Editor editor Wim Van den Broeck (@editorbelga) has put together a great set of slides highlighting, in brilliantly simple fashion, 25 new features in Media Composer 7.
Improved Waveform Redraw
Track Selection During Relink
Queue Monitoring
Web-based Queue Monitoring
Spanned Markers
More Information in Info Window
Background Services
Dynamic Media Folders
FrameFlex Reframing
AMA Clip Color
Managed AMA Media
Alpha Channels in AMA Quicktime
AS-11 Support
Audio Mixer Customisation
Audio Monitoring Control Improvements
Background Consolidate/Transcode
New Buttons for Bin View Settings
Output Monitor Masking
Clip Gain Control in Timeline
Transcode/Consolidate Only AMA Clips
BWAV XML Support
LUT Support
Native XAVC Support
Change Marker Tracks
Timeline Vertical Scrolling
It should probably be pointed out that Wim is not an Avid employee, so these images are not official Avid marketing material.
If you’re not following Wim on Twitter, you probably should me. Me too while you’re at it.
If you’ve ever made titles in Media Composer it’s probably safe to assume two things: You’ve been frustrated by Title Tool and baffled by Marquee.
Avid Title Tool from 1994
The Avid Title Tool is simple and efficient, it works pretty well and is surprisingly useful, but it’s also very limited. If you ever stumble across a manual from a very early version of Media Composer you’ll probably not be surprised to see that the Title Tool looks reasonably familiar.
To combat this limitation Avid introduced Marquee in the early 2000’s (initially in Avid DS, then in Media Composer on Windows and later also on the Mac) – while some people insist that Marquee is a powerful and versatile tool (it is), most people complain that it’s confusing and unintuitive (it is). In practice this means there’s a few people who manage amazing things with Marquee, while most people swear whenever they accidentally launch it.
Suffice to say titles have been something of a weak point in within Media Composer. People either make do with the Title Tool (entirely possible in many cases) or use a more versatile and general purpose tool like After Effects.
This has always struck me as a little disappointing given that Avid also offer some amazingly powerful titling tools in their Avid Deko and Avid Motion Graphics products. They even have a plugin version of Deko called Postdeko (it’s very pricey).
Clearly Avid have seen the need for a more flexible titling option and they’ve struck a deal with NewBlueFX to include their powerful and intuitive Titler Pro with Media Composer 7. It’s a GPU-accelrated WYSIWYG titling application that runs as an AVX plugin from within Media Composer. It has animation, lighting, textures and 3D functionality (among other things).
But there’s a catch (don’t worry, it’s not a huge one) – Media Composer 7 ships with version 1.0 of Titler Pro, but the latest version from NewBlueFX is 2.0 and the new version adds a bunch of great new features (better 3D extrusion contol, animated textures and improved lighting).
Fear not, however, the 1.0 version that ships with Media Composer 7 is still very functional and intuitive. And, as the proud owner of a copy of Titler Pro 1.0, you’re entitled to upgrade pricing if you want the newer version – a mere US$100.