The Editblog

I haven’t taken any of the fxphd courses but I have seen a couple of them and heard many praises for the classes and quality of instruction they provide. The new term has just begun and you can view the different courses offered as well as check out the preview video. One particular course of interest to Editblog readers is the course Avid for Indie Film and Commercials. Final Cut Pro classes seem to be a dime a dozen these days so a good Avid course is worth noting. The class is taught by friend of the Editblog John Flowers from LIfeZero, That Media Show and That Post Show. John has been working (more) exclusively on Avid of late and will be a great teacher. From the fxphd website:

In this course, we cover the new Avid Media Composer 3 software, available on both Mac and Windows platforms, with a focus on Independent filmmaking and new media projects. In the first few courses, we take you from Final Cut – the standard tool for most Independent Filmmakers – into Avid – the standard in Hollywood. We will focus on the similarities and differences, with many, many examples.

Click on over and read the 10 class synopsis and then sign up and get started learning Avid for the first time or studying more in-depth Avid techniques.

So Avid updated Media Composer to 3.1 a day or so ago. That’s good, more bug fixes are nice but no Tiger 10.4support! Avid has also updated their official RED support page. From the Avid email:

The Avid® + RED workflow is simplified with the release of REDrushes 3.6, as reflected in the updated Workflow Guide at www.avid.com/red.

Direct transcode to all Avid DNxHD® formats
Corrected “End” timecode in ALE files
Proper representation of “Auxillary TC1″ column in ALE file
Faster import of QuickTime-wrapped Avid DNxHD files

REDrushes 3.6 is available at www.red.com/support.
Richer metadata is available with Avid FilmScribeâ„¢ 24.1

Custom columns now available
Subclips and AutoSyncâ„¢ clips supported in the FilmScribe Master XML
Removed erroneous characters from Master XML file (Windows)
False error messages removed from XML generation process

FilmScribe 24.1 ships with Avid Media Composer® 3.1 and Avid Symphony™ 3.1 and is also available on the Avid Download Center.
More events (now up to 999) are supported in the newly posted 16Char CMX EDL template. Download from the Avid Resources tab at www.avid.com/red.

Avocoda’s cineXML (Mac OS X and Windows) enables DPX file creation via REDCINE, regardless of how the ALE file was created and allows the footage to be archived or moved before the online process.

That sounds like we can now get DNxHD 36 out of REDrushes. Here’s a thread of discussion on the subject from Reduser. Finally we get Adobe support, better Avid support, new Final Cut Pro workflow options … who would have guessed all this RED post goodness would ever come along a year ago?

Over at the Pro Video Coalition, Mike Curtis has posted a piece talking about … wait for it … the future (including Final Cut Pro) of the big 3 A’s (Apple, Avid, Adobe) and their RED support. This is the most detailed information we have heard about what’s in store for Final Cut Pro and its RED support. I would go so far to say that hell may have frozen over without our knowledge as Mike seems to be talking about a future version of the product.

According to Mike, the demo showed a new functionality to the Log and Transfer tool that rewraps RED’s .R3D files while copying the media to your Capture Scratch folder. Currently you re-encode the media through Log and Transfer to ProRes (one of several other options for getting media into FCP). Re-encoding takes time and affects quality as the footage takes a hit. Mike also makes a good comparison to shooting RAW still images with a DSLR and then working from a JPEG and not the RAW. The same thing happens when you encode to ProRes and never touch the .R3Ds again. I’ve speculated before that a large majority of RED projects transcode to ProRes and never touch the .R3Ds again so this new Log and Transfer functionality will be a good thing. But let’s be honest, anything that FCP adds to better support new and emerging media formats is a good thing. Mike also talks about upcoming support in both Color and Final Cut Server. Thanks to Mike for posting this information since we so very rarely ever get a glimpse of an upcoming version of Final Cut Pro.

He also mentions Adobe’s support and Avid. We’ve seen the Adobe implementation that works directly with the .R3D files and it looks promising. And Avid has publicly voiced and demonstrated support for RED so we can expect regular advances in their support as well. So from what we’ve seen publicly Apple’s support for Final Cut Pro looks to be catch-up at this point. Apple so rarely talks about future products it’s hard to know. Avid has great native support for MXF. Adobe is working on native support for .R3Ds. Final Cut Pro has native support only for QuickTime. Something is better than nothing but as these new formats continue to advance FCP is again falling behind.

