April 2008
Avid Technology, Inc. unveiled a new family of professional digital video editing systems that offer greater speed, responsiveness, reliability and price-performance – delivering an exceptional HD editing experience to media professionals. The new lineup, which includes next-generation versions of Avid® Media Composer® (v3.0), NewsCutter® (v7.0), and Symphony™ (v3.0) software, as well as new hardware configurations, Mojo DX and Nitris® DX, maximizes real-time performance for customers by intelligently using all available computing bandwidth to evenly disperse the processing of video and effects across the entire system. The result is an extremely fast and responsive HD editing experience that provides greater creative freedom and flexibility to end-users.
The increase in power and performance of Avid’s new editing systems is the result of an architectural design that tightly integrates Avid software and hardware with the CPU, host graphics card and PCI Express connection, to create a high-bandwidth, high-performance effects engine. This design eliminates the lag time in responsiveness that users often experience when working with HD material during the editorial process.
“For any project we begin, we need to know that our tools are going to help us work as fast as we can think and get the job done under budget, usually with intense deadlines,” said Dave Ballard of LAB 601, Inc., a beta tester of the new Media Composer Nitris DX. “Lots of products boast the latest bells and whistles, but if the tools don’t allow us to perform flawlessly in high-pressure situations, none of the bells and whistles matter. The creative process can grind to a halt the moment that technology prevents us from trying something new – on the fly. Speed and performance rank at the top of any wish list for editors. I need a system that responds to the way I want to work and allows me to work more freely. The Media Composer Nitris DX is faster than any other Media Composer I have worked on in the past, and has been rock-solid reliable and flexible in all of our daily workflows.”
Avid’s Next-Generation Editing Systems
Avid’s new editing lineup offers a range of new capabilities designed to enhance the HD editing process, including:
“This news represents another milestone in how Avid continues to drive ‘New Thinking.’ Our customers have told us that quality, performance and value are the most important characteristics in any product or solution. We’re glad to say that this new suite of offerings reflects these priorities,” said Kirk Arnold, executive vice president and general manager of Avid Video.
System Configurations, Availability and Pricing
The new HD systems are expected to be available in Q2 2008 and will offer exceptional price-performance, with flexible hardware configurations designed to meet a range of professional production needs. In addition, both the new Media Composer and Symphony configurations are qualified to run on Mac OS X Leopard and Windows XP and Vista platforms, and NewsCutter configurations are qualified for Windows XP and Vista. All Media Composer and NewsCutter systems offer the same software toolset across their respective configurations – with additional capabilities coming from different hardware options. These configurations include:
Want to see what 24 hours of creative awesomeness look like? Click here.

This news message is supported by The Creative Finder, an online platform for photographers, illustrators, designers, and art directors to promote their portfolios towards new clients and collaborators. Creatives who wish to sign up for an account can save 10% off annual fees with promo code 'designtaxi'.


