Does Avid hate me?

[William Busby]

Like John (and many others I’m sure) I don’t edit that way either and seriously never thought anyone would. I have a friend that cuts on FCP and went to his office one day and his timeline was zoomed all the way out (over an hours worth) and he had gaps everywhere, plus sync issues (other than the first few minutes) and I had to inquire what that was all about 😀

Source monitor, make I/O marks, lay it in sequence, etc. seems to be the norm

[Kell Smith]

I hope the drifting of the topic is okay here.. let me ask a workflow question.

What’s a good method for keeping your scenes organized that way? Do you use markers in the source footage? Subclips?

Let’s say you have say, 75 different takes of things on one clip. Some are good, some are alternates, some are garbage. It’s AVCHD imported footage, so let’s say you have 15 source clips imported in for that particular card.

Editing in the timeline, I would create separate timelines for each segment of the event, i.e. establishing, introduction, etc.
Drag the footage in, cut it up, remove the garbage, and edit with the remaining usable clips. Sometimes dragging the alternates to the end or to a turned-off track, using slugs to separate the stuff at the end visually from my editing area.
If there was, say, an establishing shot done in the middle of the event for some reason, I would remove the clip from the event sequence, and put it in the “establishing shots’ sequence.

If it all remains in the source clips, and is just delineated by markers, what’s the best way to handle that and stay organized? I guess coloring the markers might work, but it’s still sort of disorganized and you can’t see the clips together. Subclips might work but that seems like an extra step, along with issues of handles. Naming your markers could work, but that presents organizational/sequencing problems of its own.

Open to suggestions on methods that work for you guys.

[Peter Groom]

Hi
It us worth it- like everything in life that is eorth achieving it takes perseverance .
That said I’m surprised you think it’s so different.
We use CFO 7 at work and I long fir avid which in my opinion is much better, but they really are soon similar the differences are slight.
Peter

Post Production Dubbing Mixer

[Ericbowen]

I would not dismiss Premiere or more accurately the Adobe suite in Post so quickly anymore. There is quite an exodus from both FCP and Avid to Adobe at this point and FCP users find Premiere very easy to pickup. I would try both and see what works best for your workflow since both have their advantages. I have quite a few clients who use both Premiere and Avid and I can promise you many Avid users also use Vegas because of the advantages Vegas has over Avid especially with Audio ie surround sound mixing.

Eric-ADK
Tech Manager

[David Powell]

I switched from FCP to Avid several years back. I decided without ever having fired it up to cut a feature on it and did so successfully. Reason was I had Steve Cohen’s “Avid Agility” at my side the whole way. I’ve since done pro certification with Avid, but that book gave me everything I needed to competently edit and then some.

The trimming in Avid so far advanced over FCP 7 or X (both of which I’ve used extensively) that you will not want to go back after you get the hang. It would be worth paying someone who’s used both to sit with you a couple of days and have them show you the differences. The importing and file handling differences are probably the biggest hurdle. The feature set is very deep in Avid and but you can get the basics down rather quickly.

[Kell Smith]

I will persevere and learn this program because i want the skill, and because of its reputation, and because the people in this thread swear by it so it must be worth it. And because easy makes one lazy, and I suspect I’ve begun to fall into that trap.

It shouldn’t be this difficult. Not for me, anyway – I’m usually very good at this and have no fear of jumping in and teaching myself anything.

>Long ,angry rant edited< This is so disappointing, I have thought for years that I would immediately fall in love with Avid. Well, third date, not going so well. Not ready to kick Avid to the curb yet, but five more minutes I may be - so I'll come back to it later.

[David Powell]

Honestly, all the “problems” you’ve mentioned are very simple things. If you’d spend $60 and buy avid media composer essentials book and about 3 hours to read it, it would save you all your headaches. I’ll spoon feed you one. Adding markers from the keyboard.

I have a completely custom keyboard so I can’t remember if there is a stock command. Hit “command 3” this will show you where everything is mapped. Now go to “settings” tab where your main bin is, press “K” double click keyboard, click “button to button reassignment” you’ll find markers (previously called locators) under the last tab I believe. Drag it to the button of your choice. Hit “shift” to learn whats mapped under the modifier or to to map it to a modified command.

make sure you don’t leave the Command pallet open, it will cause playback problems.

I will mention that the command modified stuff is not show unfortunately. In this regard fcp has better functionality. But most strokes don’t use “command” in avid thanks to modes, which makes for a better experience. You can easily change the font bg color etc in the interface. Avid’s interface is far more customizable than fcp’s especially with the workspaces, which you’ll have to do some reading on.

[Kell Smith]

Thank you David,
I’ll do those tomorrow morning.
Took a break and am editing my rant.
Will start fresh in the morning and with a better attitude.

[Scott Cole]

Kell,
Read your rant about “one keystroke markers” which you seem to have edited out. If you indeed want Avid to just drop in a marker (or locator as they used to be called) without the window popping up to type marker info in, that’s doable as well. But first, I believe that F3 is the normal keystroke for adding markers. I know it’s mine and I’m 99% sure it’s the default. As David tells you above, you can verify it’s location by opening up the Keyboard settings in the Settings Tab of the Project Window. I’m not at an avid at the moment so I can’t verify that F3 is indeed the norm.

So, go to the settings tab of the project window and go down to Markers. Click on that and an options window will open up which will allow you to tick on or off the option for a text window to come up when you add markers.

My observation about Avid, everyone wants it to work they way they want it to work, therefor the interface is incredibly customizable. This has its pros and cons. When one edited 2″ tape, not counting the knobs to set up the VTRs, you really only had less then 10 buttons to worry about: Stop, Play, FF, REW, Record, Edit, and a knob for Video, Audio or Both. CMX, the mother of all linear editing devices had a full QWERTY keyboard, with all it’s functions labeled, but you could not customize the keyboard at all. This was a good thing. It meant I could walk into any edit suite and start editing once the tapes were mounted and set up. No loading my settings and keyboard, etc. Just edit. Other linear editors allowed some customization and that became more difficult. Avid is totally customizable and is often shipped without a marked up keyboard. I still prefer a marked up keyboard, and most of my keys are as marked (okay I’m old, and I don’t want to commit a lot of functions to my slowly failing rote memory). On the other hand, I’ve added a whole lot of shortcuts to my keyboard where they make sense for me. I work in a building with dozens of other Avid editors and everyone of us edits differently, and we all learn from each other. Keep at it and you’ll eventually love it.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Kell Smith]

Thanks Scott. =)
Not a pretty rant… sorry guys.
Took a break today and am going to go back and start over.
I WILL conquer Avid. LOL It will NOT win.
I won’t respect myself if I back out just because something else is easier or less trouble.
But first – an egg and cheese burrito with green chile…
Sustenance, you know. Gotta be prepared for the long haul.