Avid Demonstrates Support for RED Camera

Click over to HDHead to see a summary of a November 5th presentation by Avid on their RED support. We’ve all been grateful for Avid’s official RED support page but there appears to be more to come with Avid RED support. First is the ability to use Avid MetaFuze to help in the file conversion and preparation of offline media for an Avid edit. Second is what appears to be upcoming support for the raw RED .R3D files in Avid DS. From the HDHead site:

The RED conform in Avid DS will resemble the file based conform via AFE introduced in version 10. A Media Composer AFE will create clips that link to the the original RED .R3D files.

The Avid DS RED importer will allow the full range of RED based adjustments like the parameters in REDcine or REDrushes. Color temperature, ISO speed, OLPF processing, curve adjustments, etc. will all be available in the new importer along with an option to use the .RSX color metadata from REDalert.

This is great news for a RED > Avid conform and the native .R3D support is something that I speculated on  when Avid announced this new version of DS. It wasn’t announced with the new version back in August but I think we all knew it was inevitable.

If you aren’t listening to That Post Show then this is the week to start! John Flowers invited myself and Paul Zadie (Paul also does Film Dojo … John also does That Media Show) to sit in last night and we recorded a great (at least I think it’s pretty great) episode talking about … wait for it … POST! The episode is titled Avid Post Production and we touched on a lot of topics. We veered into the technical side of things a bit more than we all had expected but once we got going on the Avid vs. Final Cut Pro talk the ball really got rolling. While it may feel like we were (are) really down on Final Cut Pro I think a lot of the frustrations that we (me) are feeling at the lack of updates and attention that Apple has given to FCP really came out during the show. With the great upgrades that Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro have both seen recently FCP is sitting at the end of the line right now …. so let’s hop to it Apple!

Grab That Post Show as an mp3 at the show’s website or subscribe in iTunes. It you are doing the iTunes route then give the show some comment love if you don’t mind.

Steve was recently looking at the Avid vs. Final Cut Pro article archive and commented with some questions about deleting in Avid. It is a different behavior that in Final Cut Pro being that you have segment mode to deal with. All the things he is wanting to do are easy if you just forget about how FCP works and learn how Avid works. I’ll attempt to answer his questions:

* What ways can one rapidly select a clip and ripple-delete it?

Select clips with the YELLOW segment arrow and hit delete on the keyboard (backspace, delete):

Or mark a clip with MARK IN to OUT (T key) and hit the X key, for cut:

The second method is dependent on which tracks you have selected. You can see in the image above that V1 and A1 are selected so that’s what will get “ripple deleted” when I hit select with T and then hit X. It will throw the sync off since A2 will stay and all of the media in V1 and A1 will move earlier.

* What ways Non-segment can one rapidly select a clip and non-ripple-delete it?

In the above image example, all you have to do is MARK IN to OUT on a clip (T key) and hit the Z key, for lift. To me it’s very fast in the above example, actually faster than in FCP as I don’t have to touch the mouse (though you can do the exact same thing without the mouse in FCP). Two keystrokes and the V1 and A1 clip are gone.

* What ways can one rapidly select a GAP and ripple-delete it?

You do this the same way you “ripple delete” a clip as in the first question. Since a gap (really called Filler in Avid speak) can be selected just like any clip in the timeline you can move the piece of Filler with segment modes or you can delete or cut it just like any clip. If you life a piece of Filler out it doesn’t do anything since there is nothing there.

* What ways can one rapidly select a GAP and non-ripple-delete it?

Just like selecting any clip in the timeline, position the playhead in the gap and hit the T for MARK IN to OUT. Depending on how your tracks are selected will select the gap:

or when more than one track is selected and the gaps aren’t exactly the same duration you will select both of the tracks from edit to edit:

If you only want to select both bits of filler on V1 and A1 for exactly the same duration as in the above picture you would hit OPTION + T for MARK IN to OUT:

Of course you can’t “non-ripple delete” a gap as it’s either there as a gap or filled with something and not a gap at all. If you do a lift (Z key) on a gap nothing happens. You can select a gap MARK IN to OUT (T key) and then edit in material from the source monitor.

* How can one delete something in a BIN rapidly. (Why isn’t the Trash always visible? Why no right-click delete?)

Just single click the item in the bin and hit DELETE. You then get the delete pop-up which is a great thing in that it gives you a lot of options for the deleting of a clip:

This is a good thing. You want this as an option. It goes to one of the fundamental differences between Avid and FCP, Avid has better media management options and allows the editor a number of choices in how that media is managed. For me a click and delete key combo is preferable to a right click > select sub-menu.

