By Brady Betzel
I’ve been editing for over 15 years, and during that time, I’ve been watching the NLE market shift and grow. There was a time long ago when Avid Media Composer was the only real game in town, but then came Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro and, most recently, Blackmagic Resolve. These days editors are expected to use any and all NLEs, but the problem is that they don’t work well together. But thanks to Avid and Adobe putting their heads together, that has changed.
Avid has introduced a landmark update: the MediaCentral Panel for Adobe Premiere Pro. On the surface you may think, “Well, I’ve been able to use Premiere on my Avid Nexis already,” which is true. But with the latest MediaCentral update, Adobe has been working with Avid to allow Avid bins and sequences to be compatible inside of Premiere Pro! When I heard that, I did a double take. You heard correctly, Adobe Premiere Pro will be able to fully import Avid sequences, complete with layers, third-party effects and more.
Media Central Panel for Adobe Premiere
Think of a field reporter uploading footage, doing a rough cut using the web-browser interface, and being able to send that to the editor to immediately begin work inside Avid Media Composer. Except now it’s also compatible with Premiere and can be accessed inside of Adobe’s NLE. MediaCentral will also be compatible with Adobe’s production workflow with bin/sequence reservations. Bin-locking on a Nexis inside of Premiere Pro, anyone? And as mentioned earlier, Premiere Pro will now be compatible with the FastServe servers to send to playout.
Another interesting feature is the ability to perform phonetic searches that have become a mainstay for documentary, news and unscripted reality show editors. If you’ve used PhraseFind or ScriptSync, then you have encountered the Nexidia-powered search capabilities and understand how helpful and powerful they are. This same Nexidia-powered phonetic search capability will be accessible inside of Adobe Premiere Pro.
In the end, this latest Avid MediaCentral update is a big one, not just for now but for the future. If Avid and Adobe can get along and work interchangeably, what about Resolve or FCPX? Maybe not FCPX, but still, an open round-trip workflow between NLEs would be the dream. There would truly be NLE-agnostic workflows that would let editors work in their favorite tools without being held back by lack of XML imports, AAF incompatibility and more. From this online editor’s perspective, this is the start of paradigm shift coming from Avid, which has stated more is surely to come from this two-way partnership.
Now if I can get Adobe Premiere project/bins to go into Avid Media Composer seamlessly, the conform world would stand on its head. Time will tell.
Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and The Shop. He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.
