Video Editing Systems Wish List for 2014

Video editing system feature request list.

Today's blog is a 'wish list' of things I'd like to see in the coming year. But first, let me be thankful for those things that I wished for last year and are now part of the core editing product.

Last year in the blog Video Editing Systems Wish List for 2013, I wished for waveforms that are drawn in the background as well as Enhanced Audio Rubber-Banding. These features have now been added and I look forward to even more cool features to be added.

Although most of these items pertain to the Avid Media Composer editing system, some of them apply to Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro as well.

• I have never been a huge fan of the interface for Motion Effects in the Avid Editing System. I have always wished it worked more like the Adobe After Effects Time Remapping interface, which works more intuitively.


• It might be time to overhaul the Avid Title Tool - it seems very neglected. I know there are other options in the Avid Media Composer such as Avid FX, Avid Marquee (also in need of attention) and New Blue Titler Pro, but it would be nice to have a more useful internal title tool.


• A rebuild of the Avid video compositing model would be great. I would love to be able to apply effects on the foreground of a composite without affecting the background. Again, it would be nice if it worked more like compositing in Adobe After Effects. Adding Effects to a Chroma Key Foreground in Avid should be a lot easier than having to use a workaround.


• Alpha clips in the Avid editing system are a bit tricky. It's a shame they cannot be recovered from the Media Tool. I know that you can open precompute clips using "subsys monoplane debug" (see Avid Editing Tips and Tricks), but without the clip information that marries the alpha and the fill, this technique is just about useless.


• The treatment of keyframes in Avid FX (Boris RED) in Avid Media Composer seems very counter-intuitive. It seems like keyframes are always being added when I don't want them. I wish they were more like After Effects - don't assume every change I make needs to be a keyframe unless I turn key framing on. I know I compare a lot of effects editing to After Effects, but it just seems to work the way I think it should.


• I would love to be able to add motion blurs on moving layers in the Avid Media Composer. Again, I know this is possible in Avid FX, but it would be great if it was possible for some of the native effects.


• It's great having the Avid Pan & Zoom tool built into the Avid Media Composer, but I wish there was a way to see the path information of the image selected. If a project is updated after a long time, there is no way for the editor to know what image was used in the Avid Pan & Zoom effect.


• I had mentioned this a while back in AMA in the Avid Editing System, so I'm adding it now to my wish list. I would love to have the ability to export reference movies from AMA media. I understand this might be much easier said than done, but I'm adding it to my wish list anyway.


• This is another long-shot, but I wish I could pay once and use Adobe software indefinitely again. As I mentioned in My Problem with Adobe Creative Cloud, I'd love Adobe to go back to perpetual licenses.


• The extinction of interlaced formats. I'm tired of having to deal with half of the vertical lines in a video frame when manipulating interlaced footage.

I'm hoping that by this time next year I'll be able to check some of these items off the list. Until then, here's hoping that all of the DV Fanatics Blog readers have a great holiday season and a happy new year.

The winning entry of the 1994 Avid Christmas Video Contest. Mouse Failure is the story of an Avid editor rushing to finish his Avid Video Contest entry and running into problems along the way.