Avid Media Composer 6

Well it's finally out, no big party no big announcement it just popped up!
What do you guys thing?

To me its more like the FCP8 with the darker Avid look.
This could be the next one! I might have to check it out and se how it does!

No, it's more like a PPro rip-off with the interface. The interface is way more cluttered and unappealing than FCP ever was. It now does everything we could do with FCP and PPro for some time now. The price is outrageously expensive. But we will see what happens over time as folks start to use it. Funny the offer a discount to legacy FCP users, but not FCP X users. What's the deal there? Personally, I didn't see much that really impressed me. They're still trying to play catch up with FCP and PPro.

It was funny how they used all of Steve Job's tag lines, just like in the PT10 announcement (where no one applauded much). I'm trying to figure out what about MC6 is "game changing", "paradigm changing", and "revolutionary".

I think PPro is going to wipe the floor with Avid.

BenB wrote: It now does everything we could do with FCP and PPro for some time now.

and not in FCPX! lol

I don't know it does have nice tools, why would the big wigs in Hollywood use this?
Have you looked into this? Cause alone the stereographic tool looks pretty promising!

The reason for the FCP7 deal is, targeting the right crowd. Had a nice long talk at this years at the IBC and Supermeet about Avid next move and looks like most of use where almost spot on right.
How many high end FCP7 user think went over to FCPX?

My point is, what is MC6 doing for the price that FCP 7 and PPro haven't already BEEN doing? Both have been doing 3D for almost two years now. FCP 7 is used in more broadcast than anyone, and equals Avid in Hollywood. FCP X is not aimed at Hollywood, as that is a very tiny niche market today, and the overwhelming users like us don't do that level of work. Let Avid have it, there's not much of a market there. And consider the dire financial problems Avid is having. Will "just catching up" at a super high mega price tag be enough to save them?

FCP7 had a build in stereographic tool?? :ohmy: The fact is FCPX doesn't supply and Media Composer 6 does right out of the box.

I wouldn't say Hollywood is a niche market besides it is the one everybody looks up to.
Reason why Walter Murch is in the "Editors media". Not being pro Avid here just looking at the facts... which how everybody is on Avids back for laying of people, didn't Apple do the same. Yup.
I wouldn't consider myself not doing that level of work since I had my share in it. But even the Pros outside of Hollywood won't be looking up to Apple for long unless something is going to change... Apple kills Shake, Color, Xserver, Final Cut Server, xRaid, xServe and still waiting for a updated Mac Pro.
This is a stamens I have been hearing from many freelancers, manager and production houses.
If Apple doesn't show us a road map or a future enlightenment then we have to jump band wagon.
Which I hope there is something is coming!

FCP 7, FCP X, PPro have been doing 3D with third party plugins for much, much less than Avid.

Fact, Hollywood is a niche market, and a very, very tiny part of the overall industry today.

Apple has made several announcements giving us their future road map.

PPro is going to wipe the floor with MC6. MC6's price is just too high. I can still do it all for a fraction of that with FCP 7 or PPro including 3rd party add on costs.

But it's great that MC6 has finally caught up to what the other two big A's have been doing for some time now, great news for Avid users. Good to see they've opened up an API to third party vendors, and are supporting non-proprietary hardware. All great news. But it is far from their claim (and Jobs tag line rip off) of "revolutionary" and "paradigm changing".

Well they all had 3rd Party that is not a argument for me.
If they did give you road map then tell me when is and what will the next Mac Pro is coming?

Apple has a 10 year development plan for FCP X, and plan on it being as professional as ever.

May be no more Mac Pros, no one is buying them. Apple is debating it internally now. If you can get a MBP with T'bolt, what do you need a MP for?

I heard that same excuse about the Xserve and we all know that is not so 100% exact.
And besides it is true that they haven't sold many Mac Pro but you don't have to be genius to know people are waiting for update.
I hope your not serious about comparing MacBook Pro thunderbolt with Mac Pro?
More memory, storage, cores choice of graphic cards and etc... the list for flexibility is longer then it's little brother the MacBook Pro.

That's true, but if people don't buy enough widgets to turn enough profit, you stop making them. Personally, I'd hate to see the tower go. But it's not my decision to make.

We have a bunch of MacPros (and I mean a large bunch). One month ago I purchased a new iMac i7 27". I had received a Promise Thunderbolt 12 TB RAID to test drive and wanted to use this iMac to see how the Promise performed with FCPX. I had the iMac configured with 16 GB RAM and the 2GB VRAM 6970M graphics card with a 250GB SSD as boot drive and an internal 1TB drive. I started playing with FCPX on it and boy what a surprise!!! This system simply outperforms our 2010 8-core MacPros in many ways. FCPX feels snappy on it, conversions and rendering are super fast and the connectivity over Thunderbolt is amazing.

Using one little Thunderbolt port we can connect Terabytes of RAID drives, multiple 27" screens and any Thunderbolt enabled video capture and playback card to the same iMac. I connected a Blackmagic Ultra Studio 3D to get HD SDI in and out, perfect for capturing HDCAM SR tape (using Media Express included with the card) and outputting our edits back to tape. With a Sonnet Thunderbolt expansion card we even can connect our traditional capture cards to the machine. And the system really screams...

So I see no objective reason why I would consider buying another MacPro at this stage. Bulky tower systems seem to become a thing of the past. And I encourage this trend.

I haven't tested this setup with a Thunderbolt MBP at this stage, but I'm surely going to do this.

I would you add your iMac to a Fiber XSAN? Just curious.

Using SANLink. It came with the Promise system we are testing. Connects without any problems.

