Guide to Avid Media Composer 2019 w/ Kate Ketcham | Videoguys News Day 2sDay LIVE Webinar


all right welcome everyone to today's video guys Newsday Tuesday today special guest Kate ketchup the product manager Media Composer we're going to talk all about Media Composer on this show so Kate thanks for coming on hi thank you for having me oh it's a pleasure one of the things we talked about in the the pre-show that I want to dig a little bit deeper into while I got you here is we can go into all the features of 2009 19 but I think what's really important is how you got there talk to us about how you interviewed editors at every level you you welcome the community to participate this wasn't something that was made in an ivory tower this was made with avid editors side by side so tell us a little bit more about that process if you could I'd yeah absolutely I mean we we really started this process a few years ago with the introduction of Media Composer first and that started with talking with users who would you know with students with kids would never even heard of me to composer and touched it and tried if we tried to take the current needed composer and make it into something that those users could use and we realized through that process that we need to do a lot further so for the past 2 years 2 and a half years you've been talking to editors one-on-one in groups through the ACA phone calls in person just showing them even the roughest from the roughest like sketch designs to more developed designs and final actually getting the product out in front of them even when it was barely usable we still wanted to say here's where we've gotten to do we think this is the right thing and the feedback has been great and we've been you know we would go down roads of design and then get feedback back and completely take a different direction based on what the users were saying what they were what they were experiencing both again the new user but then also we really relied very heavily on our experienced users to make sure that the changes that we made weren't you know messing up their workflow and keeping them from actually getting to that was that was the million-dollar challenge right yeah how to make some of it was gonna be new and exciting to get a new generation of editors to want to use avid as their first choice but by the same regard you have respect those years of experience and muscle memory and talent and just you know let's face it oscars and Emmys and all that other good stuff that comes from using Media Composer to produce basically everything that's anything on TV on Netflix and the movies it's made on avid media composer I mean there's exceptions there but I mean it's such a small sliver the bottom line is if it's creative content and it's wonderful there's a 90 plus percent chance it was done on Media Composer yeah exactly exactly and then that was that's always we have a top of mind we know that there's the best media the best the best stories being told out there using I'm using Media Composer using our products so we wanna make sure that can continue cool so let's talk about the key elements that were changed number one is the redesign UI and user experience talked about that for us a little bit if you could yeah so we again really looking at we started the process looking at how do we make an easier Media Composer it was very difficult to approach Media Composer and get started so we looked at what other products are doing and what you know what it kind of intuitive and modern design looks like and we worked with and outside an outside consulting firm as well whose own all they do is UI and UX design so we've it's very familiar but then also totally different it's a paneled UI you know when you when you change the size of one window it affects others they all snap together it's which is complete a complete variation from what the way Media Composer was before and then there's just smaller things that that visually have a big impact but you might not really notice like the it's a flattened UI the buttons don't pop out there's a new color scheme we've rearranged where certain things are and and how you access to certain menus and things but all in service of being more intuitive more efficient easier to learn but also just easier to integrate back into your into your regular editing life and right now our virtual set is actually the user and it's which is kind of cool it you know I know some people some older users or say you know what's with all the colors and stuff like that but you're trying to make a statement part of that's marketing you don't have to use crazy colors if you don't want right exactly exactly yeah we wanted something that you know a new user could look at it and say that that's fresh and modern and you know it's definitely media composer and definitely avid but it could but it fits into the world that that we're in now right with bright colors and something that's dynamic and and exciting to look at I want to pull the admin interface up again we're going to switch that because one of the things that I really like about the interface is that over the years one of the biggest changes we've seen is a lot of people at it on a laptop one screen and you're really respecting screen real estate and what I mean by that for people who hear it said is stuff comes out when you need it and then it goes away into a convenient place when you don't and I don't want to call it tabs because I think that's an oversimplification and I want to call it panels because I think people think of panels like flooding their whole interface but I really love the way things snap into place when you need them with the tools that you need so they're a click away and then when you don't need those tools anymore in another set of tools you bring up those tools and the tools that you most need are in the most convenient spot while you're editing did I do that