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MC First – What’s the point of it?
I’m writing this at the end of a particularly frustrating day, where a “should take 10 minutes” task ended up taking the best part of 9 hours, so forgive the grumpy attitude.
As a professional editor with 20+ years of experience, Avid Media Composer user is my programme of choice when doing my day job. As a bloke trying to make home videos for his kid’s Instagram, it’s a disaster.
I can sort-of forgive the big differences in the user interface between MC and MC First. It’s designed for people with zero knowledge of editing software and it uses more “common sense” commands than the ones the Avid pros are used to. Heaven help them if they decide to fork out for the paid version, but whatever.
I can’t forgive the baffling incompatibility with H.264 / MP4 media. This is what 90% of the people Avid is aiming this at will shoot on. Lightworks can do it. Premiere can do it. My First Fisher Price Edit Software can probable do it, but when it comes to MC First: “computer says no”. Sure, you can fork out 100+beans on a special plug-in that will handle it, providing you don’t mind spending a few hours searching for this as a solution and another few hours trying to actually implement it. You can also fanny around with free file converters with interfaces that look like something out of the 1990s, but what sort of zero knowledge person is going to jump through those hoops?
Maybe I’m missing something here, but apart from brand loyalty, what can First do that the less challenging editing packages can’t do?
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4 Replies
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The WHOLE POINT of MC First is for people to learn how to use Avid Media Composer. A free way to allow them to learn the system. It lacks a lot of ability to deliver high high quality finished products because it is a learning tool only.
Avid MC First is a “training app.” It’s a way to dip your toes into the water.
[Martin Sole] “I can’t forgive the baffling incompatibility with H.264 / MP4 media. This is what 90% of the people Avid is aiming this at will shoot on”
This isn’t a “consumer level” Avid version…so they aren’t aiming this at them. They are aiming this at students, or people who want to do simple edits so they can learn the interface without paying money to do so. YES, they have a trial period for Avid MC (30 days)…and that is longer than what Adobe offers (14 days). But this is for those people who might need a little longer than that. But no necessarily for those to create projects clear enough to post.
Yes, I think that’s a little odd, but that is what this is.
[Martin Sole] “what can First do that the less challenging editing packages can’t do?”
It’s not designed for what you are thinking. If you need a free app for this stuff, you can use Resolve. Or if you work a lot with H.264/MP4…use Premiere. MC First is a crippled trainer.
Shane
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I’m not sure that First has enough similarities with MC for it to be described as a trainer.
I guess you do get an insight into the things that have been driving us nuts for years, namely Avid’s super fussiness about hardware, codecs and drivers and it’s preference for end customers to do the beta testing on every new release.
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i’m a long-haul AVID-MC editor, but returned to school to do a masters in Animation, and have lost my access to the big-boy MC. After 2 years of dealing almost exclusively in Premiere (because I get free CC account as part of my masters program, and my school doesn’t use MC for it’s animation dept)
I’m starting up a little independent project and the thought of doing it in PrPro was just depressing, so I thought I would try the Free Version of AVID to get my chops back.
I found that if I wanted to bring any footage into it, I had to convert it to quicktime. I couldn’t get anything else to work. I dunno, maybe it’s an RTFM-solution, but I really thought this ‘free’ version would be more limited in it’s commands, and less limited in what file-types it could juggle.
Also, the fact that you can’t take your AVID First project and promote it upwards to Avid Media Composer means that if I were to continue working in Avid FIRST, this project will have to forever live in Avid FIRST.
This also baffles me. One of the strongest things I thought AVID had going for it was the fact you could bring any decade old project back to life in the any current MC project, because the basis of Avid is just Bins and Sequences… and SO MUCH legacy effects and such have survived.
I find it difficult to believe this product is aimed at students.
I think it is aimed at professional editors who want a taste of Avid beyond a 30-day trial…
…but even then, I think it misses the mark.
It seems to me that Avid has created this project for people like me. Someone who knows and loves AVID, but is too cheap to buy a sub or lic. And that they give JUUUUUST enough tools available to do some work… but keep your wrists tied enough to long for the big software.
And it may end up working, as I am seriously now thinking of dropping the $300 on the academic perma-license before my Masters Student Status ends.
personal note:
My current most missed command that is not in Avid FIRST: “Remove Match Frame Edits”
-really? I have to go into trim-mode and hit the delete key?Unit of beauty required to launch 1 ship = 1 milihelen
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As a person who has been actively learning Media Composer for the last few weeks, Media Composer First has (mostly) been useful as a learning tool. Lynda.com has 2 updated Media Composer tutorials I’ve been following along, and I would say 85% of the features in MC First is there. Besides the limitations of the bins, there are many settings I cannot access, which can be frustrating, and a few “gotchas” here and there.
As a whole, I definitely wouldn’t use MC First to edit any actual projects with, but as a means to understand the general workings of MC without paying for an active subscription is invaluable. It’s another debate to ask wether younger generations would turn to MC edit their projects with. Different tools for different purposes, and while MC is an exceptional tool for editing, in my opinion, other tools such as Final Cut Pro X or Resolve definitely have more features to act as a one stop shop.
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