I try to cover the basics about what tools are present in the Avid Symphony colour correction toolset and demonstrate exactly how the relational colour correction tools can work and improve efficiency when grading within the Avid NLE, and even how they might offer advantages against traditionally more powerful grading applications like Resolve or Apple’s Color.

This is a pretty brief introduction, and obviously exactly how useful the features will be is going to depend a lot on the type and structure of your projects. If you have any questions, please let me know.

As a reminder – Avid is offering a very competitive crossgrade/upgrade offer on Symphony at the moment, if these features are something that might benefit your work then I’ve covered that offer and some other considerations in more detail in What is Avid Symphony?

Only five or six years ago an Avid Symphony system would have cost nearly US$100,000. So, what is Symphony? Why was it so expensive? Why is it so much cheaper at the moment? What’s different? And, crucially, should you buy it?

Avid’s Media Composer product is kind of split in three. There is the main product, Media Composer – most people just call it Avid - this is the editing tool that we’re used to and what Avid promotes most heavily. It also has two cousins (actually more like fraternal twins), NewsCutter and Symphony.

These two products are developed from the same source code as Media Composer – when there’s a new version of Media Composer there is usually a new version of Symphony and NewsCutter too.

NewsCutter, as the name suggests, is mainly intended for use in a broadcast news environment, it has tight integration with Avid’s Interplay and iNews products to allow for more efficient editing within an Avid newsroom environment (you may not realise, but Avid makes a lot of products really targeted at TV news production).

Symphony is Media Composer’s big brother. Originally in the days of Offline/Online editing the Symphony was a very specific finishing tool. It had support for uncompressed media, better effects, colour correction and also had HD support before Media Composer. However over time many (all but one and a half, in fact) of Symphony’s features made it into Media Composer. But the one (and a half) features that truly set Symphony apart from Media Composer now are very significant for some users and continue to justify the differentiation in products.

Why was it so expensive?
Until very recently (v6.0 in fact) Symphony required very specific Avid hardware to function. The Avid Nitris box – while Media Composer has been available for sometime as software only (and with lower cost Mojo and Mojo SDI hardware before that) the Symphony continued to rely on the features of the specific Avid hardware. So the cost included that hardware, and because not many people needed all that it offered it was higher cost (also because it offered more, they could charge more).

Once Symphony became able to operate in software-only mode, as well as with third-party hardware then the cost no longer included specific hardware and in came down to reflect the changes. However Avid obviously feels that the few extra features in Symphony are significant enough to justify a higher price than Media Composer.

Why is it so much cheaper at the moment?
Only Avid knows the specific thinking behind their promotion, but there are a couple of theories I’ve seen – these are just theories, mind you. Idle guesses really.

It’s a fire sale! Avid are planning to kill Symphony and want to milk us for cash – In a previous version I suggested and shot down that it was inventory they wanted to get rid of.  Someone clarified for me that they felt it was more about juicing Symphony for all the money they could by getting people to buy it before it was killed. I don’t think this is true either – firstly I don’t think Avid are deceptive in that way, and secondly it would cause a backlash that would cause far more damage than whatever they managed to earn.

They are going to kill Media Composer and are giving people a step up - I don’t buy this either. Firstly Avid have spent ages branding Media Composer (to stop people saying, generically, Avid) and it’s by far their most well known video product.

They knew Smoke was coming - This is the one that sounds most likely to me. Autodesk have drastically rebuilt and repriced their NLE/finishing product Smoke (see: Have Autodesk Smoked the Competition) and are very clearly targeting it at professional editors who’re looking for the next step after Apple’s FCP re-invention. This is a promotion aimed at getting those FCP users on to Avid’s top end product, and it couldn’t be offered to FCP switchers without including existing Avid customers too.

What’s different?
Good question! I’m glad you asked. It’s fairly easy to answer… Colour Correction.

Not quite true, but that’s the main thing. And it’s only half different. The colour correction toolset in Media Composer is a subset of the Symphony colour correction tools. In Symphony there are more controls and, crucially,  a much more advanced way of applying colour correction.