justice yeah I think yeah no that's exactly it it's all about one of our principles or tenants was that Media Composer was adjustable so as you said we've got people who editing a laptop so you've got people editing on big you know three monitors screen so it's making sure that you can still get to the tools you need but we're always respecting the screen real estate and then you know what you're actually using at the time so you know for instance we've got this these new workspaces and when you're in the audio workspace we're not showing you a bunch of color correction tools or things you don't need to edit with audio we're saving up we're putting those all we're hiding them to actually need them so there's some of that automatic management that we do for you but then there's also you can still completely customize it the way you want so to make sure that whatever you tool that you need at that exact moment you can get access to yeah and I know you brought back some very familiar shortcuts the people liked and the muscle memory keyboard treatments are still the same so great job on that I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the pricing because there was some changes to the pricing and I think now would be a good time at the show to talk about that it you could still buy the perpetual version but that's going to cost you a little bit more money it's going up to four t99 and i think what's important to also notice the standard support contract for that is going up to 399 we're gonna double back on that a little bit I want to talk about the subscriptions now because I get the need of you as a vendor of software to need a subscription model that that continuous revenue becomes continuous development dollars resource dollars and also it lets you plan easier and the old days of all the big revs coming out in May and we're gonna make all our money in 30 days doesn't exactly allow you to run a smooth business so I get the need for the subscription model and I also want to say that I get the need to raise the price sometimes when something's price may be lower than it needs to be and I know you raised the price a little bit on the standard subscription up to 2 2995 a year I still think that's a tremendous deal especially when you look at you know where other products are out there I mean you're still less than $20 a month yeah yeah exactly and that was I mean it was as you said it's important to us for us to make sure that we can continue to develop and create the products that that we know and love and make sure we can you know fund those kinds of projects so we but we also didn't want to you know inflate the price unnecessarily so we really wanted to make sure that it was still affordable and it's a great deal and you're right it really is don't you think about what you're getting with for Media Composer for that price and the ultimate version is staying the same price for 99.95 year now you know 500 dollars a year for a tool that I use every day it doesn't really seem that expensive to me I think it's still a great value I understand some people just hate this subscription mount but to me I love it I mean I subscribe to Netflix I subscribe to the Hulu my cellphone carrier is really a subscription when you think about it and in fact from our business point of view we've got the subscription models with zero some of the tools we use including Microsoft Office and I I don't mind having that charge be on my card every month or every year if I know it's something that I'm making money because if I look at it as an investment and I expect more from you with the subscription that is I expect more updates I don't expect to ever hear again we can't fix that till the next big release and more importantly than that I love how sometimes the features sneak in there that you just get for nothing that are fantastic you don't care for none but you know you guys release the keys you have it and it's ready you don't have to wait because of revenue recognition some other you know guidelines from you know the federal government or the Securities Exchange Commission yeah no that's exactly I don't we and we've been very conscious of making sure that we're constantly releasing updates with not just the bug fixes every month but as you said kind of those little for free features those things that you don't really expect and suddenly it's there and you realize how was i living without this for so long and we try to from a you know he's abused and use of upgrade trying to kind of condense and put large upgrades all together but still we're constantly rolling out even the smallest updates as smallest features every single month to make sure that your you know your maximum maximizing the value of that subscription cool let's concentrate on ultimate a little bit first of all let's talk about the features that are an ultimate that aren't in the standard that's separated that make it better make it ultimate you got the citizen color correction I'm gonna bring down the list then we're gonna pop to you to go in a little more in-depth all right we have symphony color correction Universal mastering scripts Inc phrase fine and compatibility with a nexus Pro shared storage solution so let's bring Kate up to go a little more in-depth into those differences yeah so the nice thing too about all the things with in many people's our ultimate is that if you you needed to you could subscribe to the symphony color correction or phrase minor scripts things separately with with the standard media composer but we know that you know if you need one of those tools and options you're probably gonna need the other so when I put them all together they're incredibly powerful tools scripts Incan phrase one particular save hundreds of hours of work with the phonetic indexing and phonetic search so we really you know we wanted to to make this version equal to the ultimate version all of the the the best