Is Avid still a dinausor workflow? I'm afraid I have no other option than affirming so.
I love Media Composer, it's a bloody peice of software but its interface belongs to another age.
An age where only the elite editors where working on 100.000 bucks software (that
strangely cost now 1000...) with an interface thought for being the most complicated and unfriendly possible. Avid changed recently and started to listen, but its old nature is still alive, it's a pity.
Here is what happened:
Fashion shooting 1400 stills, same background, dozens of models.
I had to put side by side (left-right) dividing the screen area in 2 V parts, 2 images sequences at 1 frame/sec
then, some parts of the sequences had to be played at 24 frames/sec. None frame could be lost so no time remaping.
In Premiere, this kind of requirement is intuitive even for a novice. No hassle. Try to do that in Avid...
this requires 2 kinds of imports. One is an image sequence at 24 frames/sec render into a motion clip: there, Avid is simply brilliant.
The other is an image sequence of the same but this time imported in the timeline as image with a frame duration of 1 sec: there it's been hell.
It also requires that a 1/2 H of resolution clip keeps his native dimension and transparencies guarantee when the clip is moved. Avid doesn't like that at all.
It took me 2 hours to figure out how to set-up the timeline and distribute the clips in the format area the way it should have. (that was a complex requirement that had to match with the music beat)
but then, the worst issue is that when you don't ask Avid to import in autodetect an image sequence, it simply puts the images in the bin in a non sequencial order (holly shit!!) and follows his own logic wich is more or less a reverse order but not exactly either to complicate even more the story. That's not fun! It took me another hour of searching info about how to re-order the sequence into the bin or re-import automatically with the correct order (sequence was 0001 to 1400). Well, nothing, nada and I gave-up. Do that in Premiere or Edius it simply works with no limitations, hassles or whatever. The time it took me to look for info and the project was booked in Edius!...and I still haven't find the bin order prob.
Why do I write this? because if you think to go Avid,
think well first. It's a very good software, probably the most powerfull NLE, but it's not the first time I'm facing this kind of things and it takes always ages to figure-out the hows when this simply should not be happening.
Now I'd have no other options than calling the Avid's guru in Madrid. "hello...I have this issue...bla bla bla". I'm tired of that with Avid and a little bit more of this dinausor workflow and I'm about to give it up.
They have listened, true, but still too much oscurs settings and hassles that appear when you thought it was more or less mastered and that are solved from ages by other NLEs.
I found by accident an article about Media Composer that IMO resumes very well all that. If you're interested by Avid, read it, it's IMO spot-on, the conclusion says it all:
http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/News/Feature/In-the-Studio-Avid-Media-Composer-5-and-the-Matrox-MXO2-Mini-71227.htmHave a nice day.