As the holiday season rolls around, so begins Awards Season—and we’re thrilled to see so many of our creators on Media Composer take home Creative Arts Emmy® Awards. Congratulations to the nominees and winners from Ted Lasso, A Black Lady Sketch Show, The Queen’s Gambit, Hacks, WandaVision, and many more, for categories spanning Outstanding Sound and Picture Editing, Sound Mixing, and Foley. Check out the press release here.
Speaking of Emmy awards, it’s time for the next release of the Emmy Award-winning Avid Media Composer! Let’s take a look at what’s new in Media Composer 2021.12…
Media Composer Supported on Apple Mac M1 Chip
Everyone loves to give and receive gifts around this time of year—and our gift to you is support for Apple M1 Macs. Cheers!
And, if you’re working on any of the latest operating systems, know that 2021.12 is supported on Windows 11 and macOS Monterey.
Dockable Tool Palette
Customizing your settings and user interface is key to having an experience that’s catered to your needs. The Tool Palette in Media Composer gives you a set of buttons to expand your UI toolset. However, in previous versions, it did not allow you to dock it to your user interface.
With the addition of the dockable tool palette, you can place a series of new buttons anywhere you want them, plus create a series of tool palettes in your User Settings. These can be selected in the Tools Menu, docked to your UI, and saved to your own set of user-defined workspaces.
This way, you can have a tool palette for your audio needs or effect needs. Just create them in your settings and enable them when you need them.
Increased Track Limits for Audio and Video
We’ve received feature requests from some editors working on VFX-heavy feature films and television shows to increase the 64-track limit for video and audio. Now, you can create up to 99 video tracks and 99 audio tracks in a sequence! That’s right—up to 198 tracks to a sequence for more sounds or keyed elements and effects with Media Composer, Media Composer | Ultimate, and Media Composer | Enterprise.
Be aware that if you create a sequence with more than 64 tracks, you will see the extra tracks but will not be able to edit any tracks above 64.
Bin “Snap to Grid”
Expanding on the existing bin features to align and display your media in frame view, you can also enable a grid system to easily organize and view your content the way you want.
When you access the “Snap to Grid” function from the fast menu in the bin or the bin menu, you are presented with options to enable the grid. You can set it to be on display the entire time in the current bin, make the grid “active” but visually invisible, or set it as “temporary.” This gives you the best of both worlds—as you move your clips, they are initially freeform to where they can be placed, but if you hold for a beat, the grid will display, and you can align to the active grid.
NDI Control Panel
Users of the popular NDI technology from within Media Composer now have the added ability to choose how many tracks of audio to play: 2, 4, 6, 8, or 16. This is configured through the new NDI Control Panel exposed from the timeline’s Hardware/Software switch.
Bin Column Width Adjustments
Bins can contain and display a substantial amount of alphanumeric text and metadata. Depending on the size of the font or length of information, sometimes it can’t all be displayed due to the size of the columns in the bin’s text view.
With the latest release, you can easily adjust the size of your bin columns to a width of your choice by simply clicking and dragging the column separator. Double-clicking the separator between columns will automatically resize the entire column for you.
Move Clip Leaves Filler
You can move clips in your timeline by dragging them directly in the timeline or using a keystroke to move them up or down and left or right. But if your segment mode is set to “overwrite,” you could potentially wipe out an edit as you move across it. This may not be your desired result.
The “Move Clip Leaves Filler” function in the timeline lets you choose how you want your edits to behave as you move clips within your timeline. Do you want it to wipe out the underlying clip by leaving filler in its path? Or do you want to keep the clips where they are currently edited? The choice is yours.
Insert Tracks
Over the years, editors have found different ways to do the same things in Media Composer. It could be moving groups of clips in the timeline with the mouse or a keystroke. And sometimes there may be a special keystroke to perform a function. One of these hidden keystrokes to insert a track, without having to select edits and move them is now part of the Timeline pulldown menu. Insert any new audio or video track and the edits currently in your timeline will adjust with ease to their new location.
Other New Features to Note:
The SubCap effect supports Extensis Universal Type Client/Server fonts on Windows systems. This will make it easier to use the same fonts when creating titles with the Avid Titler + and subtitles with the SubCap effect.
And when you launch your software with new User Settings on a dual monitor setup, by default, Media Composer will display the main host panel on Display 1 as a primary display and the secondary display will float the Timeline and Composer panels.
As you can see, Media Composer 2021.12 adds some great features that enable you to organize your bins and media, expand your track counts for VFX and audio-heavy sequences, provide a more customizable UI, and deliver more options when viewing your masterpiece.
If you want to try out a full version of Avid Media Composer including the features described above, you can download a 30-day free trial here.
