• Avid Media Composer

  AVID Media Composer – video mixdown question

  Posted by Peter Daniel on June 24, 2009 at 11:31 pm

  Hi there.

  I have a question regarding AVID Media Composer.

  I’m assigned to do the postproduction for a documentary. All the finishing (e.g. gfx insertion) will be done in FCP. The project will subsequently be graded in Color and authored with DVD Studio Pro.

  The project was edited with Media Composer and is supposed to be trasferred to FCP using Automatic Duck.

  The problem is that the editor applied a lot of scaling effects to the clips which don’t get properly translated in FCP.

  The solution would be to consolidate all the effects (including scales and resizes) applied in Avid into the clips, creating a video mixdown with edits. I’m not a mothertongue English speaker, so to describe it really easy: I need to find a way to render all the existing effects into the clips itself to have a timeline, that is clear of any effect. Media Composer should create new clips with the applied effects.

  I tried that several times with several settings via Export and consolidated the whole thing, but it didn’t work out for some reason. The effects kept staying on the clips.

  I’m not a huge Avid expert, therefore I search for help in this matter. How can I do that exactly? Unfortunately the editor wasn’t not able to point out any solution.

  Thanks for your help, any advise is highly appreciated!
  Pete.

  Peter Daniel replied 17 years, 2 months ago 5 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  William Busby

  June 25, 2009 at 5:25 am

  Consolidate only re-creates the media used in the sequence, clips and pre-computes (any effects & filters), etc. A video mixdown creates a separate file altogether as it’s own. The only issue is mixdowns don’t have timecode associated with it, so you would have to sync manually in the timeline.
• 

  Bill Ravens

  June 25, 2009 at 12:46 pm

  alternatively, can’t you export to a lossless digital intermediate codec, like SHEER or CINEFORM? Then import the rendered file into FCP
• 

  John Pale

  June 25, 2009 at 3:27 pm

  Post this in the Automatic Duck forum….usually scaling effects translate well.

  Wes, the author of Automatic Duck will address the problems.
• 

  Grinner Hester

  June 25, 2009 at 4:55 pm

  You’ll be far better off, quality-wise to have the editor remove those scaled effects in Avid, redo them in AE and give you the renders.

  
• 

  Peter Daniel

  June 26, 2009 at 5:26 pm

  Hey guys,

  thanks a lot for your advises.

  Unfortunately Automatic Duck can’t handle unequal resizes, so I was left with no other option as to delete all the scaling effects, as Grinner recommendet. I’ll redo them in Color later. It’s not a perfect solution but will work.

  Thanks and greets,
  Pete.

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