tools the best options and features that make you the most efficient you talked about freeze fight because that's something that you know when you when it wreak am out it was there it went away it came back that that's a tool that I think when you talk about saving time and effort you know finding a clip finding that right part the video can be very very difficult and phrase fine can really especially if you shot let's say four or five cameras hours each and you've got to find a certain clip where someone mentions you know the Toyota Corolla or the women's soccer team and phrase fine let's you actually look for that specific word and it finds it from the video and that's pretty incredible technology yeah yeah no it's it's amazing I'm always them I'm amazed every time I see it happen but it's just as you said it's if you're if you're filming hours and hours of footage and you know they're you're looking for one specific word among all of those hours simply typing it in and it's a it's a true phonetic search it's not speech-to-text it's not it's it's really very powerful and it's not based on spelling so it's really you can you could you could misspell the word when you're searching for it doesn't matter it's really truly looking for the the phenome is actually how someone says the word and it's it's amazing how much time you can spend cuz otherwise you're making transcripts or you have to mentally kind of scroll through everything and this is typing the word a phrase you're looking for word and all the different options pop up and it shows you you know where they are within the sequence or within the clip you can click through them and go to each one and audition them all to find what knew exactly what you're looking for as you said it saves you so much time and it's incredibly easy to use there's almost no thought to it and give us a quick rundown of what makes scripts Inc so cool yeah so script think scripts Inc uses the same phonetic indexing technology but what it does is it automatically aligns all of your your master Clips your video and audio files directly to your sequence to your sequence to your script so if you import a script rather than having to do all that alignment yourself and manually matching it up and winding the script it does it all automatically for you again based on reading the text and then matching that to the to the spoken word and it'll do every single take it'll do every version different camera line them all up to the exact scene in line that that's in the script so for anyone creating a movie or a show that's scripted this is a no-brainer yeah exactly and it also actually is helpful for if you're doing any kind of unscripted work and you get a transcript of it you can then also do that do that lining and very clever I like that no Symphony color correction that's a tool that got a big boost end of last year correct you want to talk to us about some of the tools are in it and if you could can you share maybe some stuff to expect this year as the color corrector keeps getting better yeah absolutely um so yeah so at the end of the year we added shape based color Corrections the symphony color corrector allows you to do you know basic color correction just on the different color channels but also doing white balance different automatic color correction as well as manual color Corrections but you can do secondary color Corrections you can do relational color Corrections that's all within that tool set already at the end of last year we added the ability to shape based color correction so actually be able to draw shape either freeform or a set shape on your on your video layer and then correct what's inside the shape and what's outside the shape separately I mean you can do multiple shapes in the same layer I mean it can be animated and move in and out and change over time it's very powerful stuff it's something we've been wanting to wendice product for a long time and probably got to do that what you'll see later this year are improvements to shape based color correction so actually having to have multiple layers with multiple shapes and then also changes to exporting color Corrections so being able to export a sequence bypassing all of the color correction already done so you have an uncorrected sequence when you do an export which is requirements for some of the OTT providers today and then also some enhancements around HDR and be able to correct things like the specular highlights separately from them regularly now richard mortgages chimed in on a facebook chat with a question that i was gonna go to on this slide anyway yes you know I have an old perpetual license and a dongle I kind of let it slip I'm I I don't have a current support player one of my options one of these I want to talk about is you guys have done a great thing you're allowing those people who Media Composer that no longer has an active support for $2.99 they can cross grate to the ultimate subscription and not only that you're going to allow them to get the second year at $2.99 also so that's almost like getting by one year get one year from you it's a tremendous deal at $2.99 and for anyone out there with older versions of Media Composer this is a great opportunity download media composer first see how it is play a little bit and then take the time take advantage this $2.99 upgrade for two years because you're gonna be on the ultimate set of tools Media Composer ultimate and we're real excited about that offer because III think it's important to accept the fact that a lot of people got comfortable with the old version or maybe tried some other stuff because they thought it was the new kid in town and the truth of the matter is the dust is kind of settled out and those other tools are good and whatever tool you use is fine but the best tool for the job when you want to make professional video and film is still avid media composer and it just got a whole