Avid Releases New, Enhanced Versions of Popular Editing Tools for Powering Faster, More Efficient Production Workflows

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID) today announced the return of PhraseFind™ and ScriptSync® options for Avid Media Composer®, the industry’s preeminent nonlinear editing solution, giving video professionals the powerful tools and accelerated creative workflows they need to create high-quality, engaging and immersive content more efficiently. The launch of new, enhanced versions of PhraseFind and ScriptSync delivers on Avid’s commitment to offering the most comprehensive tools and workflow solutions to create, distribute and optimize media on the MediaCentral® Platform, the industry’s most open, tightly integrated and efficient platform designed for media.

Avid is launching enhanced versions of PhraseFind and ScriptSync following its agreement to exclusively license Nexidia’s Emmy® Award-winning media and entertainment technologies and solutions. The new versions are a direct result of Avid listening to its preeminent customer community through the Avid Customer Association, giving them the powerful tools they need to deliver high-quality content. The new versions of PhraseFind and ScriptSync will enable Media Composer users to use the tools for phonetic indexing and search and working with scripted material with the latest version of Media Composer.

Emmy Award-winning editor, Stuart Bass, ACE (The Office, Arrested Development, Pushing Daisies) said: “ScriptSync has changed the way I edit. The phonetic indexing tool saves me about 15 hours a week. It speeds up the process and helps me be more efficient with my time, so that I can be focused on the creative part of editing.”

“Our agreement with Nexidia has enabled us to not only bring back the popular PhraseFind and ScriptSync tools for Media Composer, but also deliver enhanced versions that give video professionals the fast, efficient creative workflows they need to create engaging content and deliver projects on time,” said Dana Ruzicka, vice president and chief product officer, Avid. “As we continue to integrate Nexidia’s media and entertainment technologies and solutions into MediaCentral, we look forward to delivering more innovations that optimize content production workflow efficiencies.”

Media Composer | PhraseFind Option’s powerful automatic phonetic indexing of media enables video professionals to quickly and easily find the media they need by searching for spoken words and phrases. It saves users valuable time by delivering fast search results and eliminating the need to review and log hundreds of hours of material to find what they need.

Media Composer | ScriptSync Option’s powerful phonetic indexing engine automatically links media to scripts, enabling video professionals working with scripted projects to easily audition takes and make creative decisions faster.

New features in Media Composer | PhraseFind Option include:

• A new, faster, more powerful phonetic indexing engine that speeds up indexing time and search returns, saving valuable time and money
• Updates to the Find window, including an updated look and feel for better visual integration with Media Composer
• Auto-fill for the search field for more efficient searches
• Shorter phoneme phrases for more accurate results
• Improved ability to index unclear audio
• Support for more dialects and accents

New features in Media Composer | ScriptSync Option include:

• The same undo/redo functionality as Media Composer
• The ability to view clip frames in their native format (4x3 and 16x9)
• Additional colors for richer organization and script markup
• The ability to edit text in the script to match what the speaker actually said

Availability and pricing

As part of Avid’s commitment to offering the most flexible licensing options, the following new PhraseFind and ScriptSync options for Media Composer are now available from Avid resellers and the Avid Online Store:

• Media Composer | ScriptSync Option
• Media Composer | PhraseFind Option
• Media Composer | ScriptSync and PhraseFind Option Bundle
• Media Composer | ScriptSync and PhraseFind Option Bundle for EDU

Pricing starts at $49 for Media Composer ScriptSync and PhraseFind Option Bundle for EDU.

An upgrade plan will be available for existing owners of PhraseFind and ScriptSync starting at $149 and $349, respectively. 

A special promotional offer enables Media Composer customers whose licenses have lapsed to purchase the current version of Media Composer (8.8) for $399. Version 8.8 is required for the new ScriptSync and PhraseFind options.

A full list of features is available on the Avid website.