There’s a couple of vital things to learn in Avid that makes life easier. First is to forget the mouse-based FCP stuff you do in the timeline. You can’t automatically have Avid always have segment mode turned on though that is a nice feature request. Best to just map the segment modes to your keyboard so you can easily get to them with a keystroke.

Second it to learn how to turn your track selectors on and off with the keyboard shortcuts:

If you select the proper tracks and then hit MARK IN to OUT (T key) you can easily and quickly select things for lifting, deleting or overwrite editing. Finally, read in the manual about sync locks and their behavior in the track patch bay:

When sync locks are turned on you can’t accidentally throw things out of sync and IMHO it makes Avid editing faster. Here’s an article about sync locks. Avid’s not better or worse than FCP, just different and you can do exactly the same things in one you can do in the other … just in a little different way!

Colorista is a 3-way color corrector very similar in design to the built-in 3-way color corrector that Apple provides with Final Cut Pro. The first question that most people would ask, myself included, is why would anyone want another 3-way color corrector? The short answer is that it produces much better results. That’s a great reason to supplement any default FCP tool with that from another developer.

Colorista interface in Final Cut Pro

When you apply Colorista to a clip and open its controls in the Viewer you see that it has similar looking color wheels to that in the default FCP 3-way color corrector. But Red Giant Software, makers of the Magic Bullet Suite 2008, call these color wheels lift, gamma, gain which are terms that more resemble that in a high end color grading suite like a DaVinci. A name change is one thing but those things have to have functionality to really make a difference. I think one of the best ways to see how Colorista works it to compare some of the same corrections in both Colorist and the FCP 3-way. Stu Maschwitz of DV Rebels Guide fame is the inventor of Colorista and has done that on his website. Since there is a demo of Colorista available you can do the same and decide if Colorista is right for you. For me, I think color correction and color grading is something best left to a professional colorist. They can do a lot better color work than I can. I’ve seen a real colorist work wonders with the FCP 3-way that made my jaw drop. That said I often need to color correct footage myself so I want a tool that is easy to use and produces great results quickly. That’s what Colorista can do.

Another powerful aspect of Colorista is the Power Mask:

Similar to Power Windows in a DaVinci suite it allows you to mask and isolate only parts of the shot for color correction. You choose a rectangle or ellipse shape and then manipulate the size, positions and feathering. While something similar can be achieved with masking and FCP’s built-in 3-way, having this as part of the Colorista filter makes it much easier and faster to work on a specific part of an image. Positioning the mask is the most difficult thing in FCP since you have to click the position + sign in the filter tab before you can get the target to show in the Canvas to allow click and drag positioning of the mask. In Motion those targets are always visible when the filter is selected. It would be great to see a bezier drawing tool to create a custom shape for the mask as well.

Real power can be achieved with Colorista when you apply multiple Colorista filters to a single clip. A great example of this can be found in Red Giant’s own tutorials. They show examples of Colorista in both Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro and how you can use multiple versions on a single clip for a quickie secondary color correction.

One disadvantage when using Colorista in Final Cut Pro is the realtime playback performance. It isn’t nearly as good as that of the built-in 3-way. Colorista has what is called its DeepColor RT engine that offers better realtime performance by “efficiently using your system’s graphics processing power.” This is true in an app like Motion that utilizes the computer’s graphics card for realtime performance but not the case in FCP. Red Giant suggests using the Unlimited RT setting on an FCP timeline but you will get a lowered resolution during what might be a choppy frame rate. According to Red Giant’s engineers this is due mainly to the way FCP uses the FxPlug technology. It will be a great day when we get an FCP update that can use the graphics card as well as Motion can. Bottom line is you can get great color correction done with Colorist you just have to render it when you are done!

Colorist interface in Motion

And one final thing to like is that Colorista will run on a number of different hosts and they are included in one installer. Not may plug-ins do that:

As you can see Avid is included in that installer list. Currently Colorista won’t run on the newest Avid Media Composer 3.0. The engineers at Red Giant Software are working on updating Colorista to run on the newest version of Avid. If you use Avid you know that is has much more competent color correction that Final Cut Pro so the need for Colorista might be less on Avid. But Avid’s color correction toolset can sometimes be a bit overkill so a simple and good tool like Colorista can be good to have on Avid as well. Now if they can just get it updated to run on MC Soft 3.0.