lot better so you owe it to yourself to take advantage of this cross grade if you're an old-time user and then I also want to mention that there's a bunch of training videos that you guys have posted already that are broken down into easy to two 5-minute digestible segments so that if you are an old media composer users are looking for how would they do things in the new way you watch those videos about a dozen of them get familiar with the interface as well as how it's working differently and how a lot of stuff's still the same next I want to cut to something that's exciting these are two specials that we have at video guys because we always like to take care of the avid community who were a big part of and that is is we bought in a lot of the support contracts so while the annual support is going up to 399 a year we still have it at the old price that we could deliver it to 85 a year and what we found out that we didn't know and we're excited to find out it's true is if you want to if you're on an older version you need to stay on that older version because it ties it to your workflow perpetually but you want to cry you want to upgrade and you don't want to pay the higher price you can actually stack multiple years so if you want to buy two or three support contracts you can buy them from us load them into your avid user account and now you won't be good for the next two or three years so thank you for letting us get that passed that savings on to the avid world and also thank you for allowing those to be stackable because that's really cool that's something people requested a lot that maybe we could have couldn't do but we always tell them they couldn't but we have a confirmed now that it absolutely will work you can stack multiple annual supports and the other thing is that you get the second year at $2.99 with the cross grade as well so two tremendous offers if your perpetual to stay on the support plan or to go to the new ultimate it's your choice we've got them both available for you I want to bring up something now cake that's a little technical we kind of we're just gonna happen that is because of some licensing deals and other arrangements you and other NLE vendors have had to say from a certain level back we can't support anymore you're stuck on it or what have you and I know there's been confusion with people in the perpetual community so if you could just explain what's going on for people who maybe have to use a version six or eight because of a workflow related to non avid products or in their workflow you know what does this mean for them how do they stay with what they had until they're absolutely their workflow is ready to support the new versions yeah yeah so um I'm glad you brought this up so yes used to do seducers some contractual obligations we there are certain versions that we can't support any longer so if you're if you're if you were if you had a perpetual license prior to July 1st of this year you're fine you can continue to renew your contract and continue to renew to continue to run um older versions of software so the add immediate composer perpetual license and you were running version six in May you can continue to run version six if you'd like I would upgrade to nineteen six because I think it's great but you continue to do that you're totally fine if you buy a new perpetual license after July first then you can only run twenty 18.9 and forward and that's again due to some contractual obligations we have similarly with subscriptions the way the subscriptions work you're okay running what whatever you whatever version before up until the point of your renewal at that point then have to upgrade as well if you really really really need to run an older version of software so something older than 20 18.9 and you need a new license your option is to buy a new perpetual license with a dongle right the dongles will continue the new dongle sales will continue to run old versions cuz that's that's what a dongle is done for Everett right its run every version meeting flows are up for all time so that'll continue so if you really need to run an old version and you need a new license that's that's your path forward so things are changing but you can still do things the way you did if you need to because I think this is so important avid gets that people make a living using avid and we're not trying to put anyone out of business we're trying to make people more successful more productive more creative that's what the tool sets about that's what technology's about I want to shift gears a little bit now and talk about something that I know for a video guys customer maybe it's not important but I always like to give people look at the bigger picture what's coming let's talk about Media Composer for enterprise a little bit yeah yeah so meaningful is your enterprise was as you said it's it's really geared towards larger sites and sites that have a lot of users and a lot of different people using Media Composer and as we talked about earlier you people use me to compose over all different kinds of things and even in within a facility or one particular company they use Media Composer in lots of different ways for lots of different things and so what we've released here is the ability for for that facility for those administrators for those IT guys to say ok you know Gary you only need media composer to do X Y & Z and Kate you needed to do you know a B and C and so based on the user based on you and I our our logins that determines what our experience and Media Composer is so you can turn on and off features and functions you can eventually be able to actually lock the UI and set up the UI a certain way you can prevent people from creating media in the wrong format or prevent them from exporting some things that protects your assets there's all kinds of things that you can do to Media Composer through to this new product through media's enterprise