Pro Tools News: Avid Upgrades Pro Tools Family, Launches Avid Connect App, Expands Venue Live Sound System

The first taste is free.

Announced today at the broadcast-oriented NAB Show in Las Vegas, Avid is betting that its experience with Pro Tools | First will translate to the same success with its Sibelius and Media Composer software offerings. Now all grouped as three-branch “families”, each silo now offers free “First” and heavy duty “Ultimate” options to hammock the core mid-priced offering. Translation: If you want access to Sibelius’ music notation or the Media Composer video editing platforms, you can get started with zero investment. For today’s increasingly diversified studios and music producers, this is important news.

The new Avid Connect App for the artist community and marketplace was also unveiled at NAB 2018. A tool for helping content creators to manage their creative lives, the Avid Connect App for the Avid Artist Community and Marketplace is officially live.

Designed to enable greater collaboration between musicians, composers and sound mixers, editors, graphics designers and other creatives, the Avid Connect App opens up the 45,000+ Artist Community to the community, giving audio and video creatives a place to connect.

Coming in summer 2018, the Avid Connect App provides an artist’s personalized connection into the talented and diverse Artist Community and Marketplace from their computers, mobile devices, and within their Avid creative tools (Pro Tools, Media Composer and Sibelius). The app provides immediate access to artist needs such as their profile, connections, projects and products.

After building a profile to help others find them based on their skills for job or collaboration opportunities, artists can invite other like-minded users to connect, message and collaborate.  Accessing the new Lounges provides a place to help, meet others and give feedback on different topics. Artists can also browse the Avid Marketplace to purchase Avid or partner products to expand their creative toolset.

Here are the breakdowns on the Pro Tools, Media Composer, and Sibelius families. Note that in the process, Pro Tools HD is now Pro Tools Ultimate, which includes the Avid Complete Plugin Bundle (worth $49.99 per year) and Pro Tools Machine Control (a $749 value). In addition, this all coincides with the release of Pro Tools 2018.4, with numerous bug fixes for Pro Tools users that have current upgrade plans.

Pro Tools Family

The Pro Tools family provides the tools to create music or sound for film and television while connecting users with a premier network of artists, producers and mixers around the world.

• With more than 650,000 downloads since its introduction, Pro Tools | Firstallows creators just beginning their journey in recording and production to compose, record, mix and collaborate in the cloud with a streamlined creative toolset built on industry-standard Pro Tools—for free.
• For musicians, composers, engineers and mixers who need to take their creativity to the next level, Pro Tools delivers the industry’s most powerful, comprehensive and trusted audio and MIDI toolset.
• Pro Tools | Ultimateis the definitive and comprehensive toolset for music and audio post production, and now includes the Avid Complete Plug-in Bundle as well as Pro Tools | MachineControl. It also offers cloud collaboration enhancements and immersive sound mixing integrations with Dolby Atmos to handle the demands of the world’s most respected content creators in music, film and television.

Media Composer Family

Media Composer editions afford editors at all stages in their careers access to the industry-standard editing software used by top film, TV and broadcast editors:

• Since its introduction a year ago, Media Composer | Firstalready has more than 100,000 activations. For editors just beginning their journey, it delivers a complete yet streamlined creative toolset for free.
• Media Composer is for professional editors and filmmakers who work independently and need advanced editing tools. This new subscription version of Media Composer starts at under $20/month, and offers the complete feature set, with up to 24 video tracks, 64 audio tracks, and unlimited bins. It features a newly refined user interface for more powerful video editing and support for 4K, 8K and HDR, giving independent editors the tools to maximize their creative talent and stay ahead of the competition. These latest features, which are automatically delivered via a cloud subscription, are available today.
• For the very best in post-production, Media Composer | Ultimateempowers creative teams with access to Avid’s unparalleled collaborative capabilities, adds support for shared storage, and includes game-changing tools like Media Composer | ScriptSync® Option and Media Composer | PhraseFind™ Option to accelerate the editing process and make the most of every spoken word in a project.