The obvious difference is that Symphony’s colour correction tool has a lot more tabs, and the one people focus most on is the Secondaries one. In my opinion this is one of the least interesting aspects of Symphony advanced colour correction. The secondaries in Symphony are more accurately vectors (rather than RGB or HSL qualifiers like Resolve, Baselight, Colorista, etc) – they can be very useful, but also quite limited.

There are lots of good things about Symphony’s colour correction, including on of my favourites, the ability to modify Setup, Gamma and Gain separately for shadows, midtones and hightlights. It also has a master HSL colour control, full channel mixer and per-channel levels control.

But all that that is somewhat insignificant compared to the really good bit – the relational colour correction model. In Media Composer when you apply a correction you are applying an effect on a per-clip basis. If you’re grading a conversation scene between two people you usually end up apply grade A to one shot, grade B to the next shot, grade A to the next shot, etc etc etc. But then if there is another take used for some lines you might have to make a new grade for that, then figure out which of a few grades for Jim’s close single you need to apply each time you get to it.

With Symphony’s relational model you can correct based on source information… The tape name, or source clip name, or the Avid Master Clip, or sub clip. You can also apply a grade to an entire track (on top of the source grades) and you can still use the CC effect too.

The relational grading abilities can save a LOT of time. Often an entire scene can be graded in just one or two steps. Then in any cases where the source grade doesn’t apply you can either apply an additional master grade over the top of that clip, or switch it to a segment grade and make changes to the source grade it inherited from related clips.

So that’s the half difference, it’s by far the biggest and for anyone doing colour correction in Avid Media Composer currently it is a massive productivity boost.

The other difference is something called Universal Mastering. Essentially it allows you to make outputs in multiple formats from a single sequence, in realtime, to tape. Effectively you create a 24p master sequence. You can then choose to output that to tape as any normal video standard – it will speed up audio and vision to create a 25fps master, or add pulldown to create 29.97fps versions. This is a huge deal for people doing mastering of video for DVD film releases etc, but much less important for most other people. It’s also not available without Avid’s Nitris DX hardware, so isn’t relevant to most people looking to make the switch to Symphony.

Should I buy it?
YES. Or no. It depends…

There is one other point of difference I haven’t mentioned – it’s not about Symphony as such, but an inclusion with the Symphony purchase. As well as the Avid FX, Avid DVD and Sorenson Squeeze add-ons that come with Media Composer you also get the full Boris Continuum Compete 8 plugin package. That in itself is worth about US1,600 yet is included with this offer.

So there’s a few cases to consider…

If you’re currently using any version of Avid Media Composer to grade and finish video then it’s very possible that the improved control and the relational grading abilities in Symphony would make it worth the money.

If you’re already running the latest Media Composer but don’t have BCC8 and have been looking to buy it then this is a cheaper way to get it, and better colour correction.

If you’ve got an old (even Xpress DV from 2002) version of Avid sitting around and want a cheap way to get up to date then this is ideal.

If you’ve been using Final Cut Pro 7 (or earlier) up until now and are looking to get into Avid’s tools then this is a great deal.

If you’ve already got a full up-to-date Media Composer (or Symphony) system but also have an FCP license then this is a great way to get a second system up and going.

If you’ve got Media Composer 6, and BCC8 and don’t really do a lot of color correction, then this is probably not a useful offer for you.

Will it cost me more in the long run?
Given that Symphony is a more costly product usually, will the upgrades cost more also? No idea – we can only guess and look to the past. Previously the answer was “yes, absolutely” – the Symphony upgrade costs were much higher. However the most recent upgrade (to 6.0) was available at the same price as the Media Composer upgrade. So it could go either way, but I think Avid will be aware of the fact they are gaining new customers with this offer and will realise that they’ll react negatively if they’re looking at a more costly upgrade in the future.

