We covered the announcement of Avid Media Composer 7 back in April at NAB 2013. Since that time, we've gotten new versions of all the Creative Suite applications, and Apple's FCP-X has been gaining traction with editors around the world. Needless to say, the NLE market is more competitive than ever, and innovation is through the roof while prices are at an all-time low for professional editing solutions. Avid's new offerings with Media Composer 7 are no exception. With some fantastic new features - alongside a drastic reduction in price - Media Composer is looking to stay competitive in the high-resolution editing future.

Here's a video from NAB that outlines the new features:

Perhaps the area in which Media Composer has been lacking most in the past few years has been its nonexistent support of higher than HD resolution files. Considering the 4k direction the industry is headed, Avid's new support for 4k content, as well as a slew of new tools for reframing and applying LUTs to this high-resolution content, are essential pieces of Avid maintaining relevancy in the industry. Here's another quick video from Avid that goes into further depth with some of these new features:

One of the most welcome new features in Avid, however, is the addition of new media management tools which allow various types of transcoding tasks to be automated and run in the background while you continue to edit. Anyone who's dealt with past versions of MC knows the pain of setting up an import/transcode and walking away for an hour and a half. Good riddance, says this editor.

The thing that's most likely going to keep Avid competitive in a market that's somewhat saturated with affordable professional editing options is the price drop. Now that the Avid suite of tools starts at $1000, it's right where Final Cut Studio was priced several years ago, with what many argue is a superior set of tools. However, the $1000 price point still puts Avid at the bottom of the list in terms of affordability compared to the other major NLE options, so it'll be interesting to see if Avid can continue to snatch new users.

Media Composer 7 (as well as Pro Tools 11) is now available to purchase and download on the Avid website.

What do you guys think? Are these new features in Avid behind the curve or are they just in time to keep up with industry trends? Will Media Composer be able to stay competitive with these new features and new price? Let us know in the comments!

Link: Media Composer 7 - Avid