Well, despite Avid finally selling out and being purchased by a private equity company for $1.4 billion, it’s nice to see that this legacy audio and video software company is still alive and kicking at IBC 2023.
With big news coming from the likes of Adobe, Canon, Sony, and more at this year’s International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, it’s actually quite important that Avid be on the ground and able to share some new innovations of their own.
Let’s take a look at the highlights from Avid’s IBC 2023 showing including a whole range of new softwares for both video and audio, as well as some exciting AI tools that aim to keep us humans in the loop.
Avid at IBC2023
Of course, when any major company is sold to a private equity firm, there’s a host of questions about the future of said company and its famous products and software.
While we don’t fully know the future of Avid Media Composer or Pro Tools, it is encouraging to see the company still hard at work updating these software to remain competitive in the market—at least for now.
“At IBC 2023, the industry will see how Avid is continuing to drive innovation that enables our customers to stay ahead of the accelerating demand for content and positively transform the way they produce premium content for news, sports, dramas, and films.” — Tim Claman, SVP & General Manager, Video & Media Solutions, Avid
As we hear from Avid executives, the focus of IBC 2023 for Avid is really about two things: empowering digital-first newsrooms and AI.
Let’s take a look at both and explore how they might be helpful for those in the video editing game.
Avid’s New AI Tools
With Adobe doubling down hard on AI with Firefly and other brands like Blackmagic already having AI-powered text-based editing out in the wild, it’s nice to see that Avid is staying in the hunt with their own AI tools and features.
Avid’s next-generation ScriptSync AI is probably their biggest AI tool currently as it’s now available as a preview in Media Composer 2023.8. This proprietary tool uses AI speech-to-text technology to allow editors the ability to easily generate transcripts and automatically align media clips to scripts and transcripts all from Avid’s integrated window inside Media Composer.
Avid is also unveiling a new Media Composer PhraseFind AI which is also available as a preview in Media Composer and powered by the same AI speech-to-text technology. This tool will allow editors to easily search for clips using keywords with support for 21 languages here at launch.
Admittedly both of these tools are pretty standard stuff for AI integration into NLE, but if you are a current Avid user it’s nice to see the app is getting updates to help it keep up with its competition in this AI arena.
Avid’s Digital-First Newsrooms
The other big topic from Avid’s IBC2023 presence is really all about empowering digital-first newsrooms with comprehensive, scalable, and integrated solutions that are aimed at empowering news teams to easily collaborate from anywhere and rapidly distribute their content everywhere.
The biggest new tool in this news space is Avid’s Stream IO, a powerful, software-based production ingest and playout tool designed for cloud and COTS deployments.
This Stream IO will couple well with Avid’s new Acquire software solution as well which is designed for the scheduling of said media ingest with real-time preview capabilities for incoming feeds and added accessibility from a secure, browser-based user interface.
Avid is also previewing an upcoming release of a MediaCentral Collaborate tool that will optimize the overall user experience with customizable forms and templates to help creators create flexible plans and manage their teams and task assignments from any device.
Overall, we’re just generally all glad to see that Avid is at IBC2023 and bringing some much-appreciated competition to the NLE space overall.
If you’d like to go more in-depth into their presentation you can follow along on the Avid website here.
Author: Jourdan Aldredge
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