that lets you customize you it really means the organization comprise what people use so like we use NetSuite as our accounting system now my purchasing people don't use the same software as my marketing people as my payroll people do you know everyone has their own function they see what they need to see so we're kind of taking that same approach now at Media Composer if you're if you're logging you're gonna see the tools you need for logging if you're editing it's gonna be editing if you're doing audio work it's gonna be audio work but it'll be centralized that you can control it as the person who's controlling the facility and you can do that with either roles or an individual level or a combination thereof exactly that's exactly correct and and I said what the nice thing too is that it follows the user right so it's personal to the person behind the keyboard is actually doing the work cool now let's talk about something that I think is you know super cool out of my paygrade out of our league but distributed processing this is really tapping into the computer power that's in your facility eventually it's in the cloud that's everywhere explain to us a little bit about what that's about and this isn't something that's automatic this is something for enterprise and people like that to invest in but you still talk to us about this because I just think it's so cool yeah no thank you so you're right it's a it's a it is pretty cool and it really the what it boils down to is being able to speed up the time it takes to render a sequence or to transcode media cuz right now if you're doing that Media Composer on your on the client system you either got to do in the background which is fine but it's those other things down or you do in the foreground and then you can't continue to work so what this does is that it takes that render or that transcode job and sends it out to dedicated workers that servers or other computers or laptops or whatever you got sitting around that you set up as a worker they do the job meanwhile the editor the media composer they keep editing they can keep working you know whatever they need to do and then when the job's done it comes back and says I'm all done so really it's an efficiency thing but it also know making sure the jobs get done faster but it also allows the editor to keep to keep working to keep focusing on you know the job of editing rather than wait for something to to transcode or render I have to measure it for some of your larger clients who may be having to encode or transcode into hundreds of different formats for whatever different versions OTT and all that that's got to be a really cool feature another feature I want to talk about that I think is very cool is the composer finishing workflows and you know basically you're supporting everything in anything but I like what I like that you that's really cool is a you're getting involved with like the Netflix Post Alliance and some other people and I think it's important as an industry that we start recognizing that people are delivering in different ways and the more we can maximize the efficiency and the quality of the video that people deliver the better I remember back in the early days of DVD you know you'd have to try 3 or 4 or 5 times sometimes to get that DVD to burn right with the right quality then all of a sudden we figured out let's get these presets right for both the project and the export and stuff started working a whole lot better and I get the feeling that you guys have gone beyond that point at this point what meeting compose where you're really so integrated it with all the different methods of capture and delivery that really media poses just eats up and spits out everything yeah I mean that's it's very true and and as you said it's all about it's all about quality it's all about maintaining that you know deep rich color now high high frame rates high high resolution throughout the whole process right so even if you're just you know shooting home videos or you're you know doing something on the side for fun we you still want to make sure that it's the best quality possible– and that's kind of what all this is about within within Media Composer it brings in at the highest quality and then when you're all done as you're editing is you're doing effects that you're doing color correction you can keep it that way too you're not losing anything and that's and then once you deliver it as well you're in the right format you have to worry about you signal couldn't you've got all those presets already set up cool and I brought up the next graphic which you know is I call the pretty graphic that I don't really understand but I'll let you explain in a few minutes what is native op1 a editing a media composer and why is it a good thing yeah so very simply it means is that if you've got camera originals and you want to bring them into Media Composer you don't have to worry about transcoding or rewrapping or re encoding them in order for them to work natively with a media composer today you know previously media Cavan or Media Composer required you to do some again.we rapping transcoding in order for it to work smoothly and quickly and efficiently with MC within MC now that's gone you can link directly to it you can drop it in your having media files folder and it it just automatically starts working and linking and you've got that fast efficient native performance so you're not waiting again it's about efficiency right enough to wait around for things to change but you're also maintaining that quality because you're not rien cutting you're not reading wrapping that media awesome and that brings us to the conclusion of the Media Composer section of today's show and I thank you so much for that but we want to talk about some other things that are important and that is is evening to these file based workflow sometimes you still need to get video into your computer