NEWS • SEPTEMBER 7 , 2000
Avid Ships New Media Composer, XPress
Feature parity between Mac, NT versions

by David Nagel
Executive Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com

Avid today started shipping Media Composer 10 and XPress 4 on the Macintosh and NT platforms. This release marks the first deliberate effort on Avid's part to deliver feature parity between the Mac and Windows versions of its products. Avid has also said it will hold off release of its products until ready to release them on both platforms.

The Media Composer 10 release adds new online capabilities for finishing and streaming capabilities for repurposing content for the Web. It also offers more real-time features, speed enhancements and workflow efficiency features. New features include:

• Real-time, full-motion alpha keying.
• Real-time, nine-stream hardware multicamera play.
• Additional enhancements, such as the ability to loop selected clips before adding them to a sequence or to turn on and off locator icons in the timeline based on locator color.

Avid Xpress 4 adds new features for streaming Web delivery, enhancing workflow and increasing editing flexibility and efficiency. New features include:

• More than 75 real-time effects;
• VRT play emulation feature to allow external devices, such as DVD mastering systems, to control Avid XPress software remotely using standard 9 pin protocol;
• A video archive feature with no degradation in quality as a result of the archiving process;
• Mapable keyboard and command palette;
• JKL Trim, which allows users to trim and edit while playing video;
• Video capture straight to the timeline;
• 32 levels of undo/redo with an undo/redo list;
• Real-time sample rate conversion;
• Locator windows that can be printed to review changes;
• Audio mark-in/mark-out buttons, which offers the ability to cut in "L-cuts" or "split edits" on the fly between audio and video material;
• Bin editing direct to timeline;
• Mouse/jog/shuttle;
• Direct output to a number of DVD and Web formats, including Real Media, Windows Media, QuickTime 4.0 and MPEG 1 and 2.

Media Composer 10 and XPress 4 are available now. We'll have pricing information available later today. For more information, visit http://www.avid.com.

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