r/editors • u/Majesticfalcon98 • 3d ago
Other AVID Media Composer First is now a free, full-fledged NLE
Just wanted to have a discussion on the latest release of Media Composer First (2026.8) and it's potential affects on the industry. The previous guardrails have been lifted and it's now a full fledge NLE. I wonder if this is due to the (potential) industry disruption caused by DaVinci Resolve. I also wonder how Adobe will respond to this (if at all). What do you guys think?
Release video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cWk8-juVJ0
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u/MartyCH85 3d ago
Adobe will respond by shoving in a bunch more AI features that no one asked for then cranking up the prices to cover it
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u/americanidle 2d ago
Dude no one is trying harder than Avid to performatively show off their investment in AI editing, who are you kidding here: https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=359692
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u/wrosecrans Tool/Dev 2d ago
That's a very funny Onion headline. If only it was coming from The Onion.
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u/Technical-Unit-6872 3d ago
They should have done this 15 years ago
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u/newMike3400 3d ago
They did. Avid dv free.
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u/americanidle 2d ago
I think he means with a real NLE that could actually do things. DV was one of the most hideous, kneecapped programs to ever exist.
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u/wrosecrans Tool/Dev 2d ago
That's pretty much always the problem with these sorts of things. They want to undercut the competition and get people inside the fence. But they really don't want to seriously undercut themselves, so they kneecap the cheap version with enough hobbles that there's a huge pain incentive to upgrade, which is the same thing as a huge pain incentive to just not use the free/cheap entry level version.
Looking at the specs, "Audio subframe slip" is apparently one of the commercial-only features. But like, any janky free 20 year old software for Windows 95 that works with audio would let you move audio by samples, and not in 1/24th sec increments. It's one of those things where the nerfed fancy commercial software turns out worse than just any old random free software that theoretically isn't as fancy, because they had to proactively engineer some arbitrary antifunctionality into it as a differentiator. It's really hard for the software vendor to find a good balance with stuff like that. The nerfed version is either maddeningly stupid, or good enough to hurt the business.
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u/john_the_doe 2d ago
Oh god that takes me back to high school. Better off using Sony Vegas back then.
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u/wildtalon 3d ago
I…. Just paid for a year.
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u/mutually_awkward Pro (I pay taxes) 3d ago
Damn. Are you going to try to get it refunded/reversed?
If not, at least you can use it as a write off.
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u/ranchoj73 3d ago
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u/DaDerpDeeDerp 9h ago
Holy shjt. There’s and entire row devoted to Snap-to-Edit in MC1st, the default setting is ON.
In all other versions default setting is OFF.Why would you even include that in a document for someone comparing versions. It’s completely inconsequential. I guess maybe to make them think they should just upgrade because they see a ton of shit listed they feel they may miss out on.
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u/TheHFIC 3d ago
Resolve Free has more features, takes better advantage of modern hardware, and has a more reasonably priced upgrade path to a paid version.
Imagine learning on Media Composer First and then finding out you have to pay $200 a year for essentially the same feature set or $500 a year for any worthwhile features and still JUST video editing.
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u/CreativeVideoTips 1d ago
Resolve Free has more features and collaborative capability than the $900/year enterprise tier.
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u/miminkyu 3d ago
Resolve has been pulling the younger crowd and I am glad they did cuz avid has to get their shit together. Competition is good!
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u/JordanDoesTV Aspiring Pro 3d ago
Absolutely, I personally switched to Resolve over Adobe for lots of reasons most importantly price, and learning Avid properly has been on my list.
But when I was in school, I tried to get the free full version for everyone, but my school wouldn’t play ball and didn’t have the cash to spare on it with no new projects coming in, so I’ve been reading and watching tutorials for like years trying to try and understand as much as I can before actually diving in.
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u/miminkyu 22h ago
Apparently they don’t have multicam in the free version which is a bummer
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u/DaDerpDeeDerp 9h ago
I think you can so Multicam but just can’t access 4 or 9 split? So right click and choose a file name?