for video editing and sometimes you need to get it out and you guys have a bunch of i/o boxes that are very cool very affordable and very powerful so I just want to bring this graphic up a review there's nothing new in these boxes but I don't think we can discuss Media Composer without discussing the hardware so there's three flavors of the hardware there's the avid artist exid io hardware which is Thunderbolt 3 only basic IO hardware does a great job phenomenal product great for the independent producer guys there are a lot more Thunderbolt 3 computers coming out in the near future so that will help a lot especially laptops the DN xiv i/o hardware is $29.99 that's Thunderbolt 3 oh also a little more powerful and there's the Big Kahuna the DNX IQ which really that's the one we sell the most of even though it's the most expensive because it's got PCIe connectivity and it's got Thunderbolt kind of activity and it's got just about every eye in oh you could paint you could dream a balanced audio you know SDI HDMI everything you need so those are the boxes that we have and you know if you give us a call and you're looking to get an i/o box and one of the media composer subscriptions and support contracts give us a call I'm sure we can work out a little deal on you save you a couple of pennies on the bundle together so we're going to put that plug in there also we want to let people know that we have limited quantity available the Nexus Pro 40 terabytes you know we took a long position them a while ago we still have them left it's just a handful of folks but you can still get the 40 terabyte 410 4 and will bundle it with the Dell switch 412 495 we there's a new version of the Nexus Pro 40 terabytes that's really the same hardware it includes annual support it's gonna be price a little bit more to be priced around 14k but we're gonna sell these last few ones out before that happens so just want to thank Kate for being on the show when I talk about what we have on our next couple of shows we have a live view bundles coming up so new bundles from live view with the live view so low and there are cellular bonded technology and then and the end of July we're gonna do is show on outdoor live streaming I think we're actually gonna do the show outdoors I'm not sure if we can pull that off or not but I think it's the general plan where and we'll see how that goes so I'm excited about that one I just want to thank Kate so much for coming on the show it was really really cool and can we go back to the avid interface I love it let's go back to that i/o our virtual set of the the new avid 2019 interface so this is Gary from video guys comma Kate Ketchum from avid thank you so much for being on the show I want to remind people there are a ton of training videos and how-to videos and look videos and sneak peek videos and gorgeous videos of using it there's a whole lot of videos on using Media Composer the new version loaded with great features love the new interface love how it allows you to get the most out of your screen real estate as the editor especially if you work on a laptop like so many of us do and I just got to compliment you guys for figuring out a way to create a product that is more attractive than ever to new editors and to people getting started in their career and crafts as well as still bringing home the bacon for the guys who are making the Emmy and Oscar winning you know performances that we watch every day on the big screen and at all on TV if it's reality TV if it's scripted TV if it's a bit movie blockbuster an independent film It's Made on avid media composer folks it's not all of them it's a great majority and that's why we think it's important when you're getting started out to getting started out on the same tool that the pros use so one of the things we didn't mention Kade on our chart that I feel remiss from bringing up now is you've got some great educational deals available as well on Media Composer yeah Media Composer first which is free but for $100 a year you can get the educational correct yeah exactly yeah happening at $99 a year it gets you meat equals our ultimate so can see everything and it's an amazing deal and even if and you can even actually if you want to pay monthly it's $9.99 a month separately but anyway so yeah it's crazy for anyone wanting to embark in a career on video TV movie film content creation you owe it to yourself to give that a try if your student K thank you so much for being on the show once again video guys news day Tuesday you give us about a half hour and we just went over a half hour we're pretty close and we'll tell you about the technologies the products we sell today's show was all about avid media composer 2019 kudos to all the gang in avid where every are who worked on this I know people in marketing and engineers worked on it but I know a whole lot of people who are interviewing people and working with customers and asking the right questions to get the right answers and I think you guys have hit a homerun and I got a compliment you on it so this is Gary from video guys saying so long to Kate from Abbott and we'll see you next week guys video guys calm peace 800 3 2 3 2 3 2 5 don't forget to follow us on Twitter and Instagram to stay connected with all of our updates and you can like us on Facebook keep an eye out for our live videos and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel thanks for watching you

1 Comment

  • Steve swisz says:

    It slices, it dices….. Man what a salesman! Does it support EXR, do I need a new Breakout, I/O box to monitor Video and Audio or can use original I/O Box with 2019?
    I am currently trying out 2019.6.52395 – Overall it has been enjoyable, Bin Container FONT Settings/Size are not holding. Phonetic should just be rolled in on all versions, only a few of us even know how to use / exploit that tool.

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