HDV editing problems in Avid

[Oakmozart]

1) Have you played around with Avid’s FluidFilm effect? It’s great for turning interlaced footage into progressive. The main problem is the excessive render times…they can get nasty.

2) The technique you seek is known as nesting effects and is one example of Avid’s obsolete interface that needs some overhauling. Try holding the Alt key while dropping another effect on top of a clip that already has an effect applied to it. Other ways to do this: enter one of the 2 “Segment Modes” (which default as the : and ” keys on the keyboard in XPro). While in segment mode, click on the clip you wish to add another effect to once to highlight it. The double click to “Step-Into” the clip to expose another “layer” of the clip that’s not effected by an effect. Drag your new effect to this layer to add it, without losing the previous effect. The last way is to use the “Step-In” button to achieve the same thing as what double-clicking on a clip while selected in segment mode does. Step-In allows you to “step-into” the clip for applying multiple effects. You can continue to step in as many times as you wish to apply as many different effects as you wish. When you’re done adding and tweaking effects, use the “Step-Out” button to go back to the main timeline. Remember, you have to click “Step-Out” as many times as you clicked “Step-In.” If you stepped in 10 times, you must step out 10 times.

One last way to do it is to create a new video track above your layer you wish to effect, select that layer, add edits (default keyboard command “H”) around where you want the effect to go, and drag the desired effect to the space between the edits on the timeline. The effect will create “filler” media and you’re off to the races. Keep in mind that this method affects ALL layers of video below it, so you may be required to make some changes to your timeline layer stacks to achieve what is is you want.

Feel free to email for further clarification if none of that made sense. Also, read through the manual for more info on this, too.

3) I don’t use Photoshop much or know it very well, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re referring to what’s known as secondary color-correction. In other words, you wish to correct individual color regions within a clip, without affecting the entire clip, right? (For example, take a clip of a red sports car and turn the sports car blue, without affecting the rest of the image.) If this is what you seek, it is currently not available in any Avid product below Symphony. Hopefully this will change soon. I know FCP, Liquid Edition and Sony Vegas all offer this, as do many other expensive “professional” systems (like discreet smoke, fire, flame, inferno, etc., as well as Quantel and others). You can fake this using After Effects, combustion and other FX applications, too. Heck, you could even export your footage as an image sequence to Photoshop and tweak using PS’s Color Balance effect in there. It’d be TONS of work, but it’s possible.

Good luck.

[Antonfoy]

Hi oakmozart!

Thank you so much, your answers where very helpful. I think I can handle Avid much better now.
With Photoshop’s “color balance” I mean the one you can adjust CMY and RGB individually for Shadows, midtones and highlights. Maybe there are some plug-ins that can do that?

Thanks

[Dan Warvi]

These started out as After Effects Plugins, but they are rock-solid AVX plugins, and they give you color-correction tools on par with Symphony and the Discreet line:

55mm is the definitive set of digital optical filters meant to simulate popular glass camera