Avid at IBC2024

Avid showcased four dynamic demo pods at IBC2024, in Amsterdam, featuring its latest tech developments plus exciting new partner integrations.

“We had four pods in our booth, one focusing on Media Composer and postproduction workflows; one looking at Pro Tools and the world of audio; one focused on news and our MediaCentral solutions there; and another looking at cloud, on-demand, and storage workflows. We also showcased a range of new partner integrations,” says Craig Wilson, Avid Product Evangelist for Video and Media.

Wilson chatted with Avid solution experts about what was highlighted at the show. Check out the conversation below.

Make Remote Work for You: Cloud on-demand and storage workflows
Danny Hollingsworth, Business Development Manager, Cloud and SaaS
Luke Strent, Lead Product Owner, Avid NEXIS

The past few years have transformed the media and entertainment industry, with geographically dispersed teams becoming the norm due to the global pandemic. This shift has resulted in more efficient and collaborative work processes, which customers are keen to maintain.

Avid | Edit On Demand, featuring Media Composer and Avid NEXIS, has been evolving continuously. This year, the focus is on expanding and scaling these solutions beyond traditional postproduction workflows.

One significant update comes in response to customer feedback. Initially, a maximum of 30 seats per subscription were available, ideal for production-focused teams. However, larger enterprises expressed interest in more extensive subscriptions. This year, the ability to support 300+ seats within a single Avid | Edit On Demand subscription has been introduced, offering enterprise-level scalability while maintaining simplicity with a straightforward, one-click deployment.

There’s been significant progress in cloud storage. The ultra-high-performance storage tier in Avid | Edit On Demand has been ideal for handling any postproduction workflow, but it comes with higher costs. A new lower-cost storage tier is being introduced. This option maintains real-time editorial capabilities, making it easier for larger or longer-term productions to move to the cloud without compromising workflow quality. This development aims to provide a storage tier that meets the needs of editorial teams while being budget-conscious, enabling a smooth transition from on-prem to cloud-based workflows.

A tech preview of advanced caching technology was shown at IBC to support full remote collaboration, allowing teams to work on the same media, whether on-prem or in the cloud, without the need for file copying or conflict resolution.

The new, more affordable editing tier in Avid | Edit On Demand is coming soon, ensuring seamless remote collaboration.

This ongoing development, and the integration of cloud solutions, are paving the way for more efficient and creative workflows across the board.

Find Your Story Faster: Media Composer and postproduction workflows
Matt Feury, Senior Director of Market Solutions

Media Composer users are going to love what's new. A feature that’s generating a lot of buzz: the PhraseFind Transcript Tool. Already a beloved component of Media Composer, along with ScriptSync, PhraseFind is even better, thanks to Avid’s integration of AI-enhanced functionality through Avid Ada. The Transcript Tool offers a visual reference for both scripted and unscripted projects, allowing editors to quickly assemble rough cuts straight from the transcript. This improvement is part of Avid’s ongoing commitment to leveraging speech-to-text technology for more efficient editing.

Media Composer and Pro Tools are now more integrated than ever, further bridging picture and sound. With the ability to export sessions specifically tailored for Media Composer, the collaboration between video and audio workflows is seamless. Media Composer now supports pan and volume automation at a subframe level, ensuring compatibility with Pro Tools and enhancing overall workflow precision.

Simplifying remote collaboration is the introduction of Avid Huddle, the first fully integrated remote video collaboration tool for Media Composer. With Avid Huddle, editors can share timelines in real-time, invite feedback, and even allow team members to annotate directly on the frames. Only the session host needs a license to facilitate Avid Huddle. Everyone else can join in without a license. Powered by Microsoft Teams and secured with SRT video transport, this tool revolutionizes remote collaboration, making it simple, secure, and cost-effective.

Panel SDK offers a new level of integration for third-party developers, allowing them to bring their tools directly into the Media Composer interface. Whether it's media management, archival, logging, or VFX workflows, Panel SDK opens up endless possibilities for customizing and enhancing your editing environment.

Digital-First, End-to-End News Production: News solutions powered by MediaCentral
Daliah Naor, Director of Market Solutions

We were thrilled to showcase some of the latest advancements in our Avid MediaCentral ecosystem, designed to advance efficiency, security, and creativity in media production.

A highlight at our booth was the Avid Ada-powered transcription tool, integrated into MediaCentral. This powerful capability offers secure, automated transcript generation for master clips, or users can manually generate them. The tool allows for speaker identification, with names automatically rippling through the clip, ensuring consistent identification. These transcripts can be easily searched using the MediaCentral search tool, making it a vital asset for anyone needing quick access to specific content.

We've introduced exciting updates to the iNEWS client. In addition to the existing interface, users now have the option to toggle between light and dark modes, catering to different working preferences. The Rundown app within iNEWS has seen significant improvements, including advanced timing options, and character counts—particularly useful for social media-focused workflows.

Our MediaCentral | Acquire app now offers even more control over ingest channels alongside usability improvements. This update benefits existing customers and MediaCentral | Capture users, ensuring a more streamlined experience.

For editors, we're introducing new capabilities such as dip-to-color effects and waveform scaling directly in the timeline. Our powerful new Rules Engine brings automation to the MediaCentral platform, allowing administrators to define rules and processes that trigger automatically—like sending new clips to specific folders. This feature significantly increases workflow efficiency without requiring a full MAM system, although it integrates seamlessly if you use one.

