Some of the smaller things in Avid Media Composer version 5.

 

There is and will be quite some buzz (link) about Avid Media Composer 5. AMA support for mative R3D, Canon DSLR, etc. all will be covered in a lot of reviews and blogs. So I decided to concentrate on some of the smaller stuff, that is still a lot of fun, IMHO.

 

 

AutoSync

 

AutoSync now lets you select (which) audiotracks of a videoclip you want to use in an AutoSync.

 

 

The Collapse Audio Tracks option allows you to make an A1A2A3 clip of audiotracks that come in as A1A3A5, for instance.

 

 

Quick Transition

 

Quick Transition now lets you (de-)select tracks that you want to apply your transition to:

 

 

 

 

Command Palette

 

The Command Palette now features mappable buttons for 24 audiotracks and 24 videotracks (rather than the 9 of each that were previously mappable).

 

 

 

 

Aspect Ratio

 

The Project Format setting now has a 4:3 / 16:9 setting, rather than the Composer window:

 

 

 

 

Timecode

 

The Timeline now has a timecode window to the upper left corner:

 

 

 

 

Interface Setting

 

The Interface Settings have changed. Actually, quite a few options are taken away from it. A new slider that lets you set your color scheme brighter or darker (darkest will result in white text on black background).

 

 

 

Select Left / Right

 

Now maybe this is not new, but I did not know about it. There is a new function, Select Left and Select Right, which selects all clips left or right of your cursor:

 

 

 

 

Stereo Tracks

 

As advertised, you can now create stereo tracks, but I have some notes on that.

 

Here is how to create them:

 

 

And they look like this (A4, note the double speaker icon):

 

      

 

You can only patch stereo clips to stereo clips.

Unlike Pro Tools, MC does not allow you to move clip pairs from stereo tracks to mono tracks.

 

Creating stereo clips (or splitting them up) is done through Clip->Modify->Set Multichannel Audio.

 

 

There is a downside, though: when I tried to export a stereo track to Pro Tools through AAF, it turned up as a mono track in the Pro Tools session. There is an option to split all tracks into mono, though, so there is a workaround.

 

Also note that 4 stereo tracks take up 8 of your 8 available realtime audiotracks.

 

 

Improved Metadata for Imports

 

Imported files are now much more modifiable. You can set timecode and metadata like Camera Roll, and this info now travels into EDL Manager (this used to be nearly impossible, and is now very straightforward).

 

Also, Read Audio Timecode no longer needs a Tape entry to function (thanks to Bouke for mentioning it).

 

 

A few more notes

 

-      RTAS does not export to Pro Tools

-      RTAS is included in an audio export

-      R3D transcodes are very slow (3 times slower than MetaFuze in my tests) (hadnŐt properly tested with the right Media Creation settings for R3D transcodes!)

-      RedRocket support only for transcodes/renders, and only supported on certain configurations

-      Only the most recent workstations are supported with Windows 7

-      Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) only, you cannot install MC5 on 10.5. You need to do a clean install

-      ScriptSync is now a paid option (995 USD). Upgrading customers get a license for free with MC 5.0. Get it here.

 

 

But, all in all, a pretty awesome release.