I edited a lengthy promo piece a couple of weeks ago on a 17 inch MBP, RAM maxed out, T'bolt LaCie 2TB drive. It was amazing. Outperformed my MP tower with Quad-Core 3.2gHz, 16 GB RAM, Radeon HD 4870.

I'd love to sell off my tower and 30 inch Apple Cinema Display and external drives, and my 2.5 year old MBP, and get a new MBP, Tbolt display, Promise 6 bay RAID, and an AJA Io XT, AJA Control Room software, and I'd still have use of my FSI monitor, too. That's my dream system at this point.

As for AVID, their stocks have been on a downward drop for several years now, two years ago they laid off 150 people, last year 400 people, this year 200 people. So who's left to answer all of those customer support phone calls they're promising to be there for? They have an batch of top dog lawyers fighting off bankruptcy at the moment, and their market share has steadily dropped from 48 percent to 17 percent since 2002. PT10 has a luke warm reception. MC6 is so over priced it's not funny, not to mention folks can get an PPro system, with third party add-ons to do everything MC6 does, for a fraction of the price. I'm worried about AVID. I don't want to see them fold, but it's not look very good.

I'd honestly hate to see them fold, but they've never really kept up with modern technology or the NLE market very well until now. And now PT10 and MC6 are only just up to what everyone else does, nothing "new" for a DAW or NLE.

ronny courtens wrote: ...With a Sonnet Thunderbolt expansion card we even can connect our traditional capture cards to the machine. And the system really screams...

Hi Ronny, what is the Sonnet Thunderbolt Expansion Card you are referring to? Are you speaking of the Sonnet Echo Thunderbolt Adapter used with the Sonnet Tempo Pro Express Card?

Avid definitely have been late to open up to a wider market, for years they have been a company who sells hardware that runs their software and support to suit.

Time crept up and hardware did too, now that level of hardware isn't necessary for most people they have delved into software only, third party hardware solutions to compete. I think they should have earlier.

But regardless of hardware, business and even feature aspects, as an editing tool Avid was, still is and I'm sure will continue to be a top class piece of software. On that front it has never being playing catch up with anyone.

But there have been cheaper options for a long time now, and the options are getting better and cheaper.

This isn't so much in reply to, but is definitely more related to Tapio's post that looks like it jumped to the "Broadcast Monitoring in 10.0.3 - Matrox, Blackmagic, AJA?" thread, post #4745.

One of the things that people (non users reasons not to change) complained about for years was that it only worked with it's own codecs, eventually they introduced AMA, but their old way of working is still much better. They introduced other things, the smart tool (which is great), the new interface, 3rd party hardware etc. and pretty much all of these changes are in response to getting customers from Apple and Adobe who in the meantime learned to get on with less efficient editing systems at the compromise of lower hardware and software costs.

What I like is that while Avid is opening up this stuff and learning about the new customer base from Apple and Adobe, and realising that non users complaints could are relevant. Apple have always learned from Avid, particularly now with the "Create Optimised Media" function that Avid only worked with for so long. It's the base to how they got so stable.

I just hope the they do the same with FCPX's trimming toolset, not necessarily make it the same, but learn how important it is and give us something as fast, as robust and with all the options Avid's old/new combination has.

Ahhh now I understand why there was this Avid post in the FCPX Monitoring thread.
I thought it was someone trying to be cheeky.

Anyway my take on MC6. YAWN. I've been using Media Composer since version 3.15 (Before the reset) back in 1992 and I'm always shocked at how little it's changed over the years.

When Avid invited me to their big launch of MC 6 listing some of the new features I went, as I was actually a bit excited to see if they were finally going to start innovating again.

I was sadly disappointed. Downloaded the Trial and I was gutted.

I still used Avid just about daily but I liken it to Steve Jobs analogy of PCs being Trucks and iPads been sports cars. That's the same way I feel about Avid.

Right now it's the only solution for any large organisation that needs to share a lot of resources.
Nothing does it better. But boy is it getting long in the tooth.

Same goes for Adobe, years and years of adding features until the thing is so bloated and cumbersome to use you feel like your working with one hand tied behind your back.

The glimmer of hope was when Avid delivered Avid Studio for iPad. Maybe there are some developers left there that want to see some modernisation, and push Avid beyond what is really just for 10% of high end users.

Hopefully their share holders will have the patience to let this occur.

I couldn't agree more, Seanus.

It's been a long time since Avid have been innovators, what they have works very fast and very well. They never needed to change anything to keep their customer base happy, and overlooked the need to get others interested.

But they're late realisation to a changing market is going to need to move fast, The start seemed to be when they bought out Pinnacle a while back, but that never really went anywhere. Not until now when I've also wondered about where they'll go now that their iPad edition does show promise on that front. But I think over time FCPX could surpass them even at the higher end levels.

I am maybe a little worried that Apple will do a Premiere, and put power and feature before editing function. As good as it is on many fronts, Premiere is a slug on that department.

I would have no fear about that mate. Apple have ALWAYS put the user experience way before features.

It's their mantra. Only put it in if it can be fantastic. I think that's why we had to wait for Multicam, they didn't want to give us some hobbled approach. They wanted it to be the best there is. And they did it.

Remembering that they are a hardware company first, so they really do have their finger on the pulse of what cool technologies are going to be there for it in the future.

Any back to AVID. It's funny because if there was one thing that I reckon AVID still does better than any NLE it's Trimming. I like the FCP X method but I love the two big screens, the way you can rock and roll over an edit, trim transitions, 6 window display etc that you have with AVID.