New features

  • Get Media Composer 6 included with Avid DS (full and upgrades), and edit and color video with speed and ease (software bundle not included)
  • Gain hands-on precision and speed up color correction, grading, editing, and navigation with support for Artist Color and Artist Transport control surfaces
  • Get resolution independence with the canvas, enabling you to customize the size for source generators and visual effects
  • Apply blending operations directly on the timeline to single or multiple clips or containers
  • Conform high-resolution sequences to Avid DS from Media Composer 6 or Symphony 6 (except stereoscopic 3D)
  • Connect to and play Long-GOP MXF essence (such as from XDCAM) when conforming from Media Composer or Symphony, eliminating transcoding time
  • Edit high-resolution media—in master quality—using the Avid DNxHD 444 codec
  • Use HDR imagery in your projects with support for the Open EXR/TIFF DCDM format
  • Capture and output up to 16 channels of audio (up from 8) to create bigger, richer audio mixes
  • Work with RED EPIC and SCARLET footage with the new RED SDK
  • Integrate KONA 3G hardware into your Avid DS workflow

Top features

Avid DS editing, compositing, painting, conforming and fisnishing tools

Maximize your creativity and productivity with full-featured tools

With Avid DS, you have all the editing, compositing, painting, conforming, and finishing tools you need to create and deliver projects fast. Speed up editing and color correcting with Media Composer 6. Eliminate tedious reassembling with Total Conform to Avid DS. Design high-end graphics, effects, titles, and composites. And with the fully integrated workflow, youʼll spend more time creating than rendering or exporting to other applications.

RED workflow

Accelerate RED and other file-based workflows

With direct file-based editing and native conform, waiting is a thing of the past. Edit RED (including EPIC and SCARLET), QuickTime, AVCHD, XDCAM, and other file-based formats directly through AMA (Avid Media Access) with Media Composer 6. Keep the vision intact from the offline to finishing; no need to manually reassemble work, as all timeline information is automatically re-created natively in high resolution, including effects, titles, and color data. And with the supported RED Rocket card, you get real-time playback and accelerated rendering for immediate review/approval and clientassisted sessions.

DNxHD encoding

Get beauty without the bandwidth

Work with all popular HD sources in a real-time collaborative environment, minimizing storage and infrastructure costs with DNxHD encoding, you can edit and finish sequences in mastering picture quality over multiple generations—in files that consume a fraction of the bandwidth of uncompressed HD.

Paint and compositing tools

Achieve the look you want

Create stunning visual effects, animations, graphics, titles, and more with a huge collection of sophisticated paint and compositing tools, 2D and 3D effects, motion tracking, image stabilization, filters, transitions, and fonts. And with support for AVX/AVX 2 and OpenFX (OFX) plug-ins, you can expand your creative palette with software from top visual effects designers, including Boris FX, GenArts, and The Foundry.

Complete Digital Intermediate processing

Complete Digital Intermediate processing

Create the right look with powerful color grading tools. Clean up footage and add effects, titles, and end credits. Speed up your workflow with real-time 2K, HD 4:4:4 RGB, and HD 4:2:2 YUV playback and integrated DPX, R3D file support. Itʼs the perfect solution for TV productions; no matter what resolution the show is finished, Avid DS adapts to the required resolution or color space.

Integrate with Interplay, ISIS and Unity MediaNetwork systems

Get easy collaboration and integration

Gain better collaboration and save time when you add Avid DS into an existing Avid workflow. Integrate with Interplay and ISIS systems to simultaneously access and share media. Eliminate having to copy or transcode media for different disciplines. Get complete conform to Avid DS from Media Composer and Symphony. And boost productivity with support for industry-standard project formats, including AAF, AFE, EDL, and OMF.

Avid DS Remote Processing (RP) System

Free up resources with Remote Processing

Free up your most valuable tools and talent by rendering sequences in the background using the included Avid DS Remote Processing (RP) System Option. With it, you can transfer all processing to a remote system, enabling the team to spend more time creating and less time waiting, increasing productivity and client satisfaction.

View the full list of specifications

Avid DS 10.5 is a standalone software solution

Work with what you have and want

As a standalone software solution, Avid DS lets you work with a variety of hardware to meet your needs and budget. Add video capture and output with an I/O interface. Use your favorite graphics tablet to design. Open your workflow to collaboration by adding a shared storage solution. Choose the computer and monitoring system you want. Or choose the complete and optimized Avid DS System, which includes all of the hardware and software you need, plus computer power, to edit and finish projects.