 Sibelius Family

The world’s best-selling music notation software, Sibelius, is now available in three editions for creating captivating scores more quickly than ever before:

• Following the success of Avid’s free First products, which are now used by hundreds of thousands of artists, aspiring music creatives will have access to a free version of Sibelius with the new Sibelius | First(available later this quarter).  Designed for everyone from students to seasoned musicians, Sibelius | First delivers a streamlined notation toolset based on Sibelius and includes many of the same features including music composition transcription, editing and unique cloud-based workflows.
• Sibelius, the notation software of choice for musicians, composers, orchestrators and students who want to produce richly detailed scores, offers cloud sharing, and augmented notation capabilities so users can quickly and easily share and review scores anywhere.
• From concert halls and scoring stages, to sheet music stores and classrooms, Sibelius | Ultimateis the go-to notation software that professionals rely on most. Sophisticated yet easy-to-use, Sibelius | Ultimate is a powerful tool enabling users to create complex arrangements with an unlimited number of instruments, and to orchestrate high-quality, professional scores.

Avid Venue Expands

Avid announced a large expansion to its award-winning Avid VENUE | S6L family of live sound systems, with three new control surfaces, a new engine, and two new I/O racks, all of which are on a unified platform. Offering extensive modularity, scalability and flexibility to meet any size production, space, or budget requirement, according to Avid the VENUE | S6L stands as the industry’s only live sound platform with 100% software, hardware, and show file compatibility across all system components.

The Avid_Venue S6L 48D.

Avid VENUE | S6L is a modular live sound mixing system that delivers high functionality for a range of applications including front-of-house, monitor, broadcast, and theater. With this new release, VENUE | S6L now offers more component options to configure and scale a system to meet any production, space, or budget requirement.

VENUE users can take control of their mix with a choice of five surfaces—including the new S6L-48D, S6L-24C, and S6L-16C—that offer from 16 to 48 faders. These control surfaces can be paired with a choice of three engines, including the new E6L-112, and can be connected to any combination of S6L’s four I/O rack options, including the new Stage 32 and Local 16.

VENUE | S6L modularity enables engineers to scale systems up or down to meet their changing requirements for control, processing, and I/O. All systems share 100% VENUE show file compatibility and sound quality, regardless of the system configuration. With S6L’s True Gain technology, engineers can easily share I/O racks across multiple networked S6L systems without any loss of audio quality, reducing I/O and cable requirements, set-up time, and transportation costs.

VENUE | S6L family features the same VENUE software and workflows across every model, presenting engineers with an identical user experience and total familiarity regardless of system configuration. A “learn once, use everywhere” design eliminates complexity, allowing engineers to focus on helping their artist to deliver the best possible performance.

New VENUE | S6L System components

A complete VENUE | S6L System includes control surface, engine, and one or more I/O components­—Avid is announcing the following, with the new components becoming available summer 2018.:

• New control surfaces:
  • VENUE | S6L-48D: 48 + 2 faders, 160 assignable knobs, 1 integrated Master Touchscreen, 5 integrated Channel Touch Modules
  • VENUE | S6L-24C: 24 + 2 faders, 32 assignable knobs, 1 integrated Master Touchscreen
  • VENUE | S6L-16C: 16 + 2 faders, 32 assignable knobs
• New engine:
  • VENUE | E6L-112: 112 input processing channels, 48 mix busses + LCR
• New I/O racks:
  • Stage 32—Maximum I/O flexibility in a smaller footprint for stage or remote I/O needs, with support for a mix of up to 32 inputs and outputs total, choosing from a variety of analog I/O, digital I/O, and Dante card options
  • Local 16—Expands control surface local I/O capabilities in a compact package that provides 8 analog inputs, 8 analog outputs, and 8 AES digital inputs and outputs

 — David Weiss

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