4 problems with my avid xpress pro technique

[Satesh Ramjattan]

Problem 1
You don’t need to mark in when copy and pasting.
1. Just park your timeline indicator where you want the clips to go.
2. Alt + Drag (from the left) over the clips you want copied.
3. Ctrl+ C, (Standard Copy cmd), then Ctrl + V(Standard Paste cmd.)
It’s less than 5 steps.

Problem 2
At work we just mixed down a clip of black for 30 secs and saved in our Fx Bin.
We load it ( Already has 4 sec duration In and Out set)
Ctrl + A then splice in.

Problem 3 and 4
Read the manual about customizing your keyboard and what commands go where.
Under Settings — keyboard

[Jayson Rahmlow]

thanks sdragon. I’ve already started using your first suggestion. It’s much faster. I’d still like to know if there’s a way to copy and paste between tracks though (say from a1 to a2). I record a lot of mono punch in. I have to copy and paste it then move it to a different track to make it “stereo.”

As for your second suggestion, I haven’t yet figured out how to make 30 seconds of black. I tried to load filler into the monitor to make a sub clip but that didn’t work. But I’ll research it and figure it out. My question for you is when you add black the way you do, does it add it to all tracks or just v1 a1 a2. You said you hit shift A to select all tracks so I’m thinking it does but I just want to make sure.

also I took your suggestion and did some reading first in the manual then on the web. And I figured out how to map the more and less detail commands to a button (this zooms in and out of the timeline.) if anyone’s interested.
you go into the command palette, click the radio dial below all the commands that says “map menu to button”, Then click on the button you want to assign the menu command to, then click on a menu and select the command you want, it will be teleported to the button you clicked on.

i found it here

https://www.mediacircus.tv/The_Things_I_Learned.pdf

along with a bunch of other tips that solved 2 of my problems, it’s beautiful.

thanks again sdragon.

jayson
http://www.oldchildprojects.com

[Michael Hancock]

If you want to load black just load filler. You can map it to your keyboard to to make it faster–use the Menu to Button reassignment like you did with the timeline zoom. I have mine on Shift+F (for filler). It loads 2 minutes of filler in the source monitor–from there you can cut it anywhere.

To copy tracks from A1 to A2–stop copying and pasting. It will get you into trouble and isn’t very useful in Avid. Instead, select what you want to copy by marking an In and Out on the clip, then hit Alt+Ctrl+C to copy it to your source monitor. From there just patch your A1 track to your A2 track and cut it in. Much, much faster. Another option is to just hit C (the default for Copy to Clipboard) on your keyboard then open your Clipboard monitor. Select it, patch your audio track from A1 to A2 and cut it in. You can map your clipboard monitor to your keyboard too using the Menu to Button ReAssignment (mine is at Shift+C). The beauty of the clipboard is that everytime you cut or lift something it goes into the clipboard. Want to take out a shot and move it down the line and onto a higher track? Mark it, lift it, open the clipboard monitor, patch tracks and cut. Can be very useful.

Also, if you’re dealing with Mono audio and you want it coming out of your left and right channels but your system splits A1 to Left and A2 to Right, you can change the default under your Audio settings or Audio Project settings to All Channel Centered (or something similar). Or, open you audio tool and set the pan there to the middle. If you load the audio into your source monitor, select the source monitor, then set the pan it will set the pan to the source clip. Very useful if you always want it center panned because you don’t have to reset it everytime you cut it into the sequence.

Also, Avid isn’t really designed for drag and drop. You should think of using three point editing–set an In, an Out, then an In or Out and cut/splice. Much faster, gives you much more control, and works a lot better in Avid. It sounds like you might be more used to Premiere Pro or FCP–both good NLEs, but much different than Avid.

One more thing–you should definitely take some time to map your keyboard the way you want it. You can map almost anything to any key, as well as Shift+AnyKey. It will make things much, much easier and you’ll edit a lot faster if you do. I have every key that’s able to be mapped set to something I use almost every day, and when you hold Shift I have a lot of those mapped as well. Makes things much easier. If you want to see how different people have their keyboards and monitors set up check out Avid’s new forums here:

https://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/74/ShowForum.aspx

Check out some of these setups–there are really good ideas there. I change my interface frequently and am constantly updating my keyboard to reflect the fastest workflow I can find.

If you run into more problems or have more questions let us know–we’re here to help!

Mike.

