It’s a day Macintosh Avid editors have been waiting for, Avid Media Composer is now Apple Silicon Native. It’s been almost three years since Apple introduced the first Apple Silicon M1 Mac Studios, which were powerhouse machines great for video editing and post-production. While Avid Media Composer could run on Apple Silicon, it was eventually qualified to run natively, but it had been running under emulation without native support. That changes with Media Composer v2024.12. Avid “now runs natively on Apple silicon, bringing improved performance for playback, processing, and overall user experience with Apple’s ARM-based processors on Mac computers.”

A quick check of the Macintosh Activity Monitor confirms just that: Media Composer is now Apple Silicon native, as is most of its supporting processes that run in the background.

Word was this version was supposed to ship at the end of last year, hence why the version number is probably called v2024.12 vs being branded 2025. But we’ll take it and just a little bit of play with this new version after I give it a quick install, it feels nice and snappy. We’ll have to reserve final judgment until we can really put it through its paces with a large project. But launch time was fast, and I’ll take a native application over an application and emulation any day. While I have done some testing of Media Composer running on Apple Silicon, I’ll try to emulate these tests later when I have time.

While Apple Silicon support would have been enough on its own, there are a couple of new features worth noting: Pausing Background Transcription While Editing will do just that, pause transcription while editing to help free up other resources if needed. That’s a checkbox in your transcription settings.

But perhaps the most useful interface feature that has been added in this version is Source Side Waveforms. Turn on Source Side Waveforms, and you can see the waveform of the clip currently loaded in the source monitor. Previously, we’d have to toggle Source Record in the timeline and then turn on waveforms for the single clip you saw in your Source Timeline. While that feature still works and is still quite useful, Source Side Waveforms is another option.

There’s also a tool in here called a Waveform Map, which is the waveform overview that will appear at the bottom of a Source Monitor waveform no matter the zoom level.

As you can see in the image above, you can click and drag in that waveform map to quickly move the playhead anywhere in the currently loaded clip. This waveform map can be turned on and off, but I foresee it being on most of the time. Any custom timeline Zoom keyboard shortcuts you have in your settings will also zoom that source waveform.

Show waveforms is also in the Command Palette, so you can map this to a keyboard shortcut.

I’ve mapped my Show Video/Waveform to Shift+A. It’s going to be important to map this to a keyboard shortcut or an interface button. Hitting that shortcut will toggle between the waveforms and the picture when you have a video clip loaded.

While the Apple Silicon support is the big feature of this release, it’s often those little things that make all the difference to editors working in the trenches. The Source Side Waveforms will be really useful.

Be sure and check the Media Composer compatibility versions for systems and OSes if you are thinking about updating. M4 Mac minis and MacOS 15 Sequoia are supported with this release.

And if you’re running Blackmagic hardware check the Blackmagic support for Desktop Video 14.5 as that addresses some of outstanding issues with Media Composer playout through BMD hardware. It specifically mentions that it will Update Media Composer plugin to support Apple Silicon natively.

Media Composer users – the BMD fix is here! pic.twitter.com/BSTzl52SC6

— Chris Bové (@heybove) February 26, 2025

This guy has a good overview:

If v2024.12 isn’t showing up in Avid Link just yet you can download it directly from the Avid support site, which is where I got the installer. Of course you should never upgrade in the middle of a project, but if you have to, perhaps this will help. Good luck and happy editing!