Does Avid hate me?

[Matthew Skeris]

Have you seen this set of free lessons?? https://www.promax.com/s-130-edit-to-the-future.aspx
Steve Holyhead is clear and has a great deal of experience sequencing Avid concepts for FCP-refugees.

[John Steventon]

Hey Kell,

I’m not entirely sure if this is what you’re meaning but here’s my answer to what I think you mean…

If I have a 20 minute clip with multiple takes and multiple scenes on it – one approach is to go through it in the source viewer, mark in’s and out’s for each piece you identify, then create subclips – either into individual bins – naming each clip accordingly, and whether you like it or not – or just into a master bin, named and liked accordingly. Set the clip-colour too, this translates onto the timeline (as long as you have ‘source’ picked in the clip-colour hamburger menu on your timeline) and you’ll have a visual guide (everything purple is an establisher, everything green is a GV etc etc).

If, however, you’d rather throw things around the timeline – use the ‘Add edit’ button to chop up the clip. You’ll need to edit the entire clip onto a new sequence, but once it’s there – use the add edit at the start of a take (making sure to select V1 and all audio channels) and then again at the end of the take.

This then splits the take – ready for you to move it to a preferred point on the timeline.

Now, you can either throw it to the start – add loads of filler and shove it down to the end as others have suggested, or mark an in/out on this chunk – then hit ‘alt/c’ to copy it into the source monitor.

Then if this is an establisher clip, create a new sequence (called establishers) and edit it onto there.

Why don’t you just edit directly from the long source clip I hear you ask? Well, good question actually, but I like to retain a ‘master’ split clip sequence, so if I need to trace my movements, I’ve got my original work.

There’s many ways to skin a cat (even if it’s sleeping) – these are just a couple of thoughts I had about what I thought you meant.

Stick with Avid. The best advice i can give is what someone said to me when I was moaning about FCP the first time I used it. “If you want to use Avid, just stay on Avid. If you want to use FCP, learn FCP.” (swap programs in your case)

Avid is key/menu based mostly – whereas FCP is based a lot around mouse clicks and drags. What I didn’t like about FCP is that there was 5 ways to do everything, which invariably meant you’d do the wrong thing 20% of the time. The good thing about Avid is that there’s only ever 1 or 2 ways to do something – it’s just that you have to find what key/menu to go to do it!

Good luck with it – as an editor, Avid just can’t be beat for speed once you know it.

John

John Steventon
Senior Editor, BBC Scotland
“Success is merely a failure to imagine more…”

2.26 Dual Quad Nehalem Mac Pro (11Gb Ram) / 2 x 23inch Apple Displays / FCP 6.05 / Decklink HD Extreme 3 + Multibridge / JVC HD Monitor / Atto Celerity Fibre Channel with Infortrend 6.5tb Raid 5 Storage / And a smile.

[Kell Smith]

Thanks very much,
The basics are coming along and now I’m going to start working on this. Will post back.

[Kell Smith]

Thank you so much everyone,
I somehow managed to miss a few posts from you guys further back so I’m going back through them.
I’m still working on getting the basics down, and am going to put the specific sections into practice next.
Thank you all for your encouragement. I intend to master this program one way or another.
I’m noticing a lazy streak during this that didn’t used to be there, and I don’t like it. I think I’ve gotten used to the comfort zone without realizing it. I’ve always been one who was willing to dive into the manual or do what needed to be done. The expectation was that, having become familiar with FCP, I would just glide into Avid, and I seem to have forgotten the effort that went into starting from scratch way back when. The learning curve isn’t easy, and I have found Avid to be particularly frustrating, totally non-intuitive, and since it also involves learning a new approach to editing on my part, it’s also going to require a new approach to organization.
So really, starting from scratch.
That said, it’s starting to move along.
I’ll check in and update with progress/questions/concerns.

[Adam White]

Everyone has already given some great insight.

I guess I was in a similar position to you in that the only thing I had ever cut on professionally was FCP. I was (am) incredibly agile with it, and a couple years or so into using it I got to that awesome place where the software itself seemed to melt away, it really became irrelevant, everything was so fluid that it was just about the actual task of EDITING.

On first trying out Avid, like you, I was incredibly frustrated. Why does the timeline not operate in the way I’m used to? Why are empty spaces in the timeline acting as “clips” and not empty spaces? Why do I need to go into different modes to carry out certain tasks? etc. And for an embarrassingly long time I was stumped by the opening dialogue boxes and project settings.

But stick with it. I guarantee, that when it starts to click into place, there will be lots about Avid that you love. For me, it’s the dynamic trimming which really stands out at the feature I just absolutely love. When I do a project in FCP now, it’s the first thing I miss! Add to that the robust stability (something that I felt sorely lacking from PP, one of several reasons I decided that it wasn’t going to be the replacement for FCP I wanted) and also the way you can work with audio, and you have an outstanding tool.

The other thing, which I believe has been noted by others, is that the sky is really the limit for you career-wise if you are comfortable working with Avid. For me, this was a big part of wanting to continue through the pain and get to grips with it. The sense that whatever job might come along, I would be ready for it. With FCP going the way of the dodo, knowing your stuff in Avid is more important than ever. I am still very sceptical about whether or not Premiere is going to become as ubiquitous as FCP became, so it seems foolish not to really get comfortable with Avid.

On the downside, the aspect of FCP that I really loved was what a diverse tool it was in that I could create great looking effects, and some pretty solid graded “looks”, and even some simple composites. I have yet to get to grips with these aspects of Avid (I can do a bit of simple colour work now, but that’s about it) and I don’t think it’s ever going to be the same kind of tool for these tasks as FCP was. But the interchange with After Effects is pretty great with Automatic Duck plugins, so even that isn’t too much of a downer.

I still have a huge amount to learn. Frustrations still occur quite frequently. But I’m getting there. It’s great to be getting more comfortable with a tool that you feel like you’re going to be using for years to come.