Migrating from to What you should know to make your transition successful

www.avid.com Migrating from Final Cut Pro to Media Composer What you should know to make your transition successful

The editorial community has undergone a Media Composer 6 is also platform agnostic, with profound transition with the recent introduction of support for both the latest Mac OS X (Lion) and Apple Final Cut Pro X, causing many to re-evaluate Windows () operating systems. Although their professional tool. Final Cut Pro 7 Final Cut Pro 7 is a 32-bit application, the last editors looking to migrate to a solution that provides available version (7.03) is compatible with Mac OS X similar workflows and professional editing features Lion. That means if you’re currently using Mac OS X will find Avid® Media Composer® 6 a familiar and Lion and Final Cut Pro 7, no additional OS upgrade is powerful application. required to migrate to Media Composer. This guide is designed to assist you with Media Composer also has complete parity with its understanding the basics in migrating from PC version, meaning the application is identical in Final Cut Pro to Media Composer, and how feature set and operation on both platforms. This to successfully navigate the transition. provides you with complete platform portability when moving projects between a Mac and PC. Choose your hardware Managing your media One of the financial challenges during a migration is to maintain your investment in both computer One of the strengths of Media Composer has always hardware and video interfaces. Final Cut Pro users been its robust media management database. have a number of options when choosing video Its ability to keep track of all of your media and interfaces, including products from AJA, Blackmagic easily delete unused media and effects, as well as Design, Matrox, and MOTU. Various configurations consolidate media, has been a major feature benefit. include baseband SDI inputs and outputs, HDMI Baseband captures and imported files are managed connectivity, AES/EBU and S/PDIF by the Avid storage file structure using Avid tools. The inputs and outputs, as well as analog composite files also contain additional metadata embedded in and component connections. Beginning with the file such as information about the project, source, Media Composer 6, Avid has created a software and media format. development kit (SDK) that enables developers to When working with Avid managed media, files are create connections between their hardware and Avid wrapped in MXF containers and stored at the root software. This technology, known as Avid Open I/O, level of the hard drive in an Avid MediaFiles folder. enables you to use many of the same interfaces that This allows the system to track additional metadata you may already have implemented in your Final Cut along with the essence of the file. The actual media is Pro system with Media Composer. usually encoded to a number of different native Avid formats, including DNxHD (at various data rates), uncompressed, DV25, DV50, 15:1s, 2:1, and many other format choices.

2 Migrating from Final Cut Pro to Media Composer What you should know to make your transition successful

This powerful media management feature means AMA is a technology based on software plug-ins. that media remains linked and doesn’t irreversibly This means that plug-ins are required to provide lose its link due to a minor file system update or file support for various file formats. When you install modification changes. It’s also flexible when working Media Composer, a QuickTime plug-in is installed. in an offline to online scenario, where you want to This enables you to link to all QuickTime wrapped file unlink the low-resolution and quickly relink to the formats for use in Media Composer. high-resolution material. It’s up to the appropriate vendor to develop the AMA Final Cut Pro users do not have the option of choosing plug-in that enables their hardware to be used with a managed media system. All files imported by Final Media Composer. This allows each manufacturer to Cut Pro remain in their original location from when keep their plug-in up-to-date, without waiting for the they were imported. Media can span across drives next release of Media Composer to take advantage and be located in various folder levels throughout the of the manufacturer’s updates. You can install and file system. Media files can accidentally be moved, uninstall AMA plug-ins as desired. renamed, and deleted without you knowing how many To download AMA plug-ins, go to the AMA webpage projects reference the media file. Updating a media file (www.avid.com/ama), select the “Plug-ins” tab, and in one project may also break the links to a different find links to the various AMA plug-ins. project using the same media file. When using AMA, files, folders, and volumes can Using AMA (Avid Media Access) be linked and imported. No media is created—it is practically identical in nature to what you are Final Cut Pro users who wish to continue to link accustomed to in Final Cut Pro when importing media to media files will find that AMA gives them that into a project. capability. In many ways, AMA replicates the file linking found in Final Cut Pro, and goes a step further One of the major benefits of AMA is that it supports by providing a conduit for broad format support. more formats than Final Cut Pro. The Log and Transfer utility, built into Final Cut Pro, was created to mount non-native media in the application. After selecting a clip or part of a clip, the Log and Transfer tool wraps the media into a QuickTime format, often transcoding to Apple ProRes along the way. With AMA, many of the formats that require QuickTime wrapping or transcoding in Final Cut Pro have native support in Media Composer. AMA also gives you the ability to quickly view and play media, mark ins and outs, and transcode to various formats for editorial.

3 Migrating from Final Cut Pro to Media Composer What you should know to make your transition successful

Continuing with your ProRes workflow When importing ProRes files, Media Composer can either AMA link, or do a “fast import.” During a fast Along with Avid DNxHD®, Apple ProRes has become a import, the media is copied without a conversion, and staple codec in the industry. Many facilities use ProRes the container is rewrapped from QuickTime to MXF. as their shooting codec, editorial, and mezzanine Final Cut Pro editors will find that these two methods archival format. With the introduction of Media of importing provide for a very flexible workflow. Composer 6, Apple ProRes has become much more tightly integrated into the application than ever before. Storage your bits and bytes You can now choose to capture directly to all versions You can easily use local storage devices, such as of ProRes—including ProRes 444. You can set USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt™, and others, with both timelines to render in ProRes—final exports to ProRes Final Cut Pro and Media Composer systems for take much less time since there is no transcoding media storage. upon output. You’ll find ProRes capture options in the same lists in which you choose your normal DNxHD For larger installations, Final Cut Pro users have the codec settings. option of using the Apple Xsan centralized storage file system. This technology, based on Quantum’s StorNext file system, was once supported by Apple hardware, including Xserve RAID and Xserve servers. Apple has discontinued its professional line of servers and storage, and has opted to certify a third-party company for its storage needs. If you’re transitioning to Media Composer in infrastructures using Xsan, you will find that AMA enables you to read media on the volume without issue. Native file use with multiple Media Composer systems, however, will require some storage manipulation or the use of a third-party product due to differences in metadata and file management.

