How to configure your workstation for Avid Media Composer 2022.10

AVID Media Composer is a complex professional film editing program for post-production and editing of footage.  In the media industry, Media Composer is the most widely used video editing tool. For Avid Media Composer, a special keyboard with colored keys was specially developed to better distinguish the individual function groups. You want to edit larger and very complex projects with appealing geometry easier and faster? We configure the optimal business workstation for your individual Avid applications and offer you the possibility to put the system to the test with a test license for Avid via remote access. Contact us and arrange a free remote test. On request, we will be happy to send you an overview of the certified business workstations for Media Composer from version 2022.10. The following is our expertise for Avid:

The right processor for Avid

We recommend optimizing your Avid Media Composer workstation based on the resolution and rendering requirements of your everyday projects. 2k material is less demanding than higher resolution projects. For 2k material, we recommend a high-frequency processor with 8-10 cores and a clock speed of 4.00GHz in Turbo Boost. For optimal 4k editing, a business workstation with dual processors is a better choice. Compression processes are very computationally intensive and require many cores to complete the task in a reasonable time window. To quickly process ultra-high 8k resolution material and more complex reedings in combination with DaVinci Resolve, you need a business workstation that provides a large number of CPU cores, optimally two high-frequency processors with a high clock speed. We recommend one of the following AVID-certified workstations for Avid Media Composer 2020.12: HP Z4 G4, HP Z8 G4, Dell Precision T7820, Dell Precision 7920, Lenovo ThinkStation P720, or Lenovo ThinkStation P920. HP Z-series workstations have consistently been the internal workstation standard at Avid for years. As a mobile workstation, we recommend HP Zbook 17 inch, from G5, Lenovo Thinkpad P73, Thinkpad P17, Dell Precision 7740, 7750. You are welcome to ask for the complete table of qualified AVID systems by mail.

Bottle neck RAM for AVID 2022.10

Avid Media Composer is a very memory intensive application. Larger raster formats such as UHD or 4K require more memory. We recommend using at least for basic material 632 GB of identical ECC memory for Avid. If you are processing high-resolution media with a high frame rate (UHD/4k in 59.94p), we recommend 64 GB RAM. For larger rendering workflows, up to 256GB is a better choice. Fill up the RAM of your business workstation in Quad Channel mode and make sure that you have enough memory banks available for memory expansions.

Optimized Graphics card NVIDIA Quadro ./. Geforce ./. AMD

The Avid Media Composer program is able to distinguish between CPU and GPU processors. The Avid program independently decides which processor is best suited for processing the current workflow. If the existing graphics card does not meet Avid's minimum requirements, the CPU automatically performs the calculations. In Avid Media Composer, your rendering results and effects are greatly enhanced by high-end graphics cards as more Cuda cores are available. Multitrack editing of HD, 4k, and 8k material becomes a breeze. Due to twice the speed of GDDR5-, GDDR6 graphics memory is essential for 4k and 8K video processing. Depending on your budget, we recommend using one or two of the following certified graphics cards for Avid: NVIDIA Quadro P4000, NVIDIA Quadro RTX A2000, NVIDIA RTX A4000, NVIDIA RTX A5000, NVIDIA Geforce RTX3060, NVIDIA Geforce RTX3070Ti, NVIDIA Geforce RTX3080Ti, AMD Radeon Pro W6600, and AMD Radeon Pro W6800.

Responsive hard drives - HP Z Turbo Drive

In combination with HP Workstation, we recommend using an HP Z Turbo Drive with 256 or 512 GB for the operating system and CAD software Avid Composer.  The HP Z Turbo Drive is directly connected to the computer via the PCIe bus and achieves four times the performance of traditional SSD hard drives when reading their programs. Alternatively, we can recommend a Samsung 980 Pro M.2 SSD with either 256 or 512 GB via a PCIe interface for Dell, Lenovo or Fujitsu workstations.

Perfection through Video Capture Card  

Expand your Avid Composer Workstation with a Video Capture Card. Our customers prefer to use a blackmagic 4K extreme or an AJA IO express. The blackmagic 4K extreme captivates with digital content suitable for cinemas. An IO Express is the ultimate PC interface for a high-quality mastering solution for your work with Avid Media Composer. HP Z Series workstations have been the internal workstation standard at Avid for years.