By providing an empty XDCAM folder structure (download link at the bottom of the page) on a bare drive you can convince Avid that it’s looking at an XDCAM disc, and it will then author a standards-compliant XDCAM video file.

That’s easy enough, but I wanted to test it and didn’t have an empty harddrive available (the drive should probably only have the XDCAM files and folders to work properly) but I remembered an old DOS trick – first I copied the XDCAM folder structure to a folder on my D: drive called “XDCAM” then I opened a command prompt and typed:

subst x: d:\xdcam

subst is an old DOS command (still available all the way up to Windows 7) which maps a drive letter to a folder on your harddrive. In this case Windows will create a new drive as X: which will point at D:\XDCAM – when I use Avid’s Export to XDCAM function I will find a file called C0001.MXFin D:\XDCAM\Clip folder – this is the MXP OP1A file that Avid has created from the sequence.

This same principle can be used to create virtual drives to organise project-based media. For example if you have a series of folders on a drive named for each project, each containing an Avid MediaFiles directory then you could use subst to “mount” each of those folder as it’s own drive letter.

Avid will see each folder as if it were a real drive, but media will be kept within the project-based files. The biggest drawback to this approach seems to be that all virtual drives have the same volume name as the source folder drive.

Virtual Project Folders

Subst Usage

XDCAM folder structure:
Download

So, how does it stack up?

Given my fairly solid work committments I haven’t had the chance to use Media Composer 5 ‘in anger’ on the HP workstations I edit on daily, instead I’ve had it installed on my personal laptop, a somewhat underpowered Compaq sporting a dual Celeron 1.6GHz processor and 4GB of RAM, running Windows 7 64bit, so my review is somewhat limited in that I’ve not really been able to give MC5 the benefit of a decent workstation, but I’ve still be quite impressed by the results.

The Headline Features
When Avid announced MC5 and NAB in April the focus was really on two main features, AMA for Quicktime and R3D and The Smart Tool – these two features probably represent the most immediately noticable changes in MC5 from the last version, so what are they? How do they work? And are they worth it?

AMA for Quicktime and R3D
Avid’s AMA functionality was introduced a few versions ago, initially as a means to support MP4-wrapped XDCAM EX media. AMA, or Avid Media Access is a framework in which camera manufacturers (or Avid) can develop plugins that allow Media Composer to directly access the content of video files in a variety of formats. Rather than the traditional capture or import process creating Avid-friendly MXF-wrapped media in an Avid MediaFiles directory, AMA allows direct access to the files from wherever they are located, not unlike the file linking that will be familiar to Final Cut Pro and Premiere editors.

AMA in general is a fairly radical departure for Avid, which has been know for it’s very rigid (and very solid) media management. Linking to media directly in the file-system poses all sorts of media management nightmares (files renamed or moved for example). Those problems still exist in AMA but they are mitigated by Avid’s methodology – rather than just referencing a file by it’s filename and location, Avid will actually index all linked files and create unique identifiers for each clips based on content, not path or filename – so a file can be moved or renamed, and as long as you rescan the new location the media will be relinked reliably.

So with this AMA structure in place, there was a strong user demand to extend it into a broader range of files – and that’s exactly what Avid have done by extending it to Quicktime. Broadly speaking, any file you can play in Quicktime Player is also able to be edited within Avid as an AMA linked clip. It’s a simple as pointing Media Composer and the file or directory to link and within seconds the clips are linked and able to be edited within the bin.

It should be noted that AMA Quicktime files, at this stage, don’t support alpha channels – for alpha support you still need to import the files in the traditional manner.

Quicktime AMA was generally expected by a lot of Avid users, it seems like something that would have to happen in the not so distant future, but I think support for RED’s R3D raw format was a little more surprising. It works in exactly the same way, you point Media Composer to the files, and seconds later the clips are in the bin. But it’s more than that – by right clicking on a clip and selecting “Set Source Settings” you are able to completely control all the R3D processing settings. The bin also displays all the RED metadata.

