This of it like an analogue patch bay. You have a source with Video and 2 Audio tracks. You only want the video, so you activate video on the source then activate video on the record side. You can also use it to your advantage – if you have some video you’re inserting and know you want audio but from a different clip you can activate the record side video and audio, then activate only the video on the source side. When you insert edit it brings the source video and lays it to the record side video, but since you didn’t activate the source side audio but did activate the record side audio it inserts a gap, of sorts (Avid calls it filler), pushing your audio down without actually putting the source side audio into the sequence.
If you’re coming from FCP it might take you a bit to wrap your head around it but it really is very powerful. I came from Avid to FCP and never did get the hand of autoselects – seemed like everything was always on and I had to turn off or lock the tracks I didn’t want to use, which was always more than the ones I wanted to use. Lots of extra clicking for me.
[John Davidson] “Also, is there a way to automate it to where when you click the name it auto selects the track as well?”
This is auto patching and it’s available in Avid. It’s not available in Premiere, but I’ve filed feature requests for it. I recommend you also file the request – it’s desperately needed.
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Michael Hancock
Editor