What’s next for Colorista? danrubottom posted a couple of suggestions via Twitter a while back that would be nice:

That’s a great recommendation for the next version. If they would build a powerful secondary color correction tool into Colorista as well then it would more than double the power of the tool. Colorista might still be considered early in its life so there is a lot of room to grow. It’s also a good tip to know that when you are working on the overall settings for the lift/gamma/gain you may feel like you want to drag around the circle of the color wheel to move the slider. It’s designed to follow the left and right moves of your mouse. If you stick with left / right movement then it will work a lot better. There’s other 3rd party color correction tools available; Color Finesse and Apple’s own Color but for a great price / performance ratio it’s hard to beat Colorista. And since there is a demo available there’s really no reason not to the Colorista for you color correction needs.

While 2009 isn’t that far away I’m happy to report that I have recently gotten my hands on the Magic Bullet Suite 2008 from Red Giant Software. It’s a comprehensive suite of software that would go well in most any editors toolbox, especially if he/she does finishing out of the edit suite. There’s really a lot of things that this package can do and you might not use everything on one job. But then if you put them all together and use them to complement each other you just might find Magic Bullet Suite 2008 cab help put a polish on your edit that isn’t possible with the stock Final Cut Pro tools alone.

The biggie in the suite would probably be Magic Bullet Looks. There’s been a lot written about Looks and its innovative approach of simulating different parts of the filmmaking process in order to achieve a desired look. It shows that someone was thinking outside the box when they designed the interface and the results can be stunning. Presets or custom looks, you can do things in Magic Bullet Looks you can’t do anywhere else.

Magic Bullet Colorista is color correction tool similar to the Final Cut Pro three way color corrector but only in the color-wheels they both share. While you can do nice work with the stock FCP 3-way corrector Colorista comes much closer to what a higher end color grading suite could achieve. Use it once and you won’t want to color correct with the FCP’s built-in tool again.

Magic Bullet Frames is for giving interlaced video the 24P look of film. And everyone who has interlaced video these days wants the film-look right?

Magic Bullet Steady is an image stabilization tool. Wobbly, shaky, jittery … Steady will attempt to smooth it out and give you a few options for the smoothness level, all the way to a lock down. It’s goes head-to-head with Smoothcam and claims much faster time when analyzing footage.

Finally there is Magic Bullet Instant HD. Designed to convert standard definition DV to high definition Instant HD uses sharpening and anti-aliasing to up-rez to any number of HD formats.

I’ve begun kicking the tires on the Suite and so far it’s a nice package. Stay tuned for an upcoming review of the different parts and pieces.

If you are one of the 140 Avid-using nominees for this year’s Emmy awards then you might just find this little Media Offline mousepad good for a laugh! If you are one of the winning Avid users out of the 31 editing, sound editing and program categories then the mousepad or a set of coasters might be the perfect compliment to the Emmy award in your editing suite! Thanks to Knut in Norway who found these items and let us know via Twitter. They may have to come up with a new design for the Lift Team since that little guy got the ax in version 3. Now if someone could get that to my wife … the mousepad would make a great stocking stuffer this Christmas!

The first thing you’ll notice about Avid Media Composer 3.0 is the … icons. That’s right, for all of the longtime Avid users out there the iconic icon of the little weightlifter there on the z key known as “lift” … is gone.

He and many others have been replaced by more generic icons across the board. This was reported on the web before the release hit the streets so it wasn’t entirely a shock. I kind of miss the little guy though as the weightlifter always meant Avid. But I can see why they changed the z key as well as a number of other icons. They have decided to color-code a number of basic editing functions across the application.

The red arrow now means to lift or overwrite an edit across the application. That means when you perform an edit with any one of the “red-arrowed” edit functions you won’t be causing yourself any real sync issues as the new media overwrites what is there.

When using a “yellow-arrowed” edit function like extract or splice-in, you will close that hole upon an extraction or insert new media thus moving all other elements down in the track, possibly causing sync issues. Of course that depends on how you have your sync-lock function working but that’s the idea. Lift/overwrite functions in red and extract/splice-in in yellow. It may be scandalous that the weightlifter is gone but the color-coding of those basic edit commands, with icons that more represent the actual function, was probably done to make it easier for new users to understand. And that it should.

