Avid Delivers Ultimate HD Editing Experience With Next-Generation Systems

Avid Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID) has unveiled a new family of professional digital video editing systems that offer greater speed, responsiveness, reliability and price-performance – delivering an exceptional HD editing experience to media professionals.

The new lineup, which includes next-generation versions of Avid® Media Composer® (v3.0), NewsCutter® (v7.0), and Symphony™ (v3.0) software, as well as new hardware configurations, Mojo DX and Nitris® DX, maximizes real-time performance for customers by intelligently using all available computing bandwidth to evenly disperse the processing of video and effects across the entire system. The result is an extremely fast and responsive HD editing experience that provides greater creative freedom and flexibility to end-users.

The increase in power and performance of Avid’s new editing systems is the result of an architectural design that tightly integrates Avid software and hardware with the CPU, host graphics card and PCI Express connection, to create a high-bandwidth, high-performance effects engine. This design eliminates the lag time in responsiveness that users often experience when working with HD material during the editorial process.

"For any project we begin, we need to know that our tools are going to help us work as fast as we can think and get the job done under budget, usually with intense deadlines," said Dave Ballard of LAB 601, Inc., a beta tester of the new Media Composer Nitris DX. "Lots of products boast the latest bells and whistles, but if the tools don’t allow us to perform flawlessly in high-pressure situations, none of the bells and whistles matter. The creative process can grind to a halt the moment that technology prevents us from trying something new – on the fly. Speed and performance rank at the top of any wish list for editors. I need a system that responds to the way I want to work and allows me to work more freely. The Media Composer Nitris DX is faster than any other Media Composer I have worked on in the past, and has been rock-solid reliable and flexible in all of our daily workflows."

Avid’s Next-Generation Editing Systems
Avid’s new editing lineup offers a range of new capabilities designed to enhance the HD editing process, including:

Real-time output of all major SD and HD formats, which eliminates the need for rendering with the Avid DNxHD® codec; customers will experience greater responsiveness during the output process.
A real-time effects architecture that closely ties multi-core CPU, GPU and PCI Express hardware into a single high-performance pipeline that increases the speed of the HD editing experience.
Improved codec and file-based format support including:Native support for "Thin Raster" formats including DVCPRO HD and XDCAM HD; with real-time output with multiple streams of HD;
Native editing support for AVC-I, which will be supported in 50 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s formats, via the same Avid workflow as P2/DVCPRO HD;
Sony XDCAM-EX (requires Sony Clip Browser software – currently available only on Windows); and
JVC 23.976p and 25p HDV codecs
Support for Mac Leopard OS and Windows Vista 32 and 64 bit operating systems.
A SubCap™ visible captioning tool for adding subtitles, with the import and export of EBU-N19 formats.
MetaFuze™, a new tool designed for quickly merging single-frame files (such as DPX and TIF) from film scanning or CGI systems into a single media clip on the Windows platform. MetaFuze enables users to create Avid DNxHD 36 files from DPX or TIF masters and use the files during the offline edit in a DI workflow – with final conform taking place on a DS system.
A real-time multi-window timecode burn-in tool, which enables customers to simplify the screening process by burning multiple timecodes and sequence information onto a video and superimposing the timecode over the picture during output and playback.
Blu-ray output with new Avid DVD by Sonic™ which makes it easier for PC users to create high definition DVDs.
XML export for sequences via Avid FilmScribe which enables all source and record side metadata to be exported as XML, including change notes. With this feature, transforms can be applied to create EDLs (e.g., scan lists, ASC color metadata, etc).

"This news represents another milestone in how Avid continues to drive ‘New Thinking.’ Our customers have told us that quality, performance and value are the most important characteristics in any product or solution. We’re glad to say that this new suite of offerings reflects these priorities," said Kirk Arnold, executive vice president and general manager of Avid Video.

System Configurations, Availability and Pricing
The new HD systems are expected to be available in Q2 2008 and will offer exceptional price-performance, with flexible hardware configurations designed to meet a range of professional production needs. In addition, both the new Media Composer and Symphony configurations are qualified to run on Mac OS X Leopard and Windows XP and Vista platforms, and NewsCutter configurations are qualified for Windows XP and Vista. All Media Composer and NewsCutter systems offer the same software toolset across their respective configurations – with additional capabilities coming from different hardware options. These configurations include:

Media Composer software – For independent or mobile film and video editors looking for a portable offline editing solution with support for file-based editing – priced at $2,495 USMSRP.
Media Composer Mojo DX – Ideal for small studios, production companies or customers looking to do on-location work – offering standard digital SD and HD I/O - priced at $9,995 USMSRP.
Media Composer Nitris DX – Geared towards post production facilities or anyone looking for a full feature edit bay – offering analog and digital I/O with Avid DNxHD encode and decode – priced at $14,995 USMSRP. Customers can also purchase configurations with an 8 core MacPro or HP xw8600 workstation starting at $21,995 USMSRP.
Symphony Nitris DX – Now available on both the Mac and Windows systems and ideal for online finishing facilities looking for all the features of the Media Composer plus secondary and relational color correction and universal mastering – priced at $35,995 USMSRP including an 8 core MacPro or HP XW8600 workstation.
NewsCutter software – News editing software ideal for field, tapeless and networked news environments – priced at $4,995 USMSRP.
NewsCutter Mojo DX – Ideal solution for full-featured suite-based news editing with real-time multi-format playback and effects and standard digital SD and HD I/O – priced at $19,995 USMSRP including an 8 core HP xw8600 workstation.
NewsCutter Nitris DX – Geared towards news operations looking for all of the options of NewsCutter with comprehensive analog and digital I/O with Avid DNxHD encode and decode – priced at $24,995 USMSRP including an 8 core HP xw8600 workstation.

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