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Importing Word, Excel into Avid
I need some ideas here, people. I’ve struggled in the past dealing with bringing different types of documents into Avid, and have recently been experimenting with different ways of doing it. I often get requests from clients to include excel documents and word documents in videos, and instead of saying “no” (which is illegal, aka punishable by law), I make an attempt to bring the document into After effects and scale it, blur it, and animate the crap out of it so when it finally goes into Avid it doesn’t jitter as much. I want to avoid getting a jitter with word documents, excel documents, web pages, etc.
Has anyone found a good way to present these documents in a video? I’m pretty convinced that simply shooting a computer screen is the best way. I’m hoping someone has found a better solution and can help me out. Thanks!
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3 Replies
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Tom,
Use a scan converter on your computer’s monitor out (or use a computer that has a video card with a composite video out like the ATI cards). Then digitize into your edit system or record to tape. Using this method, you can get anything into video that you can see on a computer monitor.
Remember that other media will not necessarily look good in NTSC video, and you may need to “artistically enhance” certain elements to make them look good.
This is how we prepped a mountain of documents for the CBS 60 Minutes story on the Scott Peterson trial.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
It has been awhile since I last did this but from memory a couple of different methods were tried – screen capture saved to PSD and digital photograph (saved to PSD). I don’t remember any unusual issues occuring with visual quality.. I did contemplate setting up a vidcamera to film the document but couldn’t be bothered after the other methods worked.
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Thanks, everybody, for the fantastic support. I’ve experimented with the methods you’ve provided, and still continue to do so. I’ve found that printing and then scanning a documentas a pdf works well, because it roughs up the edges of the thin lines; after I scan it, I can bring it into photoshop and give it a very minimal directional blur to further soften the lines but not take them too out of focus.
The sure-fire method, of course, is re-designing the document in photoshop or a similar program, and avoiding lines that are too thin. I’ve used this method on a more recent project where I didn’t have to deal with a great number of documents. If there was a pile of word and excel documents I had to deal with, I would definitely go with the scanning method. However, I have yet to try the scan converter method, which I plan to do when I get some down time in the future (Probably, Summer 2009, I’d say).
Thanks again for all the help, guys. This is the first time I’ve posted anything in the message board here, and I must say there seems to be quite a bit of professional help available here. I’ll be back, and I’ll provide more feedback to other posts as well.
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