4 Migrating from Final Cut Pro to Media Composer What you should know to make your transition successful

True collaboration and bin sharing Apple Xsan provides Final Cut Pro 7 users with file-level locking centralized storage. This means that permissions are based on a per-file basis, so you can read and write files, provided you’ve been given permission to do so. Since Final Cut Pro 7 doesn’t have project sharing capabilities built into the application, no simultaneous sharing of actual projects or bins is possible. Only reading of media by multiple users is possible with its current limitations. For true collaboration across multiple Media Composer systems, Avid solutions such as ISIS® 5000 and 7000 provide high-availability, ample bandwidth, and one of the easiest storage setups in the industry. With Media Composer on ISIS, you can concurrently share projects and bins with other editors, and work in a truly collaborative editorial environment. If you need to connect non-Avid systems to ISIS, Avid has certified both Final Cut Pro and for use on ISIS storage systems. This gives you the best of both worlds—true collaborative workflows Along with timeline video and audio, Boris plug-in using Media Composer along with Final Cut Pro users on both Final Cut Pro and Media Composer compatibility for centralized media storage. will find that filters and transitions applied to clips in one system retain all of their settings and keyframed Opening Final Cut Pro projects in changes during the translation. Media Composer Timeline editing If you’d like to open Final Cut Pro projects in Media Composer, you can choose from two applications Final Cut Pro users are familiar with the mouse-driven for the translation—Boris Transfer FCP or Automatic editing and trimming, and Media Composer offers Duck’s Pro Export FCP. These applications enable similar functionality with the Smart Tool. you to export a Final Cut Pro timeline as an AAF or OMF® file, and allow the media to be external to the file for flexibility.

5 Migrating from Final Cut Pro to Media Composer What you should know to make your transition successful

Built-in audio toolset The following features are translated to : If you use Final Cut Pro’s built-in audio tools, • Markers created in the timeline migrating to Media Composer will give you an even • Volume automation (rubber banding) broader arsenal of audio tools. • Clip gain • Clip pan Unlike Final Cut Pro—which only supports clip- • Pan automaton (including surround panning) based audio effects—Media Composer supports • Avid EQ both clip-based and track-based audio effects in the • AudioSuite plug-ins timeline. This means you can place an RTAS (Real- • RTAS ® plug-in assignments and settings Time AudioSuite) plug-in on an entire track and affect This gives the Pro Tools editor a much greater head all clips you place on that track. This is useful with start when working with projects in which the video dialog tracks, for example, in which a compressor or editor set volume, panning, and plug-in assignments equalizer is necessary to smooth out dialog on the for their temp mix. entire track. Multiple RTAS plug-ins can be added to a single track, and settings can be saved and recalled The power of integrated phonetics for later use. Final Cut Pro editors have the ability to use Boris Additional audio capabilities that Final Cut Pro users Soundbite, a third-party phonetic search application will appreciate include multichannel 5.1 and 7.1 audio based on Nexidia dialog search technology. This tracks, with support for interleaved files, surround separate application indexes media files and enables panning, and automation for all audio tracks. you to find clips with particular words or phrases based on phonetic characteristics. Integration with Pro Tools Similarly, PhraseFind is an option powered by Nexidia, In a typical audio finishing workflow, you might export but differs in the fact that it is completely integrated Final Cut Pro timelines as an OMF or AAF file for into Media Composer. It offers the same phonetic use in Pro Tools®. Along with the audio media, audio audio indexing, and enables you to quickly pull up all keyframe data, as well as panning information, is relevant clips by searching on a key word or phrase. translated and imported into the Pro Tools session. Because it’s integrated into the Media Composer Find Due to the tight integration between Avid products, tool, you can use PhraseFind to search additional Media Composer to Pro Tools finishing workflows fields and filter their results, so searches are more contain much more data than simple volume and precise. Boris Soundbite users will easily be able to panning information. migrate to PhraseFind and take full advantage of the built-in integration with Media Composer.

6 Migrating from Final Cut Pro to Media Composer What you should know to make your transition successful

For script-based projects, the ScriptSync option, Conclusion powered by Nexidia, phonetically indexes all clip If you’re a Final Cut Pro editor who’s looking to dialog in your project and then syncs all relevant clips migrate elsewhere, you’ll find that Media Composer to your script—automatically—so you can find the offers a powerful and easy-to-use set of professional best takes fast. tools. For a successful migration, editors should understand that many of the features found in Final Final export and conform Cut Pro are also included in Media Composer. For workflows involving offline to online relinking, Final Features such as Avid Open I/O, AMA, native ProRes Cut Pro and Media Composer are very similar in their support, audio interoperability with Pro Tools, and approaches. The differences are in the additional the ability to work with many third-party software metadata that Media Composer tracks and catalogs, applications makes migrating an easy decision. as well as its robust and powerful Media Tool. Final Cut Pro finds and relinks by basic Finder filename, reel name, and timecode values. Media Composer uses a much more powerful set of criteria for relinking, and has many options for setting the size and codec for files being relinked.

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©2012 , Inc. All rights reserved. Product features, specifications, system requirements and availability are subject to change without notice. Avid, the Avid logo, Avid DNxHD, ISIS, Media Composer, OMF, Pro Tools and RTAS are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective companies.

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