Avid News

Report on the Avid
Feature Film Users Group

by Sidney Wolinsky

On January 15th Sony Studios hosted the 6th meeting of the Avid Feature Film Users Group. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce the latest version of the Avid software, 6.5. The meeting was preceded by snacks and drinks in the Sony commissary. The meeting itself took place in the Rita Hayworth Theater. We were first greeted by our host, Steven B. Cohen, Director of Development for Advanced Digital Systems Group at Sony. Then Scott Spector from JVC gave a presentation of their Digital S professional tape format. Finally the Avid part of the presentation began.

Jill Mullan, Product Marketing Manager at Avid, gave an overview of the rigorous development process of v6.5. Due to increased testing she promised that 6.5 would be more reliable than previous releases. Finally Tom Ohanian, Chief Editor at Avid, and Michael Phillips, Film Product Specialist at Avid, demonstrated the new features of 6.5. Both are long-standing members of the Avid development team, Tom being part of the original group that developed the Avid Media Composer in the late 80's.

The first feature they demonstrated was script integration, which Avid purchased from the makers of the now defunct Ediflex and will be familiar to those who worked on the Ediflex. In 6.5 the script is imported into a bin as a text file (you can't scan or fax a lined script into the Avid yet, but we were told you might be able to in the future). The bin then becomes a script bin with special properties, and its own menu. A take is dropped into the bin creating an identifying header at the top of the script. The take is lined and tagged while playing it in real time. Later you can double click the lines to open the take at the selected spot. You can also lasso any section of the script and all relevant coverage will be loaded into the source monitor and played. In addition you can search for a word and you will be taken to the spot in the take containing the word.

This seemed to be the high point of 6.5. Among the other features were a locator window: each take that has locators will have a window attached to it which will open like a bin in the bin monitor and have a list of all the locators in that take and the comments attached to the locators. By double clicking on a locator in this window you will be taken to the frame tagged with the locator. For heavy locator users this will be a great boon. You will also have the ability to record audio directly into the timeline. For Lightworks fans there is a new selection in the composer settings called "Single Mark Editing" which replicates the "park and mark" system used in the Lightworks.

The features presented sounded interesting but of narrow usefulness. Script integration seems to be labor intensive which will only be used on large budget, well staffed features. The locator window will be most useful to organize documentary material. Recording into the timeline seems best suited for documentaries as well, for recording temp narration while cutting. However, the ingenuity of people who used cores for Moviola risers and paper clips for knuckle guards should not be underestimated and I'm sure these new features will be put to many unexpected uses.

As the meeting wore on, the focus of the Users Group shifted from features of the new software to Avid as a company and how it relates to its Hollywood users. This discussion, which tends to arise at any meetings between Avid representatives and Avid's Hollywood editorial community, felt familiar: frustration and disappointment with the responsiveness of Avid to the core problems of the editing community in Hollywood. People feel they are not adequately prepared to use the system nor is the system adequately prepared for the uses for which it is intended. Often functions do not work as advertised, or may be so buggy that whether or not they work properly can hardly be judged. Once again we heard the Avid representatives say they are doing the best they can and once again we heard the complaints of disgruntled users. Hopefully the Avid representatives at this meeting will have heard these concerns and have carried them back to Tewksbury.