Capture and editing

Capture Tools

  • Log and capture from tape, and capture onthe- fly
  • Capture and recapture from still and movie files, frame sequences, and audio files in numerous industry-standard formats, including QuickTime, AVI, Photoshop, Illustrator EPS, TIFF, SOFTIMAGE PIC, Cineon, TARGA, YUV, RGB, AIFF, and PICT
  • Get advanced AFE and AAF conforming from Symphony, Media Composer, and Xpress DV systems
  • Automatic conform of OMF 2.0 composition
  • Supports OMF audio media
  • Batch capture and auto-conform from EDLs (CMX and GVG)
  • Import Avid Log Exchange (ALE) from external clip-logging stations

Picture Editing

  • Full Media Composer toolset
  • Edit 3D stereoscopic material
  • Manipulate 3D content with convergence tools
  • Play back sequences and effects in real time
  • Preserve or change clip durations in the timeline with user-selectable frame rate conversions
  • Work with an unlimited number of video and overlay tracks
  • Mix multiple compression ratios, resolutions, and proxy images within a sequence
  • Directly manipulate all edits in the timeline
  • Source-side timeline display mode
  • Copy, move, and add effects to multiple clips with timeline multi-selection
  • Overwrite, insert, and replace editing with fit-to-fill capabilities
  • Split edits and perform sync-point editing
  • Interlace and de-interlace video
  • 3:2 pull-down removal and replacement
  • Add edits to multiple clips simultaneously by syncing selections
  • Sophisticated sync-locking capabilities
  • Global and local timeline ripple controls
  • Full-featured edit trimming, clip rolling, and slipping tools
  • Easily manipulate images with zoom and pan controls
  • Create unlimited clip, track, and timelinebased effects
  • Quickly get oriented and navigate through projects with the timeline overview area
  • Display tracks in small, standard, or large format
  • Customize the start time in the timeline
  • Speed up editing with match-frame and match-clip capabilities
  • Navigate through and sync sequences using clip and timeline-based markers
  • Manage multilayer effects and organize complex timelines using containers
  • Share and reuse containers, with multiple layers and effects, using reference clips
  • Simple, powerful user interface, with Swift Menus for fast gestural selection of common DS functions
  • Media Composer-style track patching

Audio Editing and Mixing

  • Work with unlimited audio tracks for editing
  • Mix and pan multichannel audio in up to 5.1 surround sound
  • Play back up to 16 streams of simultaneous 24-bit, 48 kHz audio, with support for sampling rates up to 96 kHz
  • Sample and frame-based audio editing
  • Automatic audio sample rate conversion
  • Real-time, animatable mixing controls, with volume, pan, mute, and solo per track; realtime 4-band parametric EQ, 10-band graphic EQ, and 3-band ton
  • Monitor up to 8 audio channels directly
  • Includes real-time full dynamics effects, including compression, expansion, and limiting
  • Real-time fade-ins, fade-outs, and crossfades
  • Fast timeline waveform display, with sync status on timeline
  • Analog- and digital-style audio scrubbing
  • Matrix routing
  • Input and output VU metering with usercontrolled headroom, alignment, minimum level, peak level, peak hold, and max hold
  • Includes high-quality audio timewarp and reverb effects
  • Support for optional third-party hardware fader control surfaces
  • Supports VST 64-bit audio plug-ins

Post-production

Effects, Filters, and Transitions

  • Source-side effects management
  • Create timewarp effects with FluidMotion
  • Expressions-based effects model
  • Create real-time dissolves, fades, superimpositions, and standard SMPTE wipes
  • Real-time 2D digital video effects (DVEs)
  • Create DVE hierarchies in effects
  • Work easier with basic scale, border, crop, opacity, rotation, and translation effects with the real-time picture-in-picture effect
  • Effects processing at 16- or 32-bit Float precision
  • Enhance and correct color with real-time, advanced color grading tools
  • Sophisticated keyframe-animatable interpolated timewarp with position and speed curves
  • Create motion effects, including strobe, freeze frame, reverse, and frame-averaging
  • Includes high-speed Gaussian blur, noise effects, fractal noise generator, edge detection, custom, emboss, fades, sharpen, reticulation, stamp, ripple, threshold, and gradient effects; deflicker, dithering, posterize, and solarize effects; and a celluloid film simulation effect
  • Automatic drop shadows with independent 3D DVE control
  • Choose from hundreds of Avid DS Painterly and Impressionist effects presets, or create your own
  • Shape-to-shape spline warping and morphing (based on Elastic Reality technology)
  • Expand your creative palette with support for AVX, AVX2, and OpenFX (OFX) plugins

