Symphony vs Media Composer vs Newscutter

I have used nearly every Avid editing product in the 11 years that I started working on them; xpress, Media Composer, xpress dv, xpress pro, Symphony and Newscutter.

Currently we see running Symphony Nitris in the Aptn edit suite and I have a media composer running at home. Here on our setup for the olympics we are using the Newscutter systems.

The differences between these software packages in their current forms vary; media composer and Newscutter are very similar, though Newscutter has a few quirks that I find annoying like not being able to enter trim mode by lassoing a cut in the timeline (see the pic below) and having strangely coloured icons for sequences that I can’t change. Otherwise they have much of the same tools and procedures.

I will admit that I do miss my trusty symphony Nitris that I use day in and out while working in creative services. The biggest difference between it and the other edit systems is that it has very robust color correction tools which help when really trying to get the best picture possible.