Have you ever Googled “December Holidays?” Besides Christmas, Hanukkah (most of the time), Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, and Boxing Day, there’s also Let’s Hug Day, Cabernet Franc Day, National Cotton Candy Day, Human Rights Day, and so many more. Whatever you celebrate, cheers!!!
This holiday season, we are wrapping up the year with new features, enhancements, and improvements in the latest release of Avid Media Composer. And being in the gift-giving mood, we are sharing a couple of these updates with your colleagues and team members on the audio side of post-production.
So, break out the holiday cheer and let’s take a look at the new features in Avid Media Composer 2022.12!
Export Pro Tools sessions
Let’s start off with a big Media Composer holiday gift for you. And feel free to share this with your audio team as well, as they will benefit from this functionality.
For years, Avid has offered workflows that allow you to send project information and media from Media Composer to Pro Tools using an AAF file. This has been the standard for years, but it does require other steps to complete the process. Well now we’re happy to tell you that Media Composer speaks the language of Pro Tools.
In Media Composer | Ultimate and Media Composer | Enterprise, you can export an actual Pro Tools session that can be directly opened in Pro Tools. That’s right, this exports a .ptx file that is generated as a single session with all of the video and audio details combined.
“Joy to the world!"
As you choose your export options from the File > Output to File menu, or right-click on the record window and select “Export,” you can choose options to embed within your Pro Tools session. You also have the option to add any of the markers from the Media Composer sequence to be added to the exported Pro Tools session.
For Video Details, you can choose to link to, copy, consolidate, or mix down the video. Mixdowns will create an MXF or MOV file of your choosing as DNxHD, DNxHR, or ProRes media.
For Audio Details, you can link to, copy, or consolidate the audio as well, but you can also choose to mix down the audio with all audio tracks or the first 2, 4, 8, or 16 tracks. Convert the sample rate and bit depth if you choose. Even convert non-WAV media to Broadcast Wave Files.
You also have an option to embed Field Recorder bin metadata in the audio so that the metadata that’s imported from the ALE is embedded into the WAV file. It also ensures that any metadata that is corrected in the bin is written into the exported files and makes it into Pro Tools. This is going to solve a lot of workflow issues.
And when the magic of the Pro Tools session export finishes, simply double-click on the newly generated .ptx file and Ta-da—it will open that session in Pro Tools!
You’ll see the video mixdown tracks, a video cut track that shows where all of the cuts take place in the sequence, and a series of audio folder tracks—Rendered Audio, Unrendered Audio, and Rendered Only Audio.
And to top this all off, and you will see it at the top of the Pro Tools session, all of the markers from Media Composer | Ultimate and Media Composer | Enterprise come across to complete the process automagically.
This amazing export functionality is the first step towards developing our continued collaboration and seamless interoperability between Media Composer and Pro Tools. And we are excited to show you what’s next.
Get support for Avid MBOX Studio
MBOX Studio is our new USB audio interface, offering both analog and digital I/O connections and now full Media Composer support. It provides eight audio channels in and out for playback, capture, and punch-in. And it has two-way simultaneous stereo Bluetooth I/O to enable monitoring on Bluetooth headphones, as well as capture from Bluetooth devices. This is a nice addition to your editing workstation.
Mount UNC drives in Media Composer
Media Composer now supports media drives mounted using UNC paths, or the Universal Naming Convention. UNC drives will be displayed in the appropriate menus and available for any read and write operations. This also enables you to mount unlimited storage workspaces as media drives (previously, you were limited to 26 workspaces due to drive letter limitations).
Find info fast with new “Creation Date” column in the Markers window
Markers are the most common way for editorial, VFX, and sound team members to communicate notes and information within a media file or sequence. And you’ve been able to do this for years.
To streamline the process of looking for the latest set of markers that were added to your sequence, we’ve added a new “Creation Date” column in your Markers window dedicated, enabling you to now sort your markers by creaton date to see which ones are the most recent.
This metadata is stored through export and import to allow you to backtrack the source of any comment added to the list.
Turn off the Bin Map by default
The Bin Map in your bin frame view provides a complete bird’s-eye view of your entire bin, making it easy to navigate, so you don’t have to keep scrolling through your large bin of media.
In support of our ongoing user interface customization—and allowing you to work the way you want—you can now choose to have the Bin Map on or off by default. The Bin Map will be turned off until you activate it. You can also add “Show/Hide Bin Map” to a keystroke.
Select items in the Bin Container more easily
When making selections in the Bin Container, you can now start by clicking and dragging from the area to the left of the bin icons. This enables you to start lassoing from the top or anywhere in the bin—even with a list larger than the height of the window.
Drag assets from any column into a bin
As you display your bin in Text View, you can now easily move assets by performing a click-and-drag from any column into a bin. You can even click and drag assets from any column where metadata or names can be edited – just be sure you perform this action quickly or it may put you into text editing mode.
Jump between selected clips in the timeline
Need a swift way to move quickly through a timeline or sequence? You now have a couple of new “Go To” options.
You could always “Go to Previous” or “Go to Next” trim points, events, and markers, but with Media Composer 2022.12, you have new “Go to Next Selected Clip” and “Go to Previous Selected Clip” commands, enabling you to move between clips based on your clip and track selection. And, of course, these commands can be mapped to a keystroke in your User Settings to make moving through your timeline even faster.
In the example below, the selected clips are magenta.
Media Composer 2022.12 is now available as a free update to all current Media Composer subscribers, as well as perpetual license owners with an active Software Updates + Support Plan. Got an old Media Composer perpetual license? Check out your upgrade options here to get current. And if you don’t have Media Composer, subscribe or give it a try now!
Happy Holiday and Happy New Year to you and yours from all of us at Avid. Looking forward to seeing you next year!