But does it work? Yes it certainly seems to work pretty well. I tested it with a bunch of 2K 2:1 R3D media in a PAL timeline and was able to get fairly consistant realtime playback (again, this is on my laptop, not a decent workstation). Similarly, a variety of .MOV and .MP4 files I tried all linked perfectly and played in the timeline. A selection of H.264 files from a Canon 5D were clearly taxing the system somewhat, but I was usually able to achieve realtime playback in the timeline.

The Smart Tool
The Smart Tool is how Avid is referring to the ability to have a active cursor in the timeline. Traditional Media Composer has been a very modal system, if you want to be able to pick up and drag clips in the timeline you need to enter Segment Mode and if you want to trim then you enterTrim Mode – it’s something that a lot of new comers find frustrating. Avid’s answer is a context-sensitive cursor that allows direct manipulation of the timeline at all times.

What does that mean and how does it work? Well essentially you’ll now see a new set of buttons on the left of the timeline, these allow you to select what functions the cursor can perform – they are Overwrite Segment, Splice Segment,Overwrite Trim and Ripple Trim (there are also buttons for Link Selection andKeyframe Selection – more on them soon). Depending on which of these options are highlighted the cursor will perform certain functions when in the timeline. The segment mode options behave in the same way as traditional segment mode, you can select clips and shift them around, if you use Overwrite then the clips will just replace anything they intersect, if you use Splice then they will split any clip they intersect (a ripple in FCP terms). The trim tools are much the same (although the concept of Overwrite and Ripple trims is new in Avid) – anOverwrite Trim will trim one side of a clip (a single-roller trim) and replace trimmed frames with filler (not rippling or trimming surrounding clips), while a Ripple Trim is more traditional single-roller trim – trimming the end of a clip and rippling the timeline as a result.

But with two different segment modes, and two trim modes (actually theres three, I’ll get to that) how doe you control which you use? Well the cursor is your guide here – it changes to indicate which tool will be used when you manipulate a clip – with the cursor close to an edit you’ll be presented with trim icons, with it more in the body of a clip you’ll get segment icons – and which one? Well that depends on which modes you have enabled from the toolbar on the left of the timeline. Assuming all the manipulation modes are enabled (both trim modes and both segment modes) then the tracks are split horizontally along the middle – if your cursor is over the top half of a clip you will get the Overwrite versions of the tools, while on the bottom half you will get theRipple/Splice version. If you only have one of the versions of a manipulation type, then the whole height of the track will work for that tool.

And the third trim mode I mentioned? Well with either of the Smart Tool trim modes enabled you can also get the traditional double-roller trim by positioning the cursor directly over the edit point (slightly to either side and it becomes of the of the single-roller types).

This is the bit where I’m not totally sold on the Smart Tool really. In fact in general I’m not a huge fan of direct manipulation (and I can continue in my old ways by simply not enabling any of the tools) – I have always liked in Avid that I can move around the timeline and click without risk of accidentally shifting a clip slightly (something that I’ve done fairly often on other systems), but maybe I’m just a little reckless with the mouse. However I do tend to have my tracks quite small, and that makes the top-half/bottom-half distinction for tool selection quite difficult, and I’m not the only one who thinks so, Shane Ross who has also been playing with MC5 for a little while found the same thing, and his suggestion (which I like a lot) was a modifer key to change the behaviour. So where you’d have the overwrite tools by default, but hold Alt (or Opt) to switch to the splice/ripple mode. I’d also like a modifier key that would allow me to temporarily disable all Smart Tool tools so that I could click in the timeline to move the playhead.

Overall the Smart Tool is solving a problem that I never really found to be a problem. So far I’m finding that it actually slows me down a little as I get used to it – clicking the the timeline to shift the playhead is pretty ingrained behaviour for me. However the ability to use the timeline in this way is a big plus for a lot of other editors who are more used to that functionality in Final Cut Pro and other applications, so I’m keen to see what they think about it.