Security remains a top priority, and we're adding support for identity providers like Okta for MediaCentral | Newsroom Management and MediaCentral | Asset Management. This ensures that your content remains secure while also simplifying user authentication across platforms.

To make collaboration smoother, we're previewing an integration with Teams chat, which will enable a more streamlined approval process, further enhancing MediaCentral’s collaborative capabilities.

Many of the exciting features in MediaCentral | Cloud UX are also available in panels within Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro, creating a unified experience across these platforms. This integration ensures that users can access the full suite of MediaCentral tools no matter where they work.

Last year at IBC, we launched Avid | Stream IO, our ingest and playout solution, and we're pleased to report that over the past year, we've sold hundreds of channels and have reached over 1,000. We've expanded our supported configurations to include two and eight-channel setups, in addition to the original four-channel configuration. This flexibility allows support for codecs from proxy to UHD, including simultaneous proxy and higher-resolution creation during ingest.

The latest version of Avid | Stream IO, now featuring IP-based ingest and playout, is another milestone. This update complements the existing SDI support and will enable a seamless transition from SDI to IP, with full support for SMPTE 2110 video over IP, and also compressed video over IP for SRT and RTMP protocols.

Delivering the Most Demanding Audio: Pro Tools and audio post advancements
Derk Hagedorn, Director of Market Solutions

We featured a comprehensive setup, including an end-to-end system that integrates Pro Tools | HDX, various interfaces like Pro Tools | MTRX II and Pro Tools | MTRX Studio, Pro Tools | Sync X, and an Avid S4 control surface. Everything will be connected to Avid NEXIS storage, ensuring a seamless, high-performance workflow. We also highlighted the recent Pro Tools 2024.6 release that showcases many features previously introduced as tech previews that are now available to enrich sound-for-picture workflows.

A key highlight is our focus on audio post workflows enhanced by AI. We were thrilled to introduce Pro Tools speech-to-text as a tech preview. This feature allows you to scan any audio file in a session for speech, display it as text directly within the timeline, and even search and filter through speech data via a dedicated transcript window. This functionality, already incorporated into Media Composer, is now being brought to Pro Tools.

We’re expanding support for ARA technology. Initially introduced with Celemony Melodyne, we’ve now added a host of industry-standard editing solutions, including iZotope RX Spectral Editor, Synchro Arts RePitch, VocAlign, Revoice Pro, and Sound Radix Auto-Align 2 and Auto-Align Post 2. As a technology preview, we showcased new partner integrations with Steinberg SpectraLayers and WaveLab, as well as Acon Digital’s Acoustica that elevate audio postproduction.

The 2024.6 release also enhances session data import functionality. We showcased this at the booth, along with upcoming enhancements based on customer feedback, and demonstrated ongoing improvements in Media Composer interoperability, reinforcing the seamless workflow between these two industry-leading tools.

Pro Tools thrives within a vibrant partner ecosystem, and we proudly highlighted key collaborations. We partnered with Dropbox to integrate their Dropbox Replay, ideal for review and approval processes. We also demonstrated how improved Pro Tools performance with Avid NEXIS shared storage systems helps audio post facilities streamline collaboration and file management between teams.

Another essential partner is Dolby®, and since the December introduction of the internal Pro Tools Atmos renderer, we’ve continued to add new functionality with each release by leveraging Dolby’s ® expanding SDK. We also previewed integrated speaker muting, soloing, and the ability to float the trim and downmix window—enhancements that further streamline Dolby Atmos® workflows.

Partnership Integrations
Ray Thompson, Senior Director, Partners and Alliances

Avid introduced a series of collaborative partnerships and solutions at IBC, expanding its ecosystem and integrating new technologies, including more AI-driven tools.

Avid’s Panel SDK, introduced last year, is revolutionizing postproduction by allowing third-party applications to run directly inside Media Composer. This innovation simplifies previously cumbersome workflows, with seamless integration of tools like Marquis’ Midway which enables file based ingest from Sony Ci and LiveU for edit while capture workflows allowing editors to start cutting faster in any Avid environment, including Avid | Edit On Demand, Media Composer, and MediaCentral l Cloud UX for cloud and on prem deployments. The process is now more streamlined than ever, enabling editors to work with proxy formats and easily restore just the high-resolution files needed.

AI is playing a crucial role in Avid’s new offerings. Tools like ioMoVo and collaborations with companies like Doom Solutions are automating tasks, saving time, and enhancing asset management and VFX workflows. These AI-driven solutions make media production faster and more intuitive.

With nearly 200 companies developing panels for Media Composer, Avid’s network and flexibility is rapidly expanding. These new apps and tools, built by both Avid customers and third-party developers, provide even more options for streamlining workflows.

Avid MediaCentral now supports AI-powered tools like Digital Nirvana and Traco AI, which create transcripts, captions, and translations, driving efficiency in news production. Additionally, partnerships with Cinedeck for multi-cam capture and Chyron and Vizrt bring advanced graphics capabilities directly into Media Composer and iNews.

Watch our virtual event for more about the innovations we showcased in the Avid booth at IBC2024.

Learn more about Avid's latest innovations.