With that out of the way the next thing you’ll notice about this new release is the speed. One generally thinks about having to buy a new computer with a faster processor to get more speed but with this Avid update you get it included in the software. It’s speed where it counts too. Faster moving around the timeline, both with audio scrubbing on and off. Faster reactions when moving things to and from bins as well as better responsiveness when navigating menus and settings. But most importantly is more speed with all things related to that timeline. Entering and then playing in trim mode is near instantaneous. Un-dos and re-dos happen about as quick as you can push the buttons. And the four-frame display while in segment mode is thankfully usable again. Avid has said that for this release they were concentrating on performance and stability. That means maybe we shouldn’t have expected a ton of new flashy features. It’s always interesting when software updates are more of an upgrade that is based on performance rather than new tools or features as it might not make for as an exciting a demo at a trade show … but the change will be obvious for users of previous versions of Media Composer once you start editing.

As I mentioned I’m happy to report that Trim mode is speedier with this upgrade. The Avid Trim mode is something that it is always worth mentioning when talking about Avid Media Composer. I’ve never met anyone who uses the Avid that doesn’t live in trim mode. It’s one of the most missed features when cutting on Final Cut Pro. I was once asked to provide a quote about Avid trim mode and here is what I said: “The Avid trim tool is by far the greatest non-linear editing tool to be coded by a human being. It is very functional and very intuitive. From the simplest double roller trim to the most complex asynchronous multi-track trim, it delivers. And the ability to play out a slip or slide edit makes it even more useful. Plus there is the great little progress line that plays along in the timeline as you trim. It’s perfect visual feedback. Yea, I know that FCP added jkl (dynamic) trimming but its implementation is still light years behind what Avid has perfected.”

That may sound like hyperbole but IMHO that’s how good trim mode is and with the new speed in version 3 it’s faster … and faster is better.

Roundtripping is a big buzzword in the Final Cut Studio suite as well as Dynamic Relinking in the Adobe Creative Suite. These terms describe a link between the editing application and supporting apps like After Effects or Motion. Create a motion graphics sequence in one of these apps and then without rendering out a piece of self-contained media drop them into the timeline of their sister editing app (Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro) and you can render the motion graphic in the timeline. Update the graphic later in the creating application and it will update in the editor. With this version of MC Soft 3.0 on the Macintosh, Avid has added its own graphics and effects application Avid FX.

Avid FX is based off of Boris RED. Boris RED is a titling, effects and compositing piece of software that has been around for years. While it doesn’t have the penetration of Adobe After Effects (and probably not Apple Motion either) it does have a devoted following. Anyone familiar with After Effects will be able to pick their way around Avid FX and really learn it well with some dedicated time.

Click for larger view of Avid FX interface

Unfortunately there isn’t a printed manual included for Avid FX (no one seems to include them anymore) so you’ll have to rely on the help files to learn more. And those help files aren’t great but they are better than nothing. The best thing about Avid FX is that when installed you get a new category in the effects palette called Avid FX. The Avid FX Filter and Avid FX Transition can be applied just like any effect or transition in the timeline. You can then open the Avid FX application via the effects editor and go to town doing any kind of effects or compositing work you see fit. The full effect build is then updated in the timeline. It’s really useful with the transition effect as you apply it as a transition between the two clips and then build a custom transition from within Avid FX. The Avid FX Title-Matte Effect seems like it would allow you to create a title or something similar and then just key through to the background just like any title. It doesn’t seem to work that way for me and to be quite honest I can’t figure out exactly what it does so if you’ve got that one figured out please comment below. Another nice thing about Avid FX? You don’t have to go to Marquee anymore!

If you are new to Avid from Final Cut Pro one thing that always seems confusing is segment mode.

When you click and drag around in the timeline you are only moving the playhead, not individual clips in the timeline. To move clips via click & drag you have to enter segment mode. It’s a totally different philosophy from how a number of other editing apps work but for many it allows the editor to perform basic edits very fast. For others it is baffling. To this day I can still do a basic cuts/dissolve type edit, say rebuilding from a printed EDL or a paper cut, much faster in Avid than in Final Cut Pro. One thing that would be a great improvement would be for the Avid to stay in the selected segment mode until the editor turns segment mode off. The app will stay in segment mode after you move a clip and then play or move the playhead via the keypad but if you click and drag down in the timecode track to move the playhead you leave segment mode. By staying in the selected mode it would allow for another way of working which would be very welcome. Avid also finally added the ability to select clips on different tracks and move them via segment mode. What they haven’t done is give the editor the ability to select multiple non-adjacent clips and move them together. This kind of makes it feel like they have just missed something with segment mode but the developers are aware that this would be a nice feature to have and it will probably come along in future updates.

A couple of great new features that have been added are the Timecode Burn-In tool and the Subcap tool. Both are under the new Generators heading in the effects pallet.

