Dear Avid - Make One Version of Media Composer to Rule Them All

  • Feb 27, 2023
  • 3 Min Read

The fact that a movie or TV show gets made at all is a miracle, but that’s especially true when a team uses Media Composer in post-production.

Before you dismiss that, here! Check out Avid’s official Version Matrix for Media Composer.

If anyone bothers to read this, they’d discover Avid actively maintains multiple versions of Media Composer.

While Avid touts that as a positive, in reality:

  • Each version has a different user experience.
  • Each version’s UX is just different enough from the others to add mental overhead and/or needless context switching to the user.
  • All of those versions are perceived as wildly different compared to what many teams still consider the gold standard: Media Composer 2018.12.15.

Recently, a couple of teams reported having trouble with Mimiq in their workflow. Each team uses MC 2020.12.x. Since both teams used older minor versions, we encouraged them to update MC to the latest minor. They did… except they both updated MC to 2020.12.8.

Go back to MC’s Version Matrix. Do you see 2020.12.8 listed here? Nope! Turns out 2020.12.8 is only available as a downloadable patch. Its sole purpose? To fix one bug where a previous build rendered third-party licensed plug-in’s unlicensed, which would crash MC on startup.

As someone who supports Media Composer on the daily now, my first instinct is to check this Version Matrix against Mimiq’s Requirements. If a version isn’t listed, we can’t support it. We don’t have any red phone partnership with Avid, so the intel we use to support MC is the same intel you have to support MC.

Someone at Avid may read this and say, “Got it. We’ll update the Version Matrix more frequently.” That’s not the point. It’s time to make the hard decision – choose 1 version of Media Composer and leave the rest behind. Old habits die hard, but when someone has to learn something completely new, only to face the prospect of learning something slightly newer, that just breeds needless anxiety and frustration.

If this sounds like a rant, consider this CNBC piece published in November 2022:

10 of the most high stress jobs in the U.S.―some pay as much as $208,000 a year

Number 1? A urologist. Number 2? Film and video editor. Number 3? An anesthesiologist assistant.

True, movies don’t owe anybody a living, but Workflow Editors (née Assistant Editors) and Media Managers certainly aren’t paid the same as a specialist who needs to know how to insert a catheter.

And when things get rough, we frequently ground ourselves with sayings like, “Well, no need to get emotional – it’s not life or death here.” But when those deadlines loom and MC just stops working, wowee wow, we’re sure made to feel that way.

So Avid, if you’re reading this, be on the right side of the miracle. Think of those users who canceled their family vacations due to MC crashes (🙋🏽‍♂️) or spent hours re-creating work after the Attic stopped working (🙋🏽‍♂️), and put all your R&D and dev power behind one version – one stable, fast, reliable version with a consistent experience – of Media Composer.

🎞️ 🖥️