At last year’s NAB show Avid launched a special Media Composer Crossgrade program for Final Cut Pro editors to come back to Avid for just $995. That program was a huge success! Now Avid is upping the ante and going all in by making the same offer to Avid Symphony 6! Yes, that’s right, FCP editors may now crossgrade to Avid Symphony 6 for less than $1,000! That’s more than $5,000 off the regular Avid Symphony price of $5,999
There’s great news for Avid Editors as well. Avid slashed the price of the Symphony 6 Upgrade for owners of Avid Media Composer, Avid Xpress Pro & Avid Xpress DV to just $995 (regularly $3,499).
When we first heard about this program we couldn’t believe it! What was Avid thinking? Well, we had the chance to talk at length with Avid sales and product guys and they told me what they want every video editor to come back to Avid and they are willing to give you the very best tools for the job!
Now many of you may be thinking that even at $995, Avid Symphony is beyond your reach. It isn’t! You have no reason to be afraid. The introduction of version 6 of Avid Media Composer and Symphony unified the 64 bit code base for both programs. So, you can think of Symphony as Media Composer on Steroids, or Media Composer as Symphony “Lite”. Either way, you end up with the same interface, tools, 3rd party hardware and plug-in compatibility! If you know Avid Media Composer, then you will also know how to edit in Symphony. If you plan on learning Media Composer, it’s the same interface and workflow as Symphony.
What are the differences between Avid Media Composer 6 and Symphony 6?
The two main features of Avid Symphony are the Advanced Color Correction (including secondary color correction) and Universal Mastering (the ability to take a timeline and play it out at almost any other size and frame rate). Symphony also comes bundled with the complete Boris Continuum Complete (BCCAVX) plug-in valued at more than $1,000!
Avid Symphony 6 Advanced Color Correction & Color Grading with Artist Color
Avid Symphony Advanced Color correction and color grading tools are very powerful and work fantastic with the Avid Artist control surface. Advanced and secondary color tools let you correct color and grade it to get the look you’re after-with the utmost precision-and with full 4:4:4 HD RGB color support. Save time and maintain the highest quality production with the fully integrated 10-bit color correction toolset. Quickly and accurately match colors from shot to shot using NaturalMatch. Gain better color precision with support for full-quality 4:4:4 HD-RGB color space processing. Get fine control over shots with animatable color correction. Speed up your color work with Artist Color. And dive into the large palette of easy-to-use tools to refine settings or get creative.
Media Composer color correction
HSL – Hue, Saturation & Luminance (master only)
Curves – Red, Green, Blue, and Master
Symphony Advanced Color correction
HSL – Hue, Saturation, and Luminance
– Highlight Midtones and Shadows
– Master Hue Offsets
– Luma Ranges
Curves – Red, Green, Blue, and Master
Channels
Secondary Color Correction
Relational color correction – This is the ability to quickly apply a correction on a clip and have it apply to a number of clips based on its relations
Avid Symphony 6 Universal Mastering with Avid Nitris DX Hardware
The other advantage of Avid Symphony 6 is Universal Mastering which is only available when used with Nitris DX hardware. Universal Mastering allows you to deliver 24p SD and HD content to multiple SD formats – NTSC (4:3 and 16:9) and PAL (4:3, and 16:9) – with point-and-click ease. Be more productive and profitable-and take advantage of growing worldwide broadcast and distribution opportunities. When you’re ready to send your project out to tape, simply set the desired output frame rate in Universal Mastering to create your final master in the highest quality, with consistency-even if your project includes clips with different frame rates.