The Timecode Burn-In tool goes a step beyond simple burn-in and allows customization of different types of displays and it does so in real time.

One fantastic thing that it does is display other types of information like clips names and a custom note.

The new Subcap tool is an easy way to add open captioning from a text file. According to Avid it “Provides quick and easy way to fulfill delivery requirements for foreign markets and integrates easily into existing subtitling workflows by supporting EBU-N19.” I haven’t used it for this particular purpose but I did slap it on an offline the other day and use it to provide on-screen notes on parts of the edit as it went by. As I mentioned these new effects are under a Generator heading so I hope they will provide other new additions to the Generators in the future.

They’ve also added improved performance for HD codecs that aren’t full raster like HDV and DVCPRO HD:

New codecs are supported like Sony XDCAM-EX (using the Sony Clip Browser software), Panasonic AVC-I & JVC 23.976p & 25p HDV. Plus, contrary to what you might have read in other reviews (and confusingly on Avid’s own site) Media Composer 3 software will run on PowerPC Macs. I’ve run it on a Mac Pro and a Dual 2.7 G5. Performance on the G5 is pretty good.

I also want to mention ScriptSync. People often wonder what the advantages of Media Composer over Final Cut Pro might be. Here’s one great example. Besides the fact that you can even do script based editing on Avid and can’t on FCP, allowing Script Sync technology to phonetically line the script with actual takes from captured media means you don’t have to do it by hand. One important thing to remember is that it doesn’t have to be a narrative script. If you have transcripts of footage then you can use ScriptSync to associate the transcript with the footage. It’s a great way to stay organized and find specific things at a moments notice. It can work in languages other than English and is surprisingly accurate as well.

What’s not to like? One thing that I hate, hate, hate about Media Composer is that you can’t do any kind of scrolling or zooming around the timeline while it is playing back. Try to zoom out and playback stops. Hell, try to clear an IN point and playback stops!! This seems very antiquated in a modern NLE. I also really wish Avid had some kind of “check for updates” menu (or even a stand alone application) that would look at your currently installed version, and also the OS and QuickTime versions, and be able to download the updates. It has always been difficult to even learn about updates to the Avid software much less download and install them. Even if a new version requires you to uninstall an old version they should build some kind of tool that makes this process easier. In an age where all computers are connected to the Internet, software updating should be a simple affair. I don’t mean it should be automated as you don’t want to update your editor right in the middle of a big project but it should be one click to at least see what the new version is and where to get it. Even better if it can tell you things like the fact that you might need to start at version 3.0.1 for Mac OS 10.4 because of a bug related to the Avid Mojo SDI box and Mac OS 10.5. And it may be just me but the Export dialog box has always been confusing. There is only one Export under the file menu and from there you choose what you want from a pop-up. You can then Save As that setting and it ends up in the Settings tab. I have tons of them there and I wish there was a better way to store them. It also seems like I often make a change to a setting and don’t save it properly so the next time I go to output a Quicktime Movie with a particular export setting it’ll be set to something else. Maybe I’m just not paying enough attention but usually you are exporting near the end of the day so it really should be idiot proof. And don’t even get me started on the Send To menu. Like the Avid FX Title-Matte Effect, maybe i am just dumb but there is something about the Send To operations that has always stumped me. And Media Composer 3 is certified to work with Leopard but damn if it doesn’t make my dock do some crazy disappearing/becoming invisible act sometimes after tabbing through Spaces or hiding and showing. I know that it’s still there as I can show/hide the dock but I see some funky mirror image of the dock which isn’t really there anymore:

Seems like a bug so I guess they aren’t all gone.

This release is much more stable than the last. Crashes were few and far between and I only have seen one instance of the dreaded “bus error” that has plagued some earlier Media Composer releases. While I’m still not sure I like the cryptic error messages you get when Avid crashes there has to be some reasoning behind the long, crazy string of characters that pop-up. It might be less scary if you just got a generic “this application has unexpectedly quit” message but that would not mean as much to someone in the know.

To sum up … Avid Media Composer 3 is a must update for Avid users. The speed alone makes it worth the price of admission. There are a number of upgrade options from early versions of Media Composer as well as Avid Xpress Pro and Avid Xpress DV. If you choose the download option there is also a download-able bundle of the 3rd party applications that come in the boxed version for $195. That’s worth it as you get Sorenson Squeeze and Avid FX, two applications that make the suite much more worthwhile. So if you are an Avid user grab your checkbook and get version 3.