by Charlie White

As you peruse the features list of the newest version of Avid's nonlinear editing system, Xpress 3.0, you might think you're looking at Avid Media Composer 8000's features list of two short years ago. Feature creep is a phenomenon that not only brings high-end capabilities into the hands of us mere mortals -- it raises the bar for all other editing systems to match. The benefits of Avid's foray into the world of high-end, uncompressed editing, exemplified by the likes of its Symphony and Softimage D|S products, are starting to show up in even the lowly Xpress family of nonlinear editing systems. For example, by the end of this year, Avid promises single-stream uncompressed video capability for Xpress. And that's not all. But you won't need to wait until the end of the year to enjoy the new features of Xpress 3.0 for Windows -- it's shipping now. Let's take a look at some of those new features that are included in this newest version of Avid Xpress for Windows and the forthcoming version 3.1 for the Mac (available fourth quarter of 1999, according to Avid).

Digitizing
Let's start with digitizing footage. Now you're allowed to set a custom pre-roll, a feature that comes in handy if you're using a tape machine that can't stabilize itself in just a second or two. And, unlike version 2.0, you're able to access deck control parameters from inside the digitizer tool. Furthering the "trickle down" of features from Media Composer is the ability to digitize footage directly to the timeline. This is a great feature that combines two functions in one -- logging footage and marking ins and outs can now be done in the same motion. Just mark your in or out, hit Record and the shot sits right there in the time line. Of course, you still can use Media Log on another PC or Mac and import your batch digitizing list or EDL. The beauty of these external logging tools is they have the exact same recorder controls as those on the main user interface, and you won't be using up your main, more expensive machine just to log shots.

Another interesting change you'll notice: Avid's "AVR" nonsense is finally gone. The company's proprietary way of describing video quality has, at long last, been replaced by numbers that actually mean something. Now, video quality is described as a compression ratio like 3:1 instead of AVR 75, AVR 3 or whatever. The best part is, the quality of the video is better, too. According to Avid demo reps, with the AVR system, shots were dynamically compressed, where a scene containing lots of detail wasn't compressed as much as one with few details. With the new system, all shots are uniformly compressed. Why is this? Well, apparently the days of slow and small hard disks and feeble capture systems are over.

Media Management
New features have been added to Avid's media management tools as well. There's now the ability to color-code your shots in order to categorize them to your liking. Click on the shot, designate a color for that shot, and then the software adds a little swatch onto its listing in the bin. Then, when you're sifting with the 6-level sifting tool, Add Color is one of the criteria. Or, as you've always been able to do with Avid products and Windows 9x/NT in general, click on the heading at the top of the box to group the shots according to that parameter. Another welcome addition is the ability to group shots according to their time code start and stop times. This will be a boon to those producers who use time-of-day time code when they're shooting in the field. They'll be able to group the clips in the order they're shot. More innovations include an import and export routine that's as easy as can be. All you need to do is drop a file from another application into a Xpress bin, and suddenly that file has been imported into Avid's file format. The same can be done in the opposite direction to export files. Another user-interface feature that will be welcome in edit facilities where there are numerous users is the ability to save your interface preferences. It'll make things much easier when you can save your prefs on one machine and move them to another, making its interface appear exactly the same. This is a feature that's been in Media Composer (and lots of other editing systems like the old linear tape-controlling Sony 9000) for years. It's about time.

Audio
You'll also like the audio enhancements that are included in version 3.0 of Xpress. New to this version is eight channel audio scrub and audio track solo in the trim mode. Select an audio track and go to trim mode, and there you're able to solo one track and manipulate it to your heart's desire. Before, in trim mode you didn't have that kind of granularity -- you could only manipulate the entire mix of all the tracks while in trim mode. Another nice audio enhancement is the addition of support for external fader boxes. So far, the supported units are the Yamaha 01-V and the J.L. Cooper fader box. These will be a sight for sore eyes to lots of professional audio engineers who like that hands-on approach (yes, for some of our colleagues, mice are for wimps). Along with that support is the ability to memorize audio manipulations. It's always been so cool to do your audio mix, and then play it back and see the faders moving as if they were controlled by a ghost. And hey, even if you don't think mice are for wimps and use one exclusively, you'll like sliding the faders in software and seeing your adjustments memorized and playing back as if by magic.

Editing Features

A new feature that should have been included long ago is dragging in and out points. With previous versions of Xpress, you could do this by dragging the position indicator and then marking an in or out with the keyboard or an icon, but now you're able to move the in or out icon directly by pressing alt and dragging the icon you want to move. Making this an even more intuitive way to do this: As you drag, you can see the video in the monitor indicating where you are in the shot. Nice. Making things even easier is an extensive undo system, where you see a list of the 32 latest operations you've performed, sitting there and waiting to be restored if need be. Also making your editing operation easier, especially when you have clients breathing down your neck is the ability to partially render an effect. This way, if a client doesn't like a particular effect you've dreamed up, at least you haven't spent a long time sitting there watching a render thermometer. This is a feature that Avid borrowed from Xpress's cousin, Softimage D|S.

Lame CG Makes Way For Marquee
You've always been able to save a particular set of text attributes as a style in Xpress, but now you can assign one of the function keys (except F1) to apply that style to any text. That's nice, but perhaps the best addition to the graphics portion of Xpress is soft edges on drop shadows. Believe it or not, some producers in the past have refused to buy Avid Xpress for the lack of this feature. Still, though, the feature is tacked on in a rather cumbersome way. Perhaps this was done to make way for the upcoming Avid Marquee option, due in the first quarter of 2000. Marquee is Avid's spectacular and easy to use character generator app that can make letters fly in 3D so extensively that it could just about make you carsick. But for now, we'll still have to live with Avid's (perhaps deliberately) lame title tool. Here's where users wish that Avid would give up on its greedy nickel-and-dime-you-to-death tactic of introducing features, naming them as a product and then calling them options for which you must pay thousands of dollars. Hey Avid, are you listening? Crippling products on purpose just so you can sell high-priced options is not cool.

Conclusion
So, to sum up, this is a feature-rich upgrade for Xpress -- one that may sway a few buyers who were sitting on the fence before. It contains nothing truly revolutionary or earthshaking, but many of the features it adds come straight from the high end. Even so, still missing are the smooth intraframe effects and tons of video tracks of Media Composer. Let's be thankful that also missing is Media Composer's gigantic price tag.

Avid Xpress Elite for Mac or PC, approx. $32K including real time 3D, real time transitions, computer, software. Price does not include monitors or disks.

Charlie White is an Emmy award-winning PBS television producer and digital video journalist who has been writing about this stuff since it was the size of a postage stamp.