The other two buttons in the left hand toolbox are Link Selection and Keyframe Selection – they are pretty straight-forward. With Link Selection enabled Avid will maintain a relationship between related audio and video tracks so that they are moved and trimmed together (there are some complexities, but that’s the basic idea). Keyframe Selection allows for simple direct manipulation of audio keyframes.

All of the enabling buttons in the Smart Tool can be mapped to the keyboard (and existing keyboard mapping to Insert and Overwrite segment modes will be modified to the new Smart Tool modes).

What Else?
Those two features were the big big headlines, but they are far from all that’s been added to Media Composer 5.

Audio Improvements
Media Composer’s audio tools have been somewhat lacking for a while. While there are reasonable levels controls in the form of the mixer and automation gain, as well as a reasonable basic EQ, everything else had to be done with the Audio Suite which provided Media Composer with the ability to use a selection of audio plugins – however only one Audio Suite effect could be added to any track which made it largely impossible to do any real audio finishing withou having to do endless audio mixdowns.

RTAS (Real Time AudioSuite) is Avid’s answer to this problem. It supports a range of RTAS plugins (which are also developed for ProTools systems) and allows for multiple ‘inserts’ on each track.

In general the RTAS plugins have a better interface and there are five ‘inserts’ (A to E) allowing up to five effects to be stacked on each audio track – however it is track-based, it applies to all clips on that track, across the entire sequence. It’s still not perfect, but it presents a much more usable system for audio sweetening within the NLE.

Also improved in the audio functionality is the addition of stereo audio channels. Helpful for editing with inherantly stereo audio. The introduction of stereo channels changes a few other things like audio mixdowns and audio output options, but overall it’s pretty straight-forward.

A range of extra buttons have also been added to the timeline to help manipulate audio tracks – they allow you to easily toggle on and off the various “rubber-banding” lines for clip gain, auto gain and pan, also toggling of audio waveforms, solo/mute buttons, track enable and a series of track insert indicators for RTAS audio effects.

As well as being able to toggle the waveform display track-by-track it also seems to generate audio waveforms quicker than previous versions (although that’s just my observation, I haven’t tested it and I don’t use waveforms often).

Automatic Reformatting
Media Composer now offers an automatic reformatting options, in the form of a clip heading called Reformat – it presents a few basic options for reformating footage to match sequence settings. If you import or capture footage while the project is set to 4:3 then the clips are tagged as such, switch to a 16:9 setting, change the Reformat setting on those clips to Pillarbox/Letterbox and those clips will be pillarboxed in the sequence automatically. Change the project aspect ratio to 4:3 and they’ll be fullscreen.

It’s helpful and necessary with the ability to link to other media types like R3D, but a bit simple. For example, there’s no way to pan-and-scan the frame. Also once a clip is edited into the timeline there doesn’t seem to be a way to change the reformatting options, and changing the setting of the master clip in the bin makes no mistake.

In general I like this functionality, but I think it currently is a little inflexible and needs to be expanded a little (a way to directly manipulate the reformatting on the timeline would be a great start).

At this stage the only event it will email for is render completion, but there’s plenty of space to add more in future versions (I hope). I can think of a bunch more events I’d like to be emailed about… Transcode finished, file import finished, capture halted, export finished… Pretty much any of the various events that take long enough for me to want to go off and do something else.

The email settings are a user setting, which is good, although I’d probably like to see it split up so that email server settings were a site setting, and the email notification options were a user setting so that not all editors have to worry about knowing mail server settings but can still use the notification features.

AVCHD Support
It’s not currently possible to AMA link to AVCHD Mpeg files (.MTS and .MPEG files) but they can now be imported with the traditional import method.

Capture To XDCAM  & DVCPRO HD
Previously it was only possible to capture and import to Avid formats – In Media Composer 5 it’s now possible to capture and import directly XDCAM HD422 (50Mb/s) and DVCPRO HD (100Mb/s) formats. You can also import as XDCAM EX (35Mb/s) as well, but I haven’t been able to test with DX hardware so I can’t test if that’s available as a capture codec also, the documentation only mentions XDHD422 and DVCPRO HD.