[Jayson Rahmlow]

Mike, you’re a gentleman and a scholar. I wish I’d asked for help sooner. How many hours of frustration I’ve suffered doing it “my way.” You’re right I came from Premiere Pro and haven’t gotten over the drag and drop system. But with your suggestions, I think I’ll finally have some closure.

I centered my audio, so I don’t need to duplicate the mono punch in anymore which caused the most headache.

I’ve rearranged my keyboard commands around the 3 point system you suggested and it’s much faster although it’ll take some getting used to. I’m going to do my best to stop copying and pasting.

i still couldn’t find out how to bind filler to a key. None of my menu’s have the option of adding filler except “to start.” Am I just not seeing it or is it maybe not an option in xpress pro?

thanks again mike. you’re getting a credit in my movie.

jayson
http://www.oldchildprojects.com

[Michael Hancock]

I can’t remember exactly where Load Filler is and I’m not in front of the system right now, but I think it’s under Clip. It is called Load Filler, I know that. To map it to your keyboard go to your Settings Tab and double click Keyboard to open it up. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+3 is the shortcut) and select Menu to Button Assignment (I think that’s what it’s called). Now click the key on the onscreen keyboard you want to map Load Filler to (if you want to map it to a Shift+Key just hold shift and click the key you’re mapping), then go to Clip–>Load Filler. You will see a little icon zoom down to the key you mapped it to, and it will likely say LF (for Load Filler). You can do this with any menu command and it is very, very helpful, especially with the Shift+options. For example:

I have Import mapped to Shift+Z, Export to Shift+X, Video Mixdown to Shift+PageUp, Audio Mixdown to Shift+PageDown, Collapse to Shift+End, Expert Render to Shift+F5, MediaTool to Shift+F2, and Hardware to Shift+F3. I use all of these commands everyday so mapping them to my keyboard has saved me a lot of time hunting through the menu after menu.

Coming from Premiere to Avid will likely be a bit of a struggle because the interfaces are so different and the methods of editing are so different. As I’m sure you’ve found out already, Avid can be really strict in how you do things–it isn’t nearly as open of an interface as PPro or FCP. However, once you wrap your head around the Avid way of doing things it gets much faster and much easier. Again, if you have questions about anything don’t hesitate to ask. It’s what the Creative Cow is about.

Glad to be of help! Good luck with the movie and post here if you have trailer we can view online. It’s always fun to see what other forum members are working on.

Mike.

[Dan L.]

Here is how to load filler –

It is in the drop down menu above the source window. Haven’t tried to map it.

D

[Jayson Rahmlow]

Thanks mike and dan. I found it. You were right it was in the clip menu. I don’t know why my mind couldn’t figure out that “load filler” would load filler in the source monitor. Who knew. So using the bind “menu command to button” option, I bound load filler to q.

I also remembered another problem I had while cutting today.

I shot some video with my xl2 on it’s side. Now I want to rotate the video -90 degrees on the z axis. What’s the best way to do that. I usually us the 3d pip effect but then the background shows up because my clip is smaller than the 16×9 frame. Also, xpress pro doesn’t have 3d warp which is a guess what the pro’s use. But I’ve searched some for an answer and it’s such a basic move, but I can’t find one.

Also, I’ll let you know about the trailer when it’s done. I’ll let the whole world know. right now i’m laying out an animatic of the entire film. So when I start shooting for real, I’ll know exactly what I want.

thanks again,
jayson
http://www.oldchildprojects.com

[Satesh Ramjattan]

If your xl2 footage is 16:9 then you can use PIP just scale it back to 100. By default it shrinks the image down 50%.

[Michael Hancock]

3D warp is great, but you can achieve the same results using PIP. Apply it, promote to 3D, reset the scale to 100% then rotate -90 on the Z axis to set your footage upright. If there is footage on a lower video track of this shot you will see it because you’re turning a rectangle on it’s end and it’s width is now smaller than the frame size, but if you want this particular shot to fill the entire 16×9 frame you’ll need to adjust the scale. Note, it will distort the image though.

Mike.

[Jayson Rahmlow]

Thanks guys. I used 3d pip to rotate the image z -90 and reduce it 50% so the whole frame would fit vertically. then I put a key on top of it (alt drag any key effect atop the 3d pip effect automatically nests it.) Then cropped all the sides to cover up the image that showed through from the video track beneath it.

I’m surprised there isn’t a simple rotate option in image effects somewhere.