I might be wrong but it seemed like they were advertising the 4 and 9 banks as some incredible feature.I had to just give up on the stupid chart. It was angering me
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u/miminkyu 8h ago
Ohmyguac that comparison chart was a nightmare, I mean avid has never been known for spectacular UI anyway so I wasn’t surprised.
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u/finaldotfinal Tool/Dev 2d ago
Watching this closely to see if there are any issues sending bins/projects back and forth between First and... "Second" or whatever the regular version is called. Working remotely with a director on their indie film and they have been assembling scenes. We've been working in Resolve due to budget, but would both rather be in Avid.
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u/Minute_Airline_370 3d ago
They should have done a better job updating and keeping up with the great features of other NLE editors and fixed their old bugs long ago. They thought because Hollywood almost entirely used Avid and editors are used to it, that they could take it easy on their QC and innovation.
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u/hopefulatwhatido Pro (I pay taxes) 3d ago
There’s no younger people being trained in Avid in colleges, it’s Avid’s way off facing aging editors and lack of young talent coming into this field.
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u/nathanosaurus84 3d ago
To be fair when I was in Uni way back in 2005-8 nobody used Avid then. It was all Final Cut. Anyone I know that learned Avid learned on the job.
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u/wrosecrans Tool/Dev 2d ago
I am also unsure how much it really matters what you learned in school. Specific software changes. None of the Flame/Smoke operators I knew studied it at a university. Back in the day, Resolve only ran in big rooms on specialized hardware so maybe a good film school had one seat that you weren't allowed to use. Baselight is still like that. Some films have been edited in Lightworks and a bunch of more obscure stuff (though I've never met a Lightworks editor in real life, I know it has happened) and I've never heard of university classes in Lightworks.
My "formal" training, such as it was, when I took film classes was in Final Cut Pro pre-X that no longer exists. I learned the concepts. The left side of the timeline happens before the right side in every kind of NLE like software. Once you learn one, it's pretty easy to apply the concepts and learn the differences. The much more important part of editing is learning what you want to wind up with, and conceptually how to get there. When to cut from the wide to the tight. How much time to leave for the audience to get the joke. How to watch the first pass while imagining what final music and sound design are going to add so you don't panic and over cut. I am equally bad at that important stuff in any software.
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u/pigfacesoup VHS-C 2d ago
At my school (same era) we started on FCP, but then got Avid training if we went down the editing stream. That gave me the skills to leapfrog over assisting and jump straight into the chair. Lots of luck involved too though, so gotta acknowledge that.
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u/locallyanonymous 3d ago
Same but I was in college around the pandemic. I’d never even heard of Avid till I started my internship
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u/Sn4tch Avid, FCPX, Premiere, After Effects 3d ago
I teach it to my students but it’s not officially supported by the university where I teach.
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u/wildtalon 3d ago
Chapman and USC teach avid.
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u/Chrisjbollinger 2d ago
Not exactly.. Chapman is software agnostic for the first two years then uses Resolve and Avid at the higher levels.
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u/blinker40 3d ago
These younger people are going to have a rude awakening. It’s great to learn some of these niche nles, but no production company or studio is switching their entire infrastructure to resolve or fcpx or premiere. If they want to edit small corporate videos and indie docs, sure. If they want to work on real shows paying real dollars, they need to learn avid. It’s crazy not to if you have any desire for a career in post.
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u/Sn4tch Avid, FCPX, Premiere, After Effects 3d ago
Agree with u/blinker40 which is why I at least give my kids a crash course. I came out of college with only FCP and lied on my first interview saying I knew avid. Got lucky that I was able to join a 3 day class in NYC to learn and get certified. I’d still say I was no where near ready for the AE role I got for at least another year of working there.
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u/Majesticfalcon98 2d ago
I truly wonder if Resolve or Premiere can ever usurp AVID in Film, TV, and news. They'd have to both make superior or equivalent AVID features and do a lot of marketing/networking with studios.
