Avid Media Composer, Avid ProTools, My Autumnal Reflections

 It's been a while Avid.

I know you've sold out to private equity firm STG in August of 2023, so the future is bleak.

We are likely contemplating a dismemberment in the not so distant future, and stoppage or at least a slowing down of development.

Avid you've been sick for a long time, you've been standing on the crutches of large installs, incapable of luring enough young and new editors and small businesses to insure a healthy base of users. Maybe you will recenter your business solely serving these exclusive large companies. If you get lean enough, and if you find partnership to RnD intelligently and on the cheap, you may be around for some time still.

We like to hate you Avid, but your presence is somewhat comforting. No one knows for sure how many years, weeks, days you have left, but I sure will be monitoring what's up with you old pal.

In the meantime, this is your current offering for Media Composer and ProTools (which you acquired a while ago from Digidesign for the non initiated.)

Media Composer First -Free. For new users to play around with, and old users for personal, ultra lightweight projects. I should download and install this software, so I can make more useful comments. Maybe soon, stay tuned.

Media Composer $23.99/mo. For users that are not editing fully funded projects, (yep, work can be pretty precarious for many pros), or one-off productions.

Media Composer Ultimate $49.99/mo. For users editing well funded projects, and/or in need of active collaboration.

Media Composer Enterprise -Call. For aforementioned large companies, with multi year funding and project slates.

The offer is not great, it's not too shabby either. It's just that MC is a bloated software riding on old code, old ways of thinking, and old ways of doing things. It's very hard to make such an app evolve gracefully, and even harder to make it evolve quickly.

ProTools Intro -Free. For first time users and old timers to tinker around at ProTools. Enough to do some lightweight podcast like projects, and a few other things. Not for audio post as you're on a very tight leash with this one.

ProTools Artist $9.99/mo. A very lightweight version of ProTools. Yeah it's somewhat affordable,  it's also severely limited for audio post. Maybe OK for aspiring musicians, and just fine for podcasts and the likes. But why even bother for us picture editors when you can do most things in the NLE?

ProTools Studio $29.99/mo. The new "vanilla" ProTools, for single production post work, or the indy sound post person who needs the proper tools and workflow, and is able to give more of his/her time to achieve some tasks, in exchange for a less steep sub price.

ProTools Ultimate $99/mo. The only viable option for a busy post house or post pro working on fully funded projects. The complete automation set will save time over and over again. But dawg, it's $99/mo!... Granted in this situation, most users will go for the yearly sub at $599. Still frikin' expensive man. I mean, I will mitigate my views by the fact that in this case, ProTools is THE software you spend over 80% of your time with. Unlike me nowadays.

This picture, pardon the pun, is even crummier than the MC one in my opinion. It really reflects the entrenched position ProTools is holding on our industry. Decades of Digidesign and Avid Audio accumulated RnD, and ultimately an even smaller market than the picture editing one, if that's possible. Now, is a world without ProTools even possible?

WHAT TO SAY?

What to say... I'm looking at the meager competition, the comparatively small market, the new online players in these fields, and I'm flabbergasted. Avid is infuriating, it's also solid. It's cumbersome, yet it's familiar. It's somewhat overpriced compared to the competition. It's the ultimate (sic) PRO Software. But does anybody care anymore? Does anybody need it anymore? We continue our migration from a hardware to a software world, but we still need some hardware, base hardware, specialized hardware, that plays nice with the software. We need interoperability, and lean prices. But mostly we need agile, self effacing, stable, powerful software, and we need healthy competition. And we need STANDARDS.

MEDIA COMPOSER OR...

Final Cut Pro: $299, one time fee. Own it forever. Free updates so far (10years+) Modern app with a modern way of working. Maybe does not do everything MC does, but does it way better. No PC people though, and that's why Adobe & Resolve have the biggest market.

Resolve: $295, one time fee. Own it forever. Free updates so far. Modern app with a modern way of working. Progressing leaps and bounds very quickly. The next de-facto industry standard?

Premiere Pro: $20.99/mo as a single app, or better $54.99/mo with a Creative Cloud subscription which includes After Effects, Photoshop, Media Encoder, Audition. Old app though, just like MC, but it's trying its best to evolve, and so far it's making advances that Avid has not been able to do as well as Adobe.

PROTOOLS OR...

Nuendo: $999, buy once, $299 upgrades. Nuendo is just as powerful as ProTools, It's kind of cumbersome to use and has many quirks. It's not the "industry standard" but it's a solid choice. Money wise it's less expensive as long as you don't upgrade every year. For me it does not really makes sense as I'm used to ProTools, and I often suspend my sub when work gets scarce. So not a real competitor for me. But for others, surely.

Reaper: $225 buy once. Own it forever. Free updates so far. Reaper is very powerful and relatively easy to use, but lacks import capabilities for film post work. Vordio will help with that, and more, for an extra $200. Buy once. Discounted upgrades. Lively update cycle. Definitely a viable and sleek combo. If you are in adjacent markets to cinema and TV, learn Reaper now!