Compositing and Tracking

  • Create composites on unlimited layers and duplicate layers
  • Timeline-Tree conversion, layer views, and motion region visualization
  • Get unlimited external mattes per layer, with Boolean operations for combining mattes
  • Work with an extensive set of compositing operations between layers and mattes
  • Fully animate all layer parameters
  • Improved interactive performance with intelligent caching
  • Directly manipulate DVE for each layer with the motion path editor and real-time wireframe preview
  • Manipulate several layers at once with global DVE
  • Global DVE in the effects tree
  • Extremely fast 1-, 2-, and 4-point motion tracking, including the ability to track in fields
  • Motion stabilization and de-stabilization
  • Corner-pinning
  • Paint directly on any layer
  • Direct support for images with pre-multiplied alpha
  • Get field and frame-based rendering per effect
  • Compare two images using a snapshot (before/after) with the comparison buffer

3D Digital Video Effects (DVE) and Character Generation

  • Create and animate graphics in a userfriendly 3D environment, with interactive OpenGL-accelerated display and a true X-YZ coordinate space
  • Manipulate 3D material with rotate, scale, translate, and skew controls
  • Simulate rolls, zoom-ins, and other common in-camera effects with the animatable camera
  • Full object hierarchy with multiple, highquality specular light sources, reflection mapping, and materials editor
  • Create deformation effects such as cylinder, sphere, and 3D page curls
  • Manipulate text and shapes interactively with 3D extrusion, displacement mapping, and Boolean combinations
  • Get independent control over face, edge, and drop-shadow properties for all text
  • Create projected, soft, and textured drop shadows
  • See your work in real time with the fully integrated WYSIWYG 2D and 3D text module
  • Create text along a path and adjust intercharacter kerning, fully animatable down to individual characters
  • Tidy up text with paragraph formatting controls
  • Work with all TrueType fonts (hundreds of fonts included), get multibyte character set support for Far East fonts through MIME, and import EPS files

2D Character Generation

  • WYSIWYG interface, with automatic realtime title rolls and crawls
  • Copy/paste text from other applications for quick insertions; import HTML 7 text files
  • Get per-character animation, kerning, leading, offset, and tracking controls, tabulation, and justification
  • Select and modify multiple text elements containing common font, style, and format attributes with a single click (per-style selection)
  • Import subtitle information from text files
  • Control face, edge, and drop-shadow properties independently
  • Create your own text and style presets
  • Apply Avid DS paint effects to titles

Keying Tools

  • Perform keying on any layer or inside any paint stroke
  • High-quality blue-green chroma keyer with enhanced spill correction
  • Built-in garbage matting tools for all keyers
  • Includes general-purpose, real-time HLS keyer, linear luminance keyer, and chrominance keyer based on selected color
  • Difference keyer
  • Matte enhancer with sub-pixel shrink and grow
  • Painting with keys for fast garbage mattes

Color and paint

Color Grading

  • Real-time Symphony-style color grading tools at resolutions up to 2K DCI
  • Global hue, saturation, gain, and brightness control
  • Fine-tune levels with constant-luminance controls for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights
  • Interactive color-curve manipulation
  • Perform selective color grading or color correction based on the image alpha channel
  • Per-channel gamma, gain, and offset tools

Paint

  • Import Photoshop (v7) files with all layer transparency and blending preserved
  • Vector-based, nondestructive paint system —create high-quality graphics, with highperformance raster mode for rotoscoping
  • Freehand, polyline and shape-based drawing, animated handwritten strokes, combine or separate strokes, and clusters
  • Animated stroke morphing and text-tostrokes feature
  • Pressure-sensitive painting tools
  • Fully animatable and editable brush strokes, shapes, and parameters, including interactive brush resizing
  • Painting with effects, including keying
  • Interactively freehand select and manipulate a shape's geometry with the Reshaper effect, without being constrained to control points
  • Preview then render animated strokes in wireframe mode with the Wireframe Preview command
  • Get started fast with hundreds of Avid DS preset brushes, styles, effects, and textures
  • Create the look you want with custom brushes, custom presets, and stackable effects
  • Remove scratches, dirt, and dropouts in a single click with the Clone and Noise tools
  • Import EPS files, with all color properties retained
  • Rotoscoping and matte creation tools
  • Animate paint strokes by tracking the entire stroke or by applying an unlimited number of trackers to individual stroke points
  • View and operate R, G, B, and Alpha channels independently
  • Select image regions based on RGB or HLS values using the Magic Wand tool
  • Select and manipulate image regions with animatable cutouts
  • Quickly select and manipulate graphics objects in the timeline through graphics object view
  • Group paint and graphics objects

