First introduced in the late 1980s and widely adopted in the 1990s, it has become a prominent tool in the professional editing landscape, particularly in the film, television, and broadcast industries.

Media Composer is used in a variety of production environments, including feature films, television shows, documentaries, and streaming service content.

Its interface, functionality, and workflow are designed to accommodate the complex requirements of professional editing, offering advanced tools for managing large volumes of footage and collaborative post-production work.

Due to its widespread use in professional environments, it is often regarded as one of the industry standards for non-linear editing, particularly in Hollywood film production and broadcast television.

However, the Avid engineering team managed to achieve a data rate of 1,200 kilobytes per second, which enabled offline video editing on the Macintosh platform.

Avid Symphony has a strong history with broadcast users because much of its design and implementation came from the scopes, monitoring, and terminology that was familiar to the television industry's online mastering process.

The idea of organizing clips using bins was a familiar concept, so it was easy for editors to migrate from the flatbed editing world into Avid's digital interface.

The interface design remained decidedly plain and two-dimensional, focused more on clip management in the Timeline Window, than on UI colors and buttons.

Crossing Y2K and into the early 2000s with Media Composer 10, 11, and 12, the user interface saw significant advancements in not only project organization but also skeuomorphic design (making buttons and tools look like real-world items with lighting, shading, and sometimes textures).

It gave users incredible power in defining their own preferences in button shapes and shading, color coding, workspace architecture, and other intricate customizations.

In May 2003 when Avid Adrenaline introduced HD editing and a resetting of the version numbering back to 1.0, work on improving the user interface continued.

After extensive testing, the entire industry began discovering that skeuomorphic designs and other visual elements were causing drains on performance.

Users who upgraded to this version were initially upset at the loss of customizability but were indeed satisfied with the noticeable reduction in interface lag.

During 2018, Avid conducted extensive interviews, listening sessions, and ACA meetings with hundreds of users to absorb as much of their opinions as possible.

Key outcomes from those sessions included needs for stronger organization abilities for bins (bin containers), tools and other interface elements that could snap-to each other, a "paneled" interface that could mold itself to any screen size or configuration, and a means of toggling between the classic concept of Avid Workspaces in a newer, more accessible way (Workspace Toolbar).

Another common complaint of the classic interface was its overall performance, which had laggy timeline behavior in comparison to other nonlinear edit systems (NLEs).

Since Premiere Pro is also compatible for use on Avid's NEXIS shared storage, this new feature is also being used heavily by facilities that have editors and assistants who use both NLE apps.

The 1998 introduction of the Avid Symphony marked the transition from ABVB to the Meridien hardware, allowing for uncompressed SD editing.

From this point onward, Avid systems have supported media storage using SCSI, PCI-e, SATA, IEEE 1394a & b, Ethernet and fiberoptic interfaces.

In 2006, Media Composer 2.5 was the first version to be offered 'software-only', giving the user the option of purchasing and using the software without the additional cost of the external accelerators.

Software-only Avid setups could use third-party breakout boxes, usually interfaced via FireWire, to acquire video from SDI and analog sources.

Avid's own DX hardware is still natively interfaced into the application which currently allows some extra features that Open IO is limited in (LTC timecode support for example).

Avid Media Composer compatible hardware is manufactured by AJA Video Systems, Blackmagic Design, BlueFish, Matrox and MOTU.

In recent years, Avid ceased to produce their own hardware, instead collaborating with companies like Blackmagic Design and AJA, releasing customized Avid-branded I/O boxes, like the Artist DNxIO, DNxIQ and DNxIV.

Win 11 64-bit RTM, 22H2, or later Pro and ENT Win 10 64-bit 20H1, 20H2, 22H2, or later Pro and ENT 2023.3.1 (Mac only)[15] 13.0 - 13.5 Ventura 12.6.x Monterey 11.7 Big Sur 10.15.7 Catalina Win 11 64-bit RTM, 22H2, or later Pro and Enterprise Win 10 64-bit 20H1, 20H2, 22H2, or later Pro and Enterprise • AI-Enhanced ScriptSync and PhraseFind • Media Composer Classic User Profile and Workspace • Panel SDK • Audio Punch-in Using USB Audio Devices with Video Hardware • Batch Subclip Tool • Display Middle Composer Button Panel • Changing Monitor Configuration Duplicates Current Workspaces • Apply Sequence Template to an Existing Sequence • Keyboard Shortcuts Added to Command Button Tooltips • Clip Gain Extended to 36 dB in Media Composer • “LFE Only” Mono Tracks • Track Effect Bypass • Device Selection for Desktop Audio Output • Multi-Mix Tool Options Added to Pro Tools Session Export Settings • GOP Options Added to XDCAM Export to Device • Optimized EDL with Four Audio Tracks Dongles not supported for macOS beginning with Monterey 14.0 to 14.1.x Sonoma 13.x to 13.6.x Ventura 12.x to 12.7.x Monterey 11.x to 11.7.x Big Sur 10.15.7 Catalina