Edius 7 is released

If you’re not a video editing nerd then you might not have heard of Edius. In the PR stakes against Adobe Premiere, Apple’s Final Cut and Avid’s Media Composer, Edius has lost. Yet for many editors, it is a beloved tool, oft claimed to be fast, reliable and flexible – attributes that all editors desire yet so few receive.

The good news then for that secretive band of Edius fans is that version 7 has just been announced by maker Grass Valley. Its focus this time around is the hottest trend in the video market at the moment: 4K production (video with four times as many pixels as plain old HD).

The company claims it’s aimed at “fast turn production in broadcast news, newsmagazine, and studio program content, as well as professional video editors working on organizational, documentary, and 4K theatrical productions”. So that’s pretty much everyone then. They also say it’s the fastest around with realtime editing even of 4K footage without rendering, hence the specific mention of “fast turnaround production” in their pitch.

Enhancements include compatibility with I/O devices from Blackmagic Design, with support for Matrox and AJA Video coming by the end of this year. That means connections to other broadcast-standard hardware such as monitors, instead of using a PC screen as a viewer. The program will also now export XML files for use with the colour-grading software DaVinci Resolve, it has support for the XAVC/XAVC S and AVC-Ultra video formats, and is claimed to work better with large numbers of still image files.

As before, various formats can be mixed on the timeline so the bigger and faster the processor you throw at it, the better it will run. In this respect it’s similar to another under-rated video editor, Sony Vegas Pro which also relies on CPU horsepower. The software does also offer a low-res proxy ability for older PCs however.

Two versions will be availble: one for standalone users, another for those working on networked projects.

In geek-speak, the program is now 64-bit so you won’ be able to run it on older versions of Windows that are only 32 bit. Windows 7 or 8 are required. Edius 7 will be demonstrated at IBC in September and released sometime “in Q3, 2013”.

Despite the software not yet being release, you can – oddly – download a 31-day trial version at www.grassvalley.com/edius