Starting this week Avid begins shipping Media Composer 3.0 and the new hardware IO and storage devices that were announced at NAB. Here's the recap and things of note to Avid users and potential Avid users:
- There is an upgrade path for virtually every Avid customer right now. Everyone from Xpress DV to Liquid, to Composer Meridian will have discounts when upgrading to the new stuff. The most common upgrade might be Avid Xpress Pro to Composer w/ Mojo DX which will be going for under $8K
- For HD monitoring, and I/O the two main choices will be MOJO DX and Composer Nitris DX. There is a $5K price difference between the two. They both have HD-SDI I/O and HDMI monitoring. The Nitris will add additional analog hookups and a DNXHD processing board. This board will offload the encoding and decoding of DNXHD from the CPU to the Avid board (similiar to how the AJA IOHD works with ProRes422). Avid is saying that the you can do all of the encoding/decoding of DNXHD just fine with the MOJO DX, as long as you have an 8-Core workstation.
- Vista 64-bit is officially supported and working as of day 1. However, Avid is saying that there isnt that much of a difference from working in XP 32-bit. And if you are using certain effects like Spectramatte, you will actually have better performanc with XP 32.
- no more additional charges for the Avid Studio Toolkit. All bundles now include full versions of Avid FX, Boris Continuum, Avid DVD, Sorenson Squeeze and Smartfire Pro. Avid 3D has been discontinued.
- The analog MOJO has been discontinued. But the new software will continue to support it and Avid will continue to support the hardware for the next few years. The SD only, MOJO SDI will continue as a current product.
- Cross and downconversion is supported in the new MOJO DX and Nitris DX hardware! There are a few limitations regarding 23.98 sequences. (Customers will need Symphony Nitris DX to handle certain 23.98 workflows)
- Closed Captioning is not supported with the new hardware. No word on when (or if) they will add it back in.
- JVC customers can finally rejoice! JVC HDV 24P is now supported! However, still no support for HDV 60P, and there was something kinda cyptic in the tech notes saying that the 24P only works with the HD250 (not the HD100,HD110 and HD200). So JVC HD camera customers might still want to be a bit cautious.
- on the plus side of camera support; Panasonic AVC-intra is now fully supported for injest.
- 5.1 Audio out from the HDMI on the Mojo DX and MC Nitris DX is supported!
- New Avid local storage VideoRAID ST and SR are 5-bay and 16-bay DAS products that use an Atto SAS card for host connection. (similar to the Sonnet Fusion products). Both are supported for uncompressed HD workflows. (although you might be pushing it on the 5-bay box running RAID5)
3 comments:
It is comments like "You may be pushing it with a 5 bay" which cause confusion to editors. That is a disservice! Have you tried the 5 bay with HD video? It gets plenty of MBps and was on display at NAB showing dual streams of HD plus a stream of SD video! I would say that is sufficent for those who need to edit HD...make sure you try before you say you are pushing limits...
Oh yeah, my point.. RAID5 can be had from this solution with RAID0 performance and the protection from a drive failure that RAID5 offers...pretty cool I think as well.
multiple streams of DNXHD would be completely fine with a 5-bay running RAID 5. It's the "Uncompressed" talk that gets me a bit worried for multi-stream work. Your looking at 120-160MB/s per stream (depending on frame rate, format, etc). That 5-bay box will probably go about 200-220MB/s (based on how that same Atto card works with the Sonnet chasis). So, youd be ok for one stream, but for more than that youd be pushing it. So it depends on your workflow and what you need. Using DNXHD should be fine for most project mastering.
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