 AM

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Hey, thanks for this over view - I haven’t worked on and Avid for some time now - but I believe it vital to stay current and thorough reviews such as this will minimize the “cramming” I might need do should I find myself in a position to be working with this tool in the future.

Regarding speed in editing - I would hope all editors would keep the pressure on the software writers of whatever tool they use - to debug and streamline their code so that it “just works” “fast” with whatever hardware or OS or file format and codec. New features are great - but - performance is everything. I think most editors - once they decide “how” they want to cut something - can do it relative fast with any “tool” - what takes up all the time is the amount of seconds - to even minutes that it takes the hardware to respond to those decisions or experiments - What takes up all the time is the rendering and the transcoding of files to behave nicely on the timeline and what not. Not the button pressing.

Posted by Jim Hines  on  07/21  at  09:52 AM

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I’ve used Avid since the last time they released a version 5 in and around 1994. AMA and the ability to mix formats and frame rates has been an incredible blessing to my editing workflows, Right now I’m mixing 24f Canon, 30f Canon, 24p XDCAM and 60i standard def on a storytelling project. In real time!!

But, so far I’ve kept the smart tool off,,I plan on playing with it more later. I understand the basic segment and replace functions because they’re not new, but the smart trimming without trim mode I’m a little uneasy about.

I can see versioning in a supervised edit where it might speed things up for reordering whole sections maybe, but i’m not sure it will change me from entering trim mode. I’m an old dog!!!

I agree with Scott that the more precise you are on first version edits, the more flexibility you have on the back end content adjustments. I still believe basic 3-point editing and building a sequence with precision from the get go works better than throwing a bunch of non subclipped clips around in the early stages of an edit. A writer on deadline, doesn’t take random sentences and words and throw them up in the air to see where they land. IMHO, video editing is not much different than writing.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  07/21  at  10:09 AM

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