Avid announced the other day that they would be offering “Temporary Licenses of Creative Tools for Customers Affected by COVID-19.” Avid offers temporary licenses for Media Composer, Pro Tools and Sibelius. If you already have a licensed copy don’t forget you can activate and deactivate that via the Avid Link app.

To assist our community in delivering their projects and assignments while working remotely due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Avid is providing temporary licenses of our creative tools to customers at no charge. Starting today, March 16, through Friday, April 17, users who are working from home may obtain 90-day licenses free of charge for Media Composer | Ultimate, Pro Tools, Pro Tools | Ultimate and Sibelius | Ultimate. In addition, any student of an institution who uses our products and can no longer attend school and/or access school facilities can receive a 90-day license of the same products.

While the announcement happened the other day I didn’t post about it as there weren’t details of how this would work and now there is! Follow this PDF link for How to obtain a free temporary license.

This is an initiative that is for both students and working professionals. You can get more details at both of these blog posts: one for the educational side of things and the other for pretty much everyone else. This isn’t just Media Composer but also for other Avid tools including Pro Tools, and Sibelius.

If you’ve got an existing Media Composer license you might not need this temporary license for your home if you’re in a place to unlicense your current install via the Avid Link application.

I’m sure that if you’re a Media Composer owner you already know this but it’s worth a reminder as this is going to be a lot easier than requesting the temp license. Using the Avid Link app to activate and deactivate your Media Composer license if you want to move from office to home.

This is very handy for the single user moving between two places where the temp 90 licenses will be good for facilities or groups. I have to admit I’ve often forgotten to deactivate my license when I leave the office and then can’t open MC when I get home. A call to Avid support is another way to get them to deactivate a license you’ve forgotten to deactivate yourself. But by far the easy way is to just set a reminder and deactivate before you leave a location.

Thanks to Avid for offering up these different options during this hectic and uncertain time. They are keeping all COVID-19 updates in one place at this link.