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Avid … peculiarities
Hello all, Just learning my way through Avid MC 3.0 and thought I’d post some behaviors I thought prudent to run by the group since they seem odd from the outside looking in. I come from an Adobe world, so this is my background that I’m trying to forget as i try to learn Avid.
With Premier, if I have an image sequence, I click the first frame, indicate it’s an image sequence and click ok and 5 seconds later, poof, the sequence is in my project bin ready for editing. As well, if I have a series of .mpg files captured via our studio capture pc running OnLocation (which is an Adobe app for capturing DV/HDV footage via firewire) Premier will open those MPEG2 HDV files and put them in my project.
With Avid, this seems much more complicated. An image sequence first must be automatically transcoded into some codec Media Composer likes or thinks is appropriate for my project. This takes forever on my Quad core powermac. Likewise, with MPEG2 HDV files, Avid will report it does not support those files, of which I have to take into squeeze and transcode into say a .mov with DNxHD codec. Then they import just fine, all be it 3xlarger filesizes.
So peculiarity #1 observation would be, why all the hub-bub? Does avid support a narrow range of codecs for editing? It seems like it will capture HDV from a deck just fine, but I imagine it is actually doing a realtime transcode, since it didn’t like the captured mpg files from harddisk on import.
On a side note, is there a format that is native to the real world that Avid will edit in so that transcoding and duplicating harddrive space requirements for an edit job is not required?
Next, referencing the Adobe and FCP worlds, if i want to apply a key effect
and a garbage mask effect and maybe also a gamma effect to a piece of footage, I can do so and the effects palette for the clip simply tallies all of the effects I’ve added. In Avid, the application of an effect on a clip is indicated by an effect icon in the center of the clip, with a blue or green dot indicating weather that effect needs to be rendered or runs in realtime. Peculiarity #2 would be, this seems very limiting to me. I would like to apply multiple effects to a clip, but any given clip in the timeline has only one icon for effects, and clicking on a new effect essentially removes the old effect. For example, adding the keylight effect to a clip, and then adding a film-grain effect removes the keylight. Does Avid not multiplex effects hierarchically like Adobe? And even if it does in some way, it seems like it limits itself by requiring some effects be rendered. Is it not possible to run effects in real time, even if it might take longer to update that frame for that clip?
One other observation I’ve noticed is that with the lack of drag/drop as a key editing mechanism, Avid does most things by clicking a selection and then clicking elsewhere to apply those selections to your timeline. When you apply this to timelines, say you have multiple sequences, it doesn’t appear that Avid allows for a nesting of sequences. You can open many sequences, but when it comes to putting sequence 1 in sequence 2, this functionality does not seem present. I think this one is my misunderstanding of Avid workflow, though.
Last, in a very basic project, inevitably I will need to zoom and/or pan footage. The effect editor does not have these position and scale and opacity markers present like I’m used to in the Adobe world under the effect control motion. There doesn’t seem to be an effect for this either?
Thanks for reading. I do find myself cursing up a storm, but that’s only because I don’t like feeling like an idiot… 🙂 At the very least, I want to see the light that so many others who use Avid see.
CS3 – Mac
C4D -
2 Replies
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[Steve Johnson] “An image sequence first must be automatically transcoded into some codec Media Composer likes or thinks is appropriate for my project. This takes forever on my Quad core”
Not sure why a Quad is so slow, but yes, Avid transforms video/graphics to it’s OMF or MXF format. It adds metadata and a long alphanumeric name that allow it to associate the media with the right project. Whatever format Avid accepts, when it imports/transcodes, those are the eventual 2 formats it puts into the media folders.
[Steve Johnson] “I would like to apply multiple effects to a clip, but any given clip in the timeline has only one icon for effects”
Multiple effects in Avid are stacked using a procedure called “nesting”. Hold the ALT key as you drag the second and subsequent effects onto your video clip. Each subsequent effect pushes the previous one lower in the “stack”. Select your overwrite tool and double click the clip to expand the clip and see/modify all your effects. You can also use the “step in/step out” keys which look like down and up (respectively) arrows in the quick menu. Experience and experimentation will dictate when to use each method. Note: you cannot nest audio effects. You’re allowed one realtime and one rendered effect before you have to “bounce” the mixdown to another track. Boo Avid!
[Steve Johnson] “it doesn’t appear that Avid allows for a nesting of sequences.”
You can only open one sequence at a time. But you can drag a sequence into the source window and overwrite/insert it your open timeline. Be very observant of which tracks you’ve targeted and where they are going, especially when dealing with sequences having differing amounts of audio and video tracks.
[Steve Johnson] “Last, in a very basic project, inevitably I will need to zoom and/or pan footage.”
The simplest way to do this is to apply the 3D Warp effect found in the Blend category IIRC. It offers the basic transforms found in the motion menu of Premiere.
Comparison and contrast may allow you to get up to speed a bit quicker in the Avid. But as a Premiere user myself, I think you’ve just exhausted the usefulness of that method. Further gains may be accelerated by forgetting the old ways. Any way you slice it, the Avid is a strange beast. But once you become Avid-centric, you’ll hopefully discover a stable editor that allows you to concentrate on actual editing.
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Nesting was a feature I was not seeing. It’s not well spelled out in the user guide either. Luckily, the Avid handbook 4th edition will arrive today.
I think my .png image sequence is taking so long because it has 3 passes at the sequence which includes an alpha, which is interpreted inversly as compared to Adobe. That was a bit of a stumbling block…. 🙂 But I’m finding that image sequence import is not working well. It does not have the edges of alpha clearly defined like premier does on image import. I need to get source in a video file for some reason. Perhaps compressing to this Avid DNxHD codec… From what I can tell, it is supposed to be lossless compression. Good enough for my purposes anyway, I think. Will experiment there. I’m not 100% sure if it supports alpha.
Thanks for the info. By proxy it clears a lot of things up. I have a chroma project that I’m going to pretty much throw myself into the fire with Avid. But I have the luxury of some extra time, so worse case I’ll just redo in Premier. But I think I’m getting the hang of basic editing. I will say that it is 10x more stable than my premier seems to be. I don’t find myself always drawn to save every 30 seconds because a crash might happen.
CS3 – Mac
C4D
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