Burbank, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/06/2013 -- Key Code Media, the industry leader in digital media communications technology, encompassing consulting, sales, and service, is expanding its efforts this week into Chicago, opening the first of multiple Midwest locations.

The Key Code Media Chicago office will capitalize on the extensive experience throughout the company, while offering full service consulting, sales, engineering, integration and support services in the Chicago location. Regional Director of Sales and Marketing John Connolly, Jr. expressed enthusiasm about the new launch, stating, "I am extremely proud to be apart of the Key Code Media Midwest team. Their overall business philosophy and internal process is unrivaled. Having access to the best engineers and technicians in the industry will allow us to better serve our new and existing clients throughout the Central Region."

The Chicago location capitalizes on the local industry experience of Brian Plante (Vice President of Sales, Midwest Region), John Connolly Jr. (Regional Director of Sales and Marketing) Brian Allegretti (Account Executive), along with support and administrative staff. This new office extends Key Code Media's footprint from the West Coast to the Central Region for a total of 6 offices. Mike Cavanagh, President of Key Code Media: "Our focus is to bring best of breed video and audio technologies to enable our clients to leverage their communication strategies. Successful outcomes for our clients is our passion. We're excited about expanding our business to Chicago and helping clients leverage our technical and operational skills with a highly experienced local team."

For more information about the new location, visit: http://keycodemedia.com/chicago or call 818-303-3900.

About Key Code Media
Key Code Media, founded in 2001, currently services the broadcast, entertainment, corporate, government, education, and house of worship markets. Key Code Media accomplishes this by keeping it's clients ahead of technology throughout it's existing offices in Burbank, Santa Monica, Irvine, and San Francisco, California, as well as Seattle, Washington. Among it's accolades, Key Code Media was recently named the world's largest Avid reseller and integrator for it's 10th straight year, as well as being named the #1 Newtek Reseller for the 2nd consecutive year.

Since 2005, Newtek's Tricaster has made video production easier and affordable for broadcasters, bloggers, and video professionals alike. The all-in-one, integrated live production system is easy to learn. Many people with little previous video production experience are quickly learning how to shoot, switch, and stream- using the Tricaster.

A large amount of Tricaster owners have been asking for training resources, and Newtek has responded with a wealth of material & resources. Here are some great ways in which you can get training on the Newtek Tricaster:

1) Newtek's Learning Sources Page 

Video, Curriculum, Study Guide, User Guide, Knowledge Base

The Newtek Learning Source page is the best place to start! Each video tutorial runs around 10-17 minutes, and provides a detail overview of the product.

Click here:

2) Newtek Certification 

Certification is perfect for anyone looking to make a career out of operating a Tricaster. Make sure to study! Each time you take the exam it will cost $150, and you'll need to pass with a 70% or higher. Exams must be taken at an authorized Newtek Training Center. FYI- All Key Code locations are currently Newtek Training Centers.

Learn more:
http://newtek.com/support/certified.html

3) Reach out to Key Code Media

For a more hands on training, Key Code Media can give a basic training on the Tricaster. We can do it at our location, or on site. Please note, Key Code Media's training is only offered to clients that purchased Tricaster through Key Code Media. Reach out to our sales team to learn more.

Courtesy Broadcast Engineering, May 2013 [Link to Article]

LiveU is breaking new ground with their portable video-over-cellular solution. This groundbreaking technology removes previous proximity limitations of broadcast trucks- Allowing cameramen to freely get the 'hard to reach' shots, by wearing a LiveU backpack that communicates with existing SNG and ENG trucks, in H.264.

The backpack is surprisingly resilient! LiveU's antenna adds up to six 3G/4G LTE network connections, giving enough redundancy so users can worry less about potential 'network reception' issues.

With the ease of using an 'antenna in a backpack,' users are finding it easier to get the shots needed. Whether the cameraman is following a race on a motorcycle, or getting close-up shots of a raging wildfire- the LiveU is allowing audiences to get up close coverage, like they've never seen before.

Workflow With Newtek Tricaster

When Key Code Media first saw LiveU's solution we saw an instant fit with the Newtek Tricaster. Here are the two main ways in which it can expand your existing workflow:

1) Connect Tricaster video source to remote cameraman using LiveU

Advantages:
- Flexibility to shoot while on the move, and in hard to reach locations
- Removes the need to have long cables
- Record remote camera ISO straight from the Tricaster- remove the need for recording media

2) Take Tricaster Remote & Manage Stream via LiveU

Advantages:
- Allow Tricaster to broadcast from any location
- Provides the flexibility to broadcast to multiple platforms simultaneously (Broadcast Network, Youtube, UStream, etc)
- Enhanced workflow features

To learn more about LiveU and Newtek Tricaster,  contact Key Code Media. We recently became a dealer of LiveU products, and are the #1 reseller of Newtek Worldwide!

All the buzz over the past two weeks has been surrounding Adobe's Creative Cloud. The internet has been flooding with rumors, and opinions- some true, some false- about the new Software-as-Service (SAS) model being adapted by Adobe.

Early this week, Adobe provided dealers with documents & emails explaining everything from product features, release dates, and how we can/can't sell the product to our clients. We also received a nice one-sheet explaining Creative Cloud for teams that will be helpful for any production looking into sharing projects using Adobe Cloud or Adobe Anywhere.

Here is what we know:

• Major release of Creative Cloud "shipping" on June 17th
  • Next generation of creative applications — 15 new CC apps, exclusive to Creative Cloud
  • Integrates Behance and delivers collaboration and publishing capabilities
• New product innovation delivered exclusively through the Creative Cloud
  • All future creative tools will only be available in Creative Cloud
  • In order to receive future releases, you must be a Creative Cloud member
• While they have no plans for future releases for Creative Suite or other CS products, CS6 will continue to be available for purchase from participating resellers and Adobe.com
  • Also, Acrobat, Lightroom, and Elements will continued to be offered in perpetual versions
• Feature Chart Provided:

Creative Cloud for teams will be offered to CS3+ customers at a discounted price of $39.99/month from May 6th through August 31st

Common Customer Questions Answered:

Do I need ongoing Internet access to use my Creative Cloud desktop applications?

No. Your Creative Cloud desktop applications (such as Photoshop and Illustrator) are installed directly on your computer, so you won't need an ongoing Internet connection to use them on a daily basis.
You will need to be online when you install and license your software. If you have an annual membership, you'll be asked to connect to the web to validate your software licenses every 30 days. However, you'll be able to use products for 3 months (99 days) even if you're offline.

Are there special pricing offers to purchase Creative Cloud?

If you're interested in moving to Creative Cloud, there are a few options available to you as applicable:
Student & Teachers – Creative Cloud is offered at $19.99/month
Existing customers CS3 and later – special offer of $29.99/ month
CC for teams (4-10 members) - Creative Cloud is offered at $39.99 a month for each team member
For more information about our plans, please visit our Creative Cloud membership plans page.

For how long will Adobe continue to sell Creative Suite 6?

They plan to sell Creative Suite 6 for use on supported platforms indefinitely. To learn more visit: http://www.adobe.com/products/cs6.html

I am already a Creative Cloud member. Do I need to do anything to receive the new CC apps when they are available on June 17?

If you are an active Creative Cloud member, with a Complete, Single App, or Creative Cloud for teams membership, the new CC apps will be available for you to download and install from the Creative Cloud site on June 17. As always, it's your choice when you want to download and install the new versions.

What happens to my files if I cancel my membership?

If you cancel your paid membership you will still have access to the free level of membership, which provides 2GB of storage. You will have a 90-day grace period to download your files to your local machine, and delete online files to get your cloud storage down to 2GB (or to purchase additional storage separately if you choose). If you leave more than 2GB of files in your cloud storage for more than 90 days, you may lose access to some or all of your files.

Promotion Details:

Can existing customers take advantage of the $39.99 Promotion?
Yes – Existing Creative Cloud for teams customers, during the offer period, can add seats at $480 (prorated) to their existing contract.

Is the promotion tied to deploy or order date?
The promotion is tied to the order date. If your customer has deployed a seat prior to May 14, please do not include the PA information in the order. Enter 5/14/13 as the start date to be able to get the $39.99 price.

What happens if a reseller tries to place and order for the $39.99 SKU between May 6-14?
The order will be placed into 'saved orders' since the SKU is not available until May 14. The license desk specialist at the reseller will get an automatic email stating that there are saved orders and instructing them to resubmit the order after May 14.

Customers that ordered last 30 days with Current Promo ($49.99) may want to return and re-order with new lower price. How do Adobe accommodates?
Please work with your Adobe reseller support team regarding the return policy for these customers ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )

A seat downloaded before May 1st would not realistically be paid for until May 6 at which point end user's would see the new promotion price. Can Adobe process the order at the $39.99 price point?
Yes, if your customer has deployed a seat prior to May 14, please do not include the PA information in the order. Enter 5/14/13 as the start date to be able to get the $39.99 price.

What is the renewal price for the customer?
Renewal price: $840 per seat price

Learn More: 

Download the new Adobe Creative Cloud for Team pdf here: Adobe Creative Cloud for teams (PDF)

Also, visit Key Code Media's Creative Cloud landing page for more information on features & pricing: http://www.keycodemedia.com/Products/adobe-creative-cloud

Along with many other manufacturers in the media & entertainment space, Sony has made some very significant announcements at the 2013 NAB show. Among other advancements in imaging technology Sony has announced the release of their newest 4k media player, the FMP-X1.

For the $699 MSRP price tag, the FMP-X1 will come pre-loaded with 10 movie titles, all mastered in beautiful 4k. Actually, it's 'ultra-high definition' with a pixel count of 3840 x 2160- with this many dots on the screen, who's counting? Standard 4K DCI compliant images are sized a little differently.

According to the press release, Sony indicates that it will begin taking pre-orders for the FMP-X1 now, with an anticipated delivery of "summer 2013." Sony will also integrate the player with an online 4k content distribution service where users can download additional 4k titles. The price for 4k titles is unknown, but the service is said to be launching in the fall of 2013. Sony, the largest proponent of the Blu-Ray disc format, is launching an online content distribution network. As internet capacity continues to increase, will there there be any need for physical media? - Only time will tell.

4k For The Consumer

On the display side of things, it is evident that 4K imagery for consumers is becoming attainable. With prices falling to just below $5,000 for a 4k display, it's not too difficult to imagine where prices will be in a few short years.

For those creating content in HD, these developments might force one to consider taking on 4k projects. Much in the same way the media production world transitioned from SD to HD, we'll soon be migrating from HD to 4k. Actually producing 4k comes with an number of hurdles. Fortunately, acquisition is not one of them. There are a plethora of high-quality high-resolution cameras. Sony's F5, F55, F65 cameras are more than capable of 4k imagery. Additionally RED's Epic, One, and Scarlet produce some stunning images, along with Arri's Alexa.

One of the 4k production hurdle lies in media storage. High Definition imagery (1920x1080 uncompressed) will consume about 720 gigabytes of data for every hour of footage. With a single 4TB drive bringing the cost per gigabyte down to about 7 cents, it isn't that costly to store the footage. However, uncompressed 4k imagery (4096x2160, 16-bit RGB), weighs in at a hefty 4.6 Terabytes per hour. More importantly, the data throughput necessary to play a single stream of 4k skyrockets to 1.27 gigabytes (not gigabits) per second. You'll definitely need some blazing fast storage arrays and fibre channel connections just to keep up.

There are many solutions to this data problem with 4k imagery. Utilizing image compression, higher speed interconnects, and GPU acceleration make 4k production very possible even while utilizing some existing hardware.

The bottom line here is that change is constant and imminent within Media & entertainment technology. When media professionals were moving from standard definition to high definition production they needed to leverage increases in silicon technology (quad, hex, and octo-core CPU), and increases in storage technology to accomplish the task. Once again, changing formats from HD to 4k will necessitate improvements in the same technology, only the improvements will need to be exponentially greater.

This discussion begs the question, when does it end? Should we be ready to transition to 8K? 16K? Sony shares some thoughts on human visual acuity and image resolution here. Additionally, Sony is prepared to handle workflows with their announcement of XAVC. For now, lets leave that discussion for an entirely different blog post.

If you're considering throwing more pixels at your productions and need some help navigating through the technology, Key Code Media's consulting and design department can help transition your production to 4k and beyond.

Every year, NAB tends to be the reset button for all production, postproduction, broadcast, sports, news, scripted TV, reality TV, film technical departments. 'What's the hottest new feature for editing?? Should we go 4K? 3D?'- All these questions have one major, often expensive, factor in common- storage. It's no secret that storage is usually the single most expensive component of a technology eco system and the most disruptive. How do buyers make the right decision? Here are some helpful facts, tips, and questions to consider when purchasing the right storage.

Did you know?

• Between 2011 – 2016 the M&E industry expects to see 7.7x increase in the required digital storage capacity and 5.6x growth in storage capacity shipments per year from 11,248 PB to 62,736PB
• Total revenue for M&E storage systems will increase 1.7x from 2011-2016 ($3.8B to $6.4B)
• 57% of storage capacity will be used for archiving & preservation in 2011, analysts expect this to increase to 60% of total capacity by 2016 due to more efficient & cost effective conversion services, lower storage costs and a greater ROI long term
• In 2011 analysts estimate that 43.6% of the total storage media shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was tape with 39.1% HDD, 17.1% optical and 0.2% flash memory
• By 2016 tape units will decline to 39.1%, HDDs increase to 60%, optical decline to 0.6% & flash increasing to 0.3%
• The single biggest application (by storage capacity) for digital storage in the next several years as well as the most challenging is the digital conversion of film, video tape and other analog formats

[Courtesy Coughlin Associates 2013, Purchase Full Report Here]

What should you consider when making storage purchase decisions?

How do you deploy, manage, repurpose and get the best ROI out of your SAN/NAS environment? Let's face it, every business decision drives an IT event, and that IT event usually involves storage. For example, your production decides to increase the number of TV shows released from 6 to 8 per year. Follow the business decision through- how much additional storage will that IT buyer need to purchase per show?

It goes beyond storage- how will the two new shows effect your tapeless workflow? More cameras? editors? creative applications? Storage? Ingest mechanisms? Delivery mechanisms? How much of your infrastructure are you able to leverage? Do you have networking constraints with bandwidth and performance requirements? How do you back up for disaster recovery purposes? How do you archive for business continuity reasons?

There are so many variables that go into a storage decision beyond just the normal, 'how much capacity do I need.' How do you want to access it? How fast do you want to access it? At what frequency do you want to access it? Who do you want to have access to it? All these questions lead us to the final, most important question: How do you decide which storage solution is right for our business?

Enterprise Storage Meets Media & Entertainment

One of the most exciting things to see at NAB is that the big enterprise name storage providers (ie. Quantum, EMC-Isilon, NetApp, etc) are all embracing the media & entertainment market from the perspective of content creation and no longer just as an IT centric opportunity.

This means:

• More options for your business that include technology based on industry standards
• Regularly scheduled upgrade release dates/cycles and practices
• 24x7x365 support that includes them trouble shooting your issue in their labs when needed
• Features and benefits that are introduced and available for everyone making it standard and not a "custom" integration, and comfort in knowing they'll be at NAB next year!

Isn't storage exciting? ;)

Please reach out to Key Code Media with any questions you may have about your storage and workflow.

Don't forget to attend our PostNAB Tour coming in May!

A lot of the aforementioned products announced at NAB 2013 will be available for demo, and presented at our upcoming PostNAB Tour. To register for FREE for either the Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego or Burbank show visit our coming events page.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE POST NAB TOUR (Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, or Burbank)

Editors' Lounge hosted it's 10th Annual Pre-NAB Discussion Panel with Debra Kaufman and featuring Terence Curren, Michael Kammes, Dan Lebental and Mark Raudonis discussing the current state of editing and post-production, looking at what to expect for this year's NAB and peering ahead to trends for 2013 and beyond. The event was held on Friday March 22 at Key Code Media in Burbank. Lets take a look at how the panel discussion matched up with the announcements out of NAB 2013.

How did the panel discussion compare with what happened at NAB 2013?

3D

During Pre-NAB, Mark Raudonis quickly separated the challenges of 3D television vs. theatrical. Theatrical has been changing focus from filming 3D, to rotoscoping in post; increasing efficiencies during production. On the other hand, "3D Television is dead," Raudonis was quick to conclude. The people at home do not want to wear glasses, and the content broadcasted is thin. 3D just isn't as appealing as it was 3 years ago, so NAB buzz was expected to be minimal.

In some ways, the announcements were minimal- yet one raised above the others. The biggest 3D surprise at NAB was Dolby, Philips and Cameron Pace commitment to a better glass-free 3D experience for TV. While this is arguably the only 3D NAB press release, it addresses a huge issue with 3D television at home. It will be fun to see how this progresses over the next year(s).

4K

The entire panel nailed 4K announcements right on the head. Kammes conceived "Zooming In" will be its biggest feature; Lebental expanded "shooting in wider focus" and zoom in on the cut later. Terry Curren sarcastically commented, "great, more things to edit."

With the announcement of AJA's award winning ROI, and Corvid Ultra- panelist were accurate to conclude that 4K is not just about more pixels, but the ability to zoom in, and adjust a frame with more flexibility and clarity. 

These were not the only 4k announcements- Sony stole the show with eye-catching OLED 4K (and 8k) monitors, cameras and projectors. The booth- at times- was overflowing with excited attendees, waiting to catch a glimpse at crisp visuals.

Of course there were many 4K/UltraHD announcements, clearly dominating the focus of the show. 

Multi-Screen

"People want to do more with their screen!" Raudonis mentioned this- surprisingly- when discussing how we will use 4k technologies. While he was alluding to a 4K interactive display being segmented into sections, it brings up the main NAB discussion; programming & distribution.

Social Media & Tablet integration companies such as never.no & Mass Relevance aimed to create an interactive communication between our tablets & phones with our television. Elemental Technologies addressed multiscreen challenges distribution complexity via HEVC (h.265).

While manufacturers aim to make multiscreen a reality, the hidden truth is that these solutions will require massive app development, and programming in the back end.

Cloud & Software As Service

Cloud

Software As Service

"The question is more about where is the storage, and how far are you from it" Curren mentioned while discussing cloud. Kammes was quick to reply, the cloud is about "the ability to work from home, work from the beach, being able to access the footage to edit." The reason for combining cloud & software by service topics is because the "cloud" is really about editing remotely.

NAB 2013 has an abundance of "remote editing" solutions. Adobe presented Adobe Anywhere, giving Creative Cloud (and all CS7) users the ability to share projects on-site or remote. Avid expanded on Interplay Family – including Sphere- giving professionals the ability to share video, audio, graphics, social media scheduling, ranging from broadcast to post. Of course, cloud was not limited to Adobe & Avid, it seemed like almost every exhibitor in South Lower had some sort of software as a service in the cloud. Some of these cloud products seemed more like branding opportunities than actual solutions.

High Frame Rate

Kammes made the witty comment "It's there...."

Bueller? Bueller? Did anyone see 48FPS at NAB 2013? The market seems to be backing off High Frame Rate. Discretely, making HFR announcements in combination of other buzz terms, 4k & hd. Reference: Panasonic & AJA.

Don't forget to attend our PostNAB Tour coming in May!

A lot of the aforementioned products announced at NAB 2013 will be available for demo, and presented at our upcoming PostNAB Tour. To register for FREE for either the Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego or Burbank show visit our coming events page.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE POST NAB TOUR (Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, or Burbank)

On Demand Video From Pre NAB Panel:

One of the main themes breaking through the noise of NAB 2013 was second screen engagement for television. This past year, a storm of tweeting fans engaged their favorite shows (ie. Walking Dead & Game of Thrones) in record numbers. Networks are now looking for engagement beyond the tweet, creating audience interactivity on smartphones and iPads.

Imagine watching a live Quiz Show, answering questions during the program on an app (or social media), and possibly winning prizes at the end of the show for participating. Imagine as advertisements begin on a program, they appear on the smart device with interactive qualities. These are two of the main types of interactions second screen companies are hoping to provide major network television.

Mass Relevance

At NAB, broadcast graphic companies such as ChyronHego, Ross, Vizrt introduced various software solutions that will help edit, moderate, and broadcast tweets, instagrams and more, live to air. A company called Mass Relevance develops the 'secret ingredient' behind the aforementioned social media broadcast graphic solutions.

Mass Relevance hopes to make it easier than ever for brands to tap into real-time social content, separate quality from quantity, and bring media to life on-air, online, in mobile, or even within destinations like Facebook or Youtube channels. Early adopters are already finding ways to create deeper integration of social experiences across all of these channels with the Mass Relevance Product Studio Platform. Their tight integration with some leading names in broadcast make it an appealing solution.

never.no

never.no also provides straight to graphic social media interactivity, through its Interactivity Suite. In March, never.no's Instagram integration helped "Ice Cream Guy" go viral on NBA.tv [SEE VIDEO]. This hilarious video is a great example of the many ways social media can be used during a show. It's worth noting that never.no also integrated with ChyronHego, Ross, and Vizrt graphic engines.

What makes never.no unique is the interactivity features which go beyond social media platforms. For example, never.no is working with the NBA, so that ads visible on television are also interacting with users on the NBA Sports app. That means advertisers can engage with audiences even more, asking trivia questions or promoting a contest giveaway. In this video [SEE VIDEO], Eric LaVanchy gives a demonstration on how advertisers can interact with audiences on second screen.

At NAB, the major trends for second screen appear to be enhanced social media engagements tools, tighter integration with existing graphic engine providers, and the ability for advertisers to engage audiences. This will be an exciting year for second screen engagement with audiences!

Key Code Media is excited about these new technologies, and how they will effect audience interaction in the future.

What do you think about second screen technology? How could you see it being used in current television shows?

Other Social Media Platforms to check out:

• Chyron Shout 
• SnappyTV 

Over the next month, KeyCode will be doing blog post covering multiple angles of NAB show 2013. Topics will cover exhibitor announcements, film & technical theory, and ultimately the direction KeyCode will be taking in the future. Everything will lead up to our PostNAB Expo West Coast Tour, happening in May!

Product Announcements On The Floor That Key Code Media is Excited About:

1) Adobe Anywhere

With the recent concern about Avid Technologies direction, in Professional Post, many have looked for Adobe to come up with a shared projects solution.

At NAB, Adobe announced just that, with the release of Adobe Anywhere – targeting the online editing community.

Watch the announcement:

2) never.no

Two words: Second Screen! Pronounced "never no," this Norwegian based company is about to redefine how we watch television.

Imagine a Game Show, where participants are playing from home, on a smart phone or tablet. Everyone watching the show could submit their answers via an app, and the results will instantly be sent to the show host. -"Looks like Jim from New York got the most points, and we will send you an XBOX!"

It doesn't stop there- never.no also has huge potential with educational programming. Imagine interactive "SpongeBob SquarePants," where kids interact with the show, via an iPad. Huge potential!

Watch the announcement:

3) NVIDIA GRID VCA

While NVIDIA GRID was announced at this years CES, NAB introduced product functionality for the professional video market.

GRID gives the power of NVIDIA Quadro performance, remotely, with up to 16 users. This gives users the ability to use Adobe Photoshop on a Linux System, and Autodesk 3ds Max on a Macbook Pro. Thanks to GRID processing heavy graphics remotely, users can get all their work done on a less powerful systems.

Watch the announcement:

4) Avid Everywhere- Vision

While most would consider Media Composer 7, and Pro Tools 11 the big announcement, Avid was smart to layout their entire company vision for future media professional products. Expanding passed the edit; Avid announced a comprehensive workflow of creative and media management tools. Products include: Media Composer 7, Pro Tool 11, Motion Graphics 2.5, Fast Track Solo/Duo, Interplay Production 3.0, Interplay Pulse, and Airspeed 5000 2.5. The goal is to provide an end-to-end workflow aimed to provide an integrated suite.

Watch the announcement:

For all other exhibitor booth announcements, visit:

http://www.keycodemedia.com/Event-Pages/key-code-exclusive-booth-tour-at-nab-2013#live-from-the-floor

Stay tuned for more NAB related analysis, as we lead up to our PostNAB Expo Tour, in Seattle, San Francisco, Burbank, and San Diego!

New features were sparse for Media Composer 7 at NAB this year, but the announcements made do impact quite a few post workflows. Let's examine a handful of them:

"Reframe" and "Pan and Scan" are synonymous with one big feature in v7 - the 'handling' of resolutions above HD. By handling, I mean the scaling and shifting of video frame sizes over HD into a smaller HD frame size. In other words, a selective crop of your raw frame size into a 1920x1080 or 1280x720 frame size.

Previously, Media Composer could only work this mojo with RED footage - however, now the feature has been expanded to address the growing number of cameras that shoot above HD. What this dances around is the continued lack of resolution independence within the Media Composer product line. This necessitates a traditional offline / online workflow for anyone wishing to finish at HD+ resolutions.

Truth be told, the need to finish at HD+ resolutions is often overrated - most web and broadcast outlets aren't accepting it, most home players and TVs can't handle it, and unless there is some substantial money for a larger theatrical release, most festival theaters or projectors can't show it natively. That being said, future proofing is always a consideration - finish larger for a better product in the future. So, weigh the pros and cons - do you really *need* to finish above HD?

That PSA aside, it's disappointing that the undisputed leader in digital editing for Hollywood's biggest films is still locked at HD. Wouldn't it be great if Avid already had software that supported resolutions over HD natively?

When dealing with these newer cameras that shoot above HD, they often shoot in different color spaces. While rec709 is pretty much the default standard, however shooting RAW or LOG C (among others) is becoming more and more common among those shooters who need desire greater color latitude in post. These looks usually give a visually milky or otherwise unpleasant experience, but allow for more latitude in color grading afterwards. While this is great while color grading at the tail end of the project, it's always been a massive pain for those editors who need to take this unpleasant looking footage and not only cut with it, but generate a cut people can watch.

Normally, a D.I.T. will create media the editor can cut with that has a LUT (look up table) applied, but frequently the budget (or time) does not allow for this. Enter the Editor, who must apply some kind of color effect to the raw footage to approximate the look the DP was going for. This involves rendering, creating new media, and often the color is not exactly what the artist in residence DP is jonesin' for.

With Media Composer 7, 1D / 3D LUTs and CDLs can be applied to your footage. LUTs have many standards, and thus the LUT the DP has created can be added to the footage to give editorial and screenings the look production was going for. This then can be baked in, or removed if the project goes to another color grading solution. Those who shoot and/or edit RED and Alexa (among others) will be beyond thrilled. As an added bonus, there is a metadata handshake between the AMA linked footage and Avid, so Media Composer knows what LUT should be applied. It's the little things.

Background Transcoding, Consolidate and Copy: Let's be clear about this. This is not background rendering. This is not background exporting. This are watch folders with user customizable profiles enabling the ability to import/transcode media into various formats for use with Media Composer, as well as consolidate or move media. Background rendering is planned for the future – however with no ETA. To assist, Media Composer presents a UI of the progress of the jobs to be accomplished in the background for the user to track progress, as well as cancel, pause or prioritize items. This is the first step (much like AMA for XDCAM in v3.5) in creating a robust framework which to expand upon in the future. As a side note, for those efficiency speed demons out there – there is no frame chase....the file must be fully transcoded before you can begin to edit with it.

This is a technology borrowed heavily from Interplay Sphere (if you haven't seen our slide show on on our AVID NAB 2013 PAGE, or our current webinar – you're missing out).

All this is possible via the new Dynamic Media folders in Media Composer 7. These folders (outside of the Avid MediaFiles folder) are also managed by Avid, and even have the database files we've come to love/hate. These folders can reside local, on Avid shared storage, or any other 3rd party storage.

Users will continue to debate the amount of attention by Avid on the massive implementation of a robust stereoscopic feature set for quite a while. It was a risky horse to bet on. Looking ahead, one sure bet is the move towards distance collaboration for editorial. Interplay Production with Sphere is one of the best implementations of these distance collaborative workflows. With Media Composer 7, Interplay Sphere is enabled and built into the software, so when you decide to make that next leap into distance workflows, Media Composer can be enabled to do so.

Avid continues to further blur the line between audio and video (finally, eh?) with continued addition of features from their Pro Tools juggernaut. One can certainly argue that having similar toolsets make the move to Pro Tools less daunting - acclimation time is reduced. Adoption rate will be higher. That's one way to look at it.

Abbreviated Pricing:
Media Composer 7: $999 (price drop!)
Media Composer 6.5 – 7 UPG: $299
Media Composer Pre 6.5 – 7 UPG: $399
Media Composer Symphony Option: $1499 (new option / price drop!)

Other important side notes:

Symphony: Now an option for Media Composer users as a license upgrade – the feature set is already included with the Media Composer installer.

XAVC is now native within Media composer, as is adherence to the AS11 spec.

Avid now has a Thunderbolt (Intel Eagle Ridge Thunderbolt chip) to PCIe adapter devicethat supports Mojo DX connectivity to Mac Minis and iMacs. No, Nitris DX is NOT currently supported.

Sphere? WOW. Too much to mention. Need another blog post.

Avid DS: Like many of the cactuses here in Nevada. Doesn't get much attention, yet still seems to serve a purpose. Ya know, they've had some really nifty features for quite a while. Resolution independence. Useful tracking and compositing tool. DPX interop. Boy, I'd love to see some of that in Media Composer or Symphony.