Media management

Media Management

  • DPX file support including conform from Avid EDLs and AFE
  • RED file support including conform from Avid AFE and ALE
  • Visual-based Media Management: Get tools for sorting, viewing, moving, and deleting media, and share media across projects and machines
  • Automatic tracking of multiple media compression ratios and resolutions per clip
  • Selectively delete unused media with the Purge tools
  • Get thumbnail and details views of annotatable clips and sequences, with clip data tracking
  • Locate clips and sequences with the Search tool
  • Sophisticated cache management
  • Send shots to third-party applications, with a live update in Avid DS, using the Outsource effect
  • Import Photoshop PSD files and preserve all layers
  • Import Illustrator EPS files and preserve vectors and colors
  • Output QuickTime reference movies from the original video media in an Avid DS project

Archive and Restore

  • Archive project data, video and audio media, and cache files in multiple ways
  • Complete archiving of all editorial and effects setup information, including paint strokes, compositing, and audio mixing parameters
  • Selectively restore any part of an archive
  • Automatic conversion of effect alpha channels to mattes for archive
  • Automatic, unattended restore of all project data, media, and caches

Networking and Storage

  • Works with Unity MediaNetwork 5.1, Unity ISIS (1.1 and higher), and ISIS 5000/7000 shared storage environments, enabling realtime collaborative workflows and productivity-enhancing use of previously stored footage
  • Supports Avid VideoRAID SR fail-safe local storage for guaranteed high performance, even in the event of a disk drive failure or during a drive rebuild (VideoRAID ST not supported)

Additional features

Global Features

  • Full cache recovery
  • Mix and match different resolutions in a composite and customize output resolutions
  • Get unlimited levels of undo and redo
  • Interactive viewer: comparison buffer, onionskin mode, channel selection, proxy resolution, pan, and zoom
  • Animate effects parameters with an unlimited number of keyframes
  • Edit effect parameters across all toolsets with the Unified Animation Editor
  • Automatic keyframing
  • Import and export animations (function curves)
  • Get unlimited, user-definable presets for all effects
  • User-configurable drag-and-drop toolbars
  • User-configurable key accelerators with visual keyboard mapping
  • User-configurable interface layouts
  • Automatic save
  • Interactive viewer pan and zoom
  • Supports single or dual-display monitors
  • Support for graphics tablets
  • Available optional Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating software extensions

Avid DS Remote Processing (RP) System Option (one license included)

  • Continue working while processing-intensive tasks are rendered in the background on a remote system
  • View icon or receive email notification when processing is complete
  • Gain more creativity time and speed up delivery through background network rendering
  • Uses standard network configurations such as 10/100-Base-T Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, or shared storage systems such as Unity MediaNetwork or ISIS
  • Supports multiple render stations over Ethernet, Unity MediaNetwork, or ISIS
  • Includes one seat of Avid DS RP
  • Installs on a wide variety of Windows 7 workstations (Windows XP and Vista not supported)

Optional plug-ins

Build up your effects and toolkit library with a choice of great Avid DS plug-ins designed by some of the most respected companies in the industry.

Boris FX

Complement your high-end projects with Boris Continuum Complete 8 AVX, which delivers nearly 200 comprehensive visual effects filters, including extrusions, image restoration tools, lens flares and lights, and blurs, glows, and cinematic effects. New features include a vectorscope tool, 3D lens flare and film glow effects, extrude text, and Beat Reactor technology for audio-driven effects creation.

For more information, visit Boris FX

eyeon Software

Get unprecedented concurrent editing, VFX creation, and stereoscopic production in your Avid DS workflow with eyeon Connection, Fusion, and Dimension. eyeon Connection directly embeds Fusion's advanced node-based VFX supercomputing environment and Dimension's optical flow-based stereoscopic and high-level image processing application in the Avid DS timeline. Fusion and Dimension can exist on the same system as your Avid DS software or anywhere else on the network.

For more information, visit eyeon  or watch the video

The Foundry

Create and perfect composites faster and easier with FURNACE and FURNACECORE for Avid DS. These suites of sophisticated plug-ins are designed to enhance your workflow and boost productivity, so you can tackle a diverse range of everyday compositing tasks. Remove wires and rigs, clean up dust and grain, and tackle keying faster than ever before.

For more information, visit The Foundry

GenArts

Create high-quality, more organic transitions with GenArts Sapphire, available standalone or as a bundle with Avid DS. The latest Sapphire comes with nine new transitions (with over 100 presets) and six new effects. Plus, most of the effects are GPU-accelerated, so you can work quickly without compromising quality. Whether you edit TV shows, films, trailers, music videos, or promos, you can make projects more engaging and impactful with Sapphire effects.

For more information, visit GenArts

Primatte

Add high-quality Chroma Key and compositing capabilities to Avid DS. Primatte S-100 for Avid DS offers a revolutionary solution for ultraprecision, matte-control blue-screen compositing. The standard plug-in works on both SD and HD media in Avid DS, while an inexpensive option provides you with an unlimited number of Remote Processing Stations (RPS) for those looking to do off-line rendering.

For more information, visit Primatte