Adobe Audition: $20.99/mo as a single app, or better $54.99/mo. as part of Creative Cloud subscription afore mentioned. Kind of a "vanilla" ProTools, and if using Premiere, a no brainer option as you get both MC and PT replacements for the price of MC alone.

Presonus Studio One: "Pro" $399.99, or annual subscription "+" $19.99/mo. Updates: $199.99. Now has Dolby Atmos, and DAWproject open-source file exchange format. Also "Artist" $99.99, not as well featured, not as useful.

Apple's own DAW, LogicPro: $199.99. Own it forever. Free updates so far. Dolby Atmos.

Resolve AGAIN!: $295, one time fee. Resolve does NLE and DAW - via the Fairlight page, and COLOR, and VFX!  Resolve has Dolby Atmos as well with integrated Dolby renderer.

CONCLUSION

I'm not using Media Composer or ProTools full time, so for me, I subscribe to either, whenever I need it, for the length of the project I'm working on. One month, two months... Most of the time I've been able to get by with Media Composer and ProTools Studio and avoided paying for the Ultimate versions high fees.

I deal exclusively with indy film, TV, Web, corporate and educational markets. I've invested into Final Cut Pro early, (and Motion and Compressor), and I have a CC subscription. I spend most of my time with Apple and Adobe apps. Probably 60% Apple, 20% Adobe, and 20% others, including Avid. Nothing beats ProTools for serious audio work for me, and I'm still having fun using it, although it seems I'm using it less and less year after year. Each time I open and use Media Composer though, I curse profusely, even more than when using Premiere, and I wish I could be using Final Cut Pro instead.

What's your situation?

Avid Application Manager - Pro Tools Plugins installers location Mac OsX

FYI, Avid Application Manager downloads Pro Tools Plugins installers into the following folder:

Mac HD/Library/Caches/Avid/AppManager/Downloads

After a particular installation is complete, the Avid installer removes itself from the Download folder.

So if you want to save the installers in order to avoid downloading again, make a copy prior to installing.

ProTools 12.5 gives me an error: "The Video Engine had an unrecoverable error" - (not) fixed

I found an answer here:
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=373288

I already had problems with Blackmagic Design Desktop video and FCPX, now it's also creating problems with ProTools.

I had just upgraded to DV 10.7, but because of this ProTools error had to downgrade down to 10.3.7 and... The error goes away.

Maybe one of these days when I have some free time I will figure which number of DV I can safely go up to without problem.

--- Update 1...
Nooo..., it was to good to be true, of course the damn error is coming back constantly.

---- Update 2...
I'm stuck with DV 10.4.3, anything higher FCPX dislikes and crashes eventually.

How to sync mixed audio into FCPX

After the cut is locked, I export a fcpxml of the project, then run X2Pro to create a ProTools Session. (See: http://humanuser.blogspot.com/2016/04/fcpx-to-protools-via-x2pro-ironing-out.html)

Mixing is done into ProTools, and a 4 tracks mix (Stereo Dialog stem/ Stereo Music stem) is Bounced out of ProTools to sync back into FCPX.

In the Timeline, select the original Music and click (V) to mute it.  Select all the video clips, and then "Expand Audio Components" (Control+S), then select the audio portion only of the clips and click (V) to mute the audio only.

Now all your audio is muted. Collapse Audio/Video (Control S.)

Import your mixed stems, make sure to select the proper Pan Mode - stereo in this case, and sync them to the In-point. Done, now your final image plays with your final mix, ready for Share / Export.

FCPX to ProTools via X2Pro - ironing out the hiccups

1) If the ProTools session shows mono music where it was stereo in FCPX, chances are the music clips are connected to a video clip as opposed to the "empty" Primary Storyline.

How to fix:
- Select the video clip(s) and Lift From Storyline so that the connected music connects to a Gap in the Primary Storyline.
or (faster),
- Select all the connected music clips and Create new Storyline. Make sure the newly created Storyline connects to a Gap in the Primary Storyline.

2) When using L and J cuts - or overlapping audio in FCPX, X2Pro will checkerboard the audio onto multiple tracks.

How to fix:
- No need to fix this as it is a necessity going from trackless FCPX to tracked ProTools.

3) ProTools is showing the same audio clip multiple times: 2 instances on two different tracks, even up to 9 instances on 9 different tracks!

How to fix:
- The same separate audio clip got connected twice to the video clip, probably confusing X2Pro, or FCPX XML Export. Select the clip in question, Reveal In Browser (Shift F), Right+Click the Clip to Open in the Timeline.  Check the presence of dupe audio, delete the extra audio.  Now go back to your Timeline and for each instance of the clip, Matchframe (Shift F) and replace the clip in the Timeline with the "fixed" synchronized clip from the Browser.