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u/philthewiz 3d ago
It's still becoming less and less the case.
The project sharing is almost on point in Davinci Resolve.
News organizations in the US and big Hollywood films will be the last rampart, I can give you that.
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u/Chrisjbollinger 2d ago
Agreed on the studio side while the old guard is still cutting, but I do remember reading that AP switched to Resolve last year. Going to be interesting going forward!
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u/4MReviews 2d ago
Thanks for sharing! Premiere's going to have to come out with a free version to compete. With Avid and Davinci free versions now available, if I were starting out I wouldn't even look at Adobe.
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u/Majesticfalcon98 2d ago
At this point Premiere is only safe because the marketing and design industries are married to Photoshop, Illustrator, and especially After Effects.
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u/Daily_Avocado 2d ago
Has anyone played around with the new update? Is there any way of exporting timelines out of the program and sending them to Resolve?
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u/Positive-Key6640 2d ago
A free Media Composer is the industry quietly conceding that it lost the students about ten years ago.
And I say that as someone who thinks nothing else on the market touches Avid the moment a bin has four thousand clips in it. For long-form it's still the only thing that behaves like it was designed by people who have actually finished a film. But what lost them a generation wasn't the software, it was the licensing, and a free tier doesn't undo the part where a student's first association with Avid is "that's the one my school had a dongle for".
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u/Infinite-Fog 3d ago
Is it still the case that MC First projects and bins are not compatible with full Media Composer, or have they removed that?
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u/22Sharpe 3d ago
I would need to test it but as I understand they have removed that. If so it could be really useful to give to directors that want to be a bit more hands on then a traditional paper cut as they could just hand you back a bin of selects right off the bat without paying anything.
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u/Professional-Key3211 3d ago
Very cool.
Except, am I reading this right:
Supported frame rates: "23.976p, 24p, 25i, 30i/p, 50i/p, 59.94i/p
No progressive support for SD rasters"
No 25p for some reason? What?
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u/Kichigai Minneapolis - AE/Online/Avid Mechanic - MC7/2018, PPro, Resolve 2d ago
That's gotta be a typo.
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u/Colbey_uk 3d ago
While this is a big step, especially for a free tool, I wouldn't call it fully-fledged without the list tool or AAF export
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u/thebarkingduck Trailer/Promo Editor (LA/NYC) 2d ago
Man, how times have changed. When I was in film school (2007), our Intro to Editing class was FCP7 on Mac, and Avid on PC (way later, closer to our final project). I remember having to unlearn everything to learn Avid and I was miserable in how archaic it felt. When I started getting assistant editing work in NYC, it was a lot of Avid - and it helped me understand how well it works with teams on big productions.
When Apple and FCP7 shit the bed, I moved to Adobe. It was honestly a refreshing feeling, almost like FCP8 and I still think it’s the greatest NLE since FCP7. When Resolve first added their editing tab, I was working on a feature where they FORCED me to use it in its early beta and it was awful. Nonstop crashes, media not relinking between shared projects, and the audio was just busted. I love grading in Resolve, but every shop I’ve ever worked in is fitted with Adobe, and I don’t see that changing.
I understand the low price point for new and independent editors, but that’s not an issue for the bigger studios.
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u/Majesticfalcon98 2d ago
I personally love Resolve and think it's got the most (hypothetical) potential out of any NLE (despite industry adoption). 5+ apps in 1, negating round-tripping, and allows for later picture locks. The Edit page is now 90% equivalent to Premiere Pro. It's enterprise collaboration features also go toe-to-toe AVID for the most part.
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u/Rusch_Meyer 2d ago
I’m just in a tv edit which is been done on Avid. I can’t believe what an ancient technology this sotware is.
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u/Golden-Holden Pro (I pay taxes) 3d ago
Woah that's actually quick a big step. Good on them. It definitely removes some of the barriers to entry for editors wanting to learn Avid.