Transcode Mixed Rate Material
It’s been possible to use mixed rate footage in a Media Composer timeline since version 4, however it has been complicated later in the process with things like exporting Quicktime reference files. In version 5 it’s now possible transcode mixed-rate clips into the base project rate. I’d say this is a pretty necessary addition for the mixed-rate workflow which was quite difficult to move outside of Media Composer before.

Stabilize
The Stabilize is now automatic. As soon as you drop it on a clip it will track the shot and try to apply the optimal settings to stabilize the shot, and it now includes ‘Auto Zoom’ (which seemed like an omission in earlier versions). If the result isn’t what you want you can still modify all the parameters manually. And it’s quick.

Realtime Paint (and AniMatte!)
The Paint effect has been upgraded to a realtime/green-dot effect (along with a bunch of IllusionFX effects) which is great, but that’s not all – AniMatte is realtime now too, which is a big plus for me as I use it a lot!

And More!
There’s a whole lot more that has changed in Media Composer 5, including improvements in metadata handling, better support for ancillary data, hardware support for Matrox MXO2 Mini, dual-link RGB HD, easy tape substitution in batch capture and a whole lot more, but I simply haven’t had the opportunity to test all those things.

If you’re curious the What’s New for Avid Media Composer v5.0 document is 176 pages long (I know, I had it printed and bound) – so clearly there’s quite a lot that’s changed and already I’ve found a few things that haven’t been mentioned.

A Summary
This is probably the most substantially improved version of Media Composer I’ve used – it includes some very substantial changes that will be welcomed by a lot of people. If you’re currently involved in file-based workflows with cameras like the RED One or DSLRs then this could probably been seen as an essential upgrade.

All the big new features seem to have been well considered and integrated with care and thought, they integrate well within the overall “Avid experience” rather than feeling like a clunky add-on, however there is probably room for refinement in some respects – the option of modifier-key behaviour for Smart Tool, a better clip-based audio effects option, for example.

In my testing (which was far from exhaustive) the system was very solid – the only crashes I had were when trying to test Magic Bullet Looks 1.4, and I can’t determine if it was Media Composer 5 or 64bit Windows 7 that caused that crash. Hopefully a new version will be forth coming.

It seems like a very solid upgrade, and probably one that I’d be quite happy to deploy even at the point-zero release. Editors who’re very comfortable with Avid’s existing segment-based workflow will probably find the new Smart Tool a little daunting at first (I have) but otherwise it’s all pluses.

I’m Not Alone
I am not the only person who’s been reviewing Avid over the previous weeks, keep an eye out for reviews and thought from the following people:

• Scott Simmons – The Editblog on PVC – @editblog on Twitter
• Shane Ross – Little Frog in High Def – @comebackshane on Twitter
• Philip Bloom – PhilipBloom.co.uk – @PhilipBloom on Twitter

It’s worth noting that Shane and Philip are both FCP users usually, and Scott also does a lot of FCP work, so I’m personally very interested to see what they have to say.

Stay tuned for some basic tutorials on the new features, as well as tests of RED workflow between Media Composer 5 and Avid DS 10.3

Yesterday I posted a very brief summary of the workflow for Canon DSLR clips in Avid Media Composer 5.0, today I am following it up with the same demonstation for R3D media from the RED One camera.

Direct access to the RAW R3D media is as simple as selecting Link to AMA Volume from the File menu then navigating the folder where you’ve copied the clips from the CF card, RED RAM or RED Drive (you could potentially access the media directly from the card or drive) – seconds later you will have a bin full of clips.

In my test above Media Composer scans and indexes 93 clips in less than 12 seconds. All the clips are then immediately available, with full access to all RAW processing settings and file metadata right in the Avid bin.

Again, on my laptop playback can be a little difficult, but with only Media Composer running I can actually get realtime single-steam playback of 2K 2:1 RED media in Avid’s Yellow/Yellow mode.

Check back soon for more posts about new features in Media Composer 5.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called Avid Media Composer in a DSLR World which detailed the various workflow options for working with DSLR media (mainly from Canon’s insanely popular 5D and it’s siblings). In that post I mentioned that the upcoming Media Composer 5 would change it all, and it really has, so here’s the update…

With Media Composer 5′s support for Quicktime as an AMA media format working with DSLR material (shot in QT-native formats .MOV or .MP4) is as simple as the Avid workflows for XDCAM or P2.

Accessing the media is a simple as selecting Link to AMA Volume from the File menu then navigating the folder where you’ve copied the clips from the card (you could potentially access the media directly from the camera card) – seconds later you will have a bin full of clips.

When linking to the Canon DSLR media Avid will create new timecode from the file metadata, a Time-of-Day timecode based on the record time in the file.

On my laptop, which isn’t very powerful with a Dual-Celeron 1.6GHz processor, I can play one stream of H.264 in realtime (assuming I’m not running other processor or memory intensive applications). For improved performance it is possible to transcode selected clips to an Avid resolution.

In my test video above, it take 13 seconds to link and index 46 minutes of footage from an external USB drive.

To put this in perspective, it took me only a couple of minutes to link to 5 cards containing a total of 129 minutes of footage. Also it’s significantly faster to transcode from the AMA material than it is to directly import the files – I transcoded a 1:03 clip to DNxHD 120 in 2 minutes 27 seconds, importing the same clip directly to DNxHD 120 on the same system took 5 minutes 06 seconds, a little over twice as long – again on my underpowered laptop with a few other memory-hungry apps running.

So in summary, the workflow issues with DSLR media in Avid Media Composer largely cease to exist in version 5.

More posts about Media Composer 5, including a lengthy review/introduction will be posted in the near future.

Don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but Canon made a little digital SLR camera called the Canon 5D Mark II and, apparently, it shoots HD video… It seems that some people are quite excited about the whole thing. Well if you had noticed that, you’d probably have also noticed that almost every mention of editing 5D footage is around Apple’s Final Cut Pro. It’s certainly not because other products can’t cut it, it’s probably just because of a massive commonality between those who’ve embraced the 5D and those who long ago embraced FCP.

So how do the current crop of HD DSLR cameras play with Avid’s flagship NLE? The answer is just fine now, and really well soon. As I write this Avid is shipping Media Composer 4.5, it cuts the DSLR footage fine, but there is transcoding involved and that takes time, but they’ve also recently announced Media Composer 5.0 and it will do it all straight from the files, with no waiting around.

So how does it work now, and how will that change in Media Composer 5.0?

I recently had the pleasure of shooting our 48 hour film, Professional Dancer, with the 5D and really there’s nothing like serious time pressure to help you come to terms with workflow options!

In general Media Composer likes to work with what it knows, that means usually that it will only work with Avid Media – stuff it’s either capture or transcoded itself, but it also incorporates native support for some popular file-based broadcast acquisition formats like XDCAM and P2. Anything beyond that has to be imported, which will involve Avid converting the file into it’s own codec and wrapping it in an MXF file. This will change in Media Composer 5.0, but more on that soon…

For DSLR users this could be seen as a hinderance. But there’s more to it than that – while FCP users can simply drag and drop the 5D’s .mov files into their timeline, the perfomace is less than stellar, and the frustrations will quickly build. Instead the suggested workflow has been to convert the media to Apple’s ProRes format which is better suited to the rigours of the NLE environment, and to that end Canon released EOS E1, an import plugin for FCP which will, among other things, convert the footage into ProRes.

The import process into Avid is a similar process, where Media Composer will convert the file from Quicktime H.264 to your specified Avid resolution – the time taken to do so will depend a lot on the power of your computer and what you’re converting to - my laptop takes about 5 minutes to import 1 minute of 5D footage as DNxHD 120. When importing the files ensure you tell Media Composer that they are ‘RGB’ source files, so that the colour levels will be appropriately handled.

The waiting may seem like a lot of time wasted, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way at the end of the edit when minimal rendering is required to create a finished product. Many 48 hour teams had the pain of watching a render bar barely tick along as the time ran out – there were a lot of rendering laptops at the finish line.

So what abour the metadata, and sound? Well here it get’s complicated… The files from most DSLRs lack any decent metadata – even things as fundamental as timecode that we’d expect from other formats are missing in these files. Also, the sound on the DSLRs is not great, they have AGC systems which mess with the audio levels, and no professional audio inputs,

There are ways to work around it (the 5D can disable AGC and set manual level, and BeackTek have an adapter to get good audio in), but most people advise a ‘dual system’ record as is common in film production, where audio is recorded to a separate device, it could be another video camera, or something like the Zoom H4.

Clean audio can then be synced to pictures in the edit suite. With timecode this is easy, in fact Avid just about automates it, but without timecode it’s more difficult, you have to locate the sync points manually between audio and video, but that’s why clapper boards exist – Here FCP users do have an advantage in the form of a product called PluralEyes which will automatically sync audio to pictures by using the camera’s lower quality audio as a sync reference, however newly announced software called DualEyes will be able to automate this sync process for any NLE.

What options then exist for Avid users now? Well there’s a few things… Avid has a fairly unique feature that could be very helpful here – it can read timecode data from a video’s audio track. Standard SMPTE timecode is a series of pips that can be recorded by audio equipment, so by feeding an LTC source info the DSLR that is in sync with the audio recorder you can actually record timecode that Avid will be able to decode, although in doing so you are probably giving up reference audio attached to the recorded video (unless you feed LTC to one channel and a mic to the other).

Another option is to create timecode in the video files – VideoToolShed’s QtChange can modify the timecode track in a Quicktime file based on the file’s creation date, so if you sync your camera’s time to your Audio recorder then it should be possible to record audio and video files that have similar timecodes.

Offline / Online Workflow?

As all the clips have to be imported you can choose what resolution to import them at. You could import all footage as Standard Def 15:1 for offline if you wanted to. When it comes time to online you can simply select the edited sequence and Batch Import the clips again at a higher resolution (DNxHD 185 perhaps). When they clips are imported they record a ‘UNC’ path for the source file, so if the original source Quicktime files are still located in the same place then Avid will find them and re-importing them is just a button click away. If they source files have been moved, it’s usually as simple as locating the first one and Avid will see the rest.

What About Media Composer 5.0?

While the issues with timecode data aren’t going away anytime soon Media Composer 5.0 has at least one massive improvement for DSLR film makers – Quicktime AMA!

AMA, or Avid Media Access, is Avid’s method for handling access directly to native media files. It was introduced in version 3.5 with XDCAM and P2. Essentially you can point Media Composer at a folder full of files it supports and it will immediately index the clips within the folder and create clips in a bin that point directly at the files.

One big difference with this approach and the standard filesystem-based approach of FCP is that Avid indexes the files it finds and creates a unique media ID that will remain consistent every time it indexes the same file. That means even if files are moved or renamed Avid will still recognise and relink them, just as long as you point it at the correct folder to index.

This AMA functionality has be limited to professional broadcast formats until now, but with version 5.0 it has been extended to include ‘All Quicktime’ files – so in theory any file that the Quicktime player will play is also going to be available for immediate access in Media Composer with AMA, including H.264 DSLR files, and even Apple’s ProRes if you have the necessary codec installed. Presumably the performace will be less than native media, but once the files are in you can also Consolidate them to standard Avid Media – so AMA for making shot selection and then consolidate to edit.

The Practicality?

Avid is more than capable of editing DSLR matial right now with Media Composer 4.5 and earlier (in fact if Quicktime on your edit suite will play the source files, then Avid will import them – although earlier versions may not read timecode from the Quicktime files), and with the pending release of Media Composer 5.0 Avid’s strength in this area becomes even greater.