Avid is pleased to announce the release of Media Composer | Software v8.5.
HOW TO GET:
The latest update to Media Composer is available worldwide as of January 29th, 2016 from the Avid Download Center or through the Application Manager.
The ability to launch Media Composer software is dependent on the status of the customers Upgrade and Support Plan on the date this software version was released.
- Please read the How to Update Your License page before upgrading to this release.
- More detailed information is also available on the Upgrade and Support Plan FAQ page.
- The FlexVersioner, as has been stated in the past, is no longer supported for this release. See the Support Upgrade article for instructions on how to upgrade your dongle based or SW licensing based System.
NEW FEATURES:
Some of the new features in v8.5 include:
- Menu Simplification: The menus have been reorganized to remove legacy menu items and simplify the user experience.
- Timeline UI Improvements: A number of updates have been made to the timeline, including enabling Sync Rollers for Sync Locked Tracks, the ability to see full segments as you drag them within the timeline as well as the effect their repositioning will have on the rest of the timeline before you commit the change, and creating a new track by dragging a segment above the timeline.
- Support for 64 Tracks of Audio: Users can now create and work with 64 individual tracks of audio.
- Group by Audio Waveforms: Group clips can be made based on audio waveform analysis.
- HDR Support: Media Composer now includes color spaces for High Dynamic Range (HDR). This provides support for a higher range of video signal, and enables automatic color transformations for source files based on the HDR color space set in the project.
- Audio Mixer Updates: You can now resize the Audio Mixer and create custom track groupings.
- FrameFlex Rotation: Users can rotate the framing box in the FrameFlex source settings using the Z rotation slides, enabling the straightening or reframing of an image at the source level rather than in the timeline.
- Interactive Video Frame Cache: A new Video Memory tab has been added to the Media Cache settings to allow users to save generated frames of the current playing sequence into a memory storage cache, resulting in faster response times while editing and playing back media.
- UI Personalization Tools: Additional UI settings have been added to allow users to change the background color of the Project Window and Timeline, and override Bin and Project fonts and font sizes.
- Bin Columns Updates: The process for adding Custom Columns as well as Multiple Columns in bins has been simplified, and you can now copy and paste the same text to multiple fields within a column.
- Identifying Rendered Effects: Users can now choose to differentiate between rendered effect media and Title and Matte key effect media in the Media Tool. This is helpful when identifying media to delete.
- Ancillary Data SCC Import: Media Composer now supports importing of Scenarist Closed Caption (.scc) files.
…and more!
OS SUPPORT:
This release continues support on Mac OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) and 10.10.1 through 10.10.5 (Yosemite) AND introduces support for OS X El Capitan (10.11.3).
NOTE: To those users upgrading to El Capitan, please deactivate & uninstall Media Composer FIRST, upgrade the OS, then reinstall Media Composer. If you use Avid Artist DNxIO, you must also uninstall the Desktop Video software and reinstall it after the OS upgrade.
README:
The README & "What's New" documents for 8.5 are available here. As always, please read the docs before upgrading to understand any known issues.
FEEDBACK:
If
you have any comments or questions regarding the installation of this
version, please post it here. For other bugs or questions, please start
a new thread.