NAB SHOW 2019

Avid Overhauls Media Composer, Intros Nexis Cloudspaces

The inventor of TV’s first non-linear editing platform has reimagined the solution, adding a new UI, distributed processing, finishing and delivering capabilities and other features. It also brought to market a new cloud-based version of its storage platform, offering customers a free, three-month trial.

Avid CEO Jeff Rosica at NAB 2019

LAS VEGAS — Fresh from a positive fourth quarter earnings report — and subsequent stock price surge — Avid introduced a new version of its Media Composer nonlinear video-editing platform Saturday during the NAB Show.

At its customer association meeting in Las Vegas, the company also unveiled Avid Nexus Cloudspaces, a scalable storage solution residing on Microsoft’s Azure platform.

The new Media Composer 2019 features a new user experience, a next-generation Avid media engine with distributed processing, finishing and delivering capabilities, a customizable role-based user interface for large teams.

“After receiving input from hundreds of editors and teams across the media industry, and knowing where the industry is headed, we reimagined Media Composer, the product that created the nonlinear video editing category and remains the gold standard,” said Jeff Rosica, Avid CEO-president. “Media Composer 2019 is both evolutionary and revolutionary. It maintains what longtime users know and love while giving them more of what they need today — and what they will need tomorrow.”

Media Composer 2019

BRAND CONNECTIONS

With Media Composer 2019, an editor can go from first cut to delivery without ever leaving the application. Whether they are a professional editor, freelancer or someone just starting out, Media Composer 2019 inspires creative storytelling.

  • New User Experience – makers can work at the speed of creativity with a paneled interface that reduces clutter, reimagined bins to find media faster, and task-based workspaces showing only what the user wants and needs to see.
  • Next Generation Avid Media Engine – puts more power at a user’s fingertips with features, such as native OP1A, support for more video and audio streams, Live Timeline and background rendering, and a distributed processing add-on option to shorten turnaround times and speed up post production.
  • New Finishing and Delivery Workflows – Now, users can create and deliver higher-quality content with editing, effects, color, audio, and finishing tools without leaving Media Composer. Whether working in 8K, 16K, or HDR, Media Composer’s new built-in 32-bit full float color pipeline can handle it. Additionally, Avid has been working with OTT content providers to help establish future industry standards.
  • Customizable Toolset – built for large production teams, the new Media Composer | Enterprise provides administrative control to customize the interface for any role in the organization, whether the user is a craft editor, assistant, logger or journalist. It also offers unparalleled security to lock down content, reducing the chances of unauthorized leaks of sensitive media.

Media Composer | Enterprise 2019

The Media Composer family adds Media Composer | Enterprise for post-production, broadcast, media education and other larger production teams. Media Composer | Enterprise is the industry’s first role-specific video editing and finishing solution. Large production teams now have the ability to customize the interface and tailor workspaces for different job roles, providing end users access only to the tools and functions they need. This capability gives teams better focus so they can complete jobs faster and with fewer mistakes. Media Composer | Enterprise also integrates with Editorial Management 2019 to deliver collaborative workflow innovation for post production and enables creative teams to stay in sync.

Media Composer | Distributed Processing

Avid today also announced Media Composer | Distributed Processing, an add-on option that shortens turnaround times and accelerates post production by sharing the media processing load. Tasks that previously took hours can now be done in minutes, strengthening post facilities’ competitive edge while delivering high-quality programming. Media Composer | Distributed Processing also offloads complex processing tasks when working in today’s emerging high resolution and HDR media-rich worlds.

Media Composer 2019 will be available in late spring for all of its models: Media Composer | First, Media Composer, Media Composer | Ultimate and Media Composer | Enterprise. For a full list of Media Composer features and benefits click here.

Rosica, who took over as CEO of Avid in February 2018, had made an overhaul of Media Composer a priority. Media Composer was the TV industry’s first non-linear video editing platform and to celebrate its update, Avid had flown in its founder, Bill Warner.

“I don’t think people realize just how much work went into the new Media Composer,” said Alex Keighley, senior director of strategic accounts at Avid Technology.

Avid Cloudspaces marks another significant move for the company as it works to make cloud storage seamless and scalable for its diverse customer base, which ranges from music composers and mixers to independent video producers and large broadcast enterprises.

“Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces brings the power of the cloud to Avid NEXIS, giving organizations a cost-effective and more efficient way to extend Avid NEXIS storage to the cloud for reliable backup and media parking,” said Dana Ruzicka, Chief Product Officer and Senior Vice President at Avid. “Working with Microsoft we are offering all Avid NEXIS users a limited-time free offer of 2 terabytes of Microsoft Azure storage that is auto-provisioned for easy setup and as much capacity as you need, when you need it.”

Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces key features and benefits

  • Leverage the power of Avid NEXIS – Users can start storing media in the cloud today and benefit from Avid NEXIS’s robust workspace management and user access controls with the flexibility and scale of the cloud.
  • Safely back up or park media – Users can sync or park on-premise Avid NEXIS workspaces to Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces with commonly used media management tools, while optimized media workflows provide organizations with better efficiency and security over risky manual processes.
  • Free up Avid NEXIS storage – Instead of resorting to NAS or external drives when budgets are tight, Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces makes it easy to offload projects and media not currently in production. And, because Avid NEXIS manages cloudspaces alongside workspaces, users can spend less time searching for and wrangling media—giving them more time to create.
  • Get super-simple setup – Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces offers easy activation and auto-provisioning from the Avid NEXIS Management Console, with activation from an Avid Link account, leveraging Avid NEXIS workspace user access controls for end-to-end security.
  • Gain better workflow and cost efficiency – Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces eliminates the time wasted manually shuttling media to and wrangling media from USB drives, so users can keep production moving and easily park projects and media. With a variety of subscription plans available, users can match their storage expense to their business needs.
  • Increase scalability, capacity, and reliability with Microsoft Azure – Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces extends Avid NEXIS storage directly to Microsoft Azure. Now Avid customers can easily benefit from Azure’s hyper-scale storage capacity, global distribution and industry leading storage and networking capabilities.

Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces will be available in April 2019.

Avid’s positive earnings results in 2018 stemmed partly from a renewed focus on enterprise customers. The company is expected to soon announce it has licensed its MediaCentral platform to one of the largest cable networks in the U.S.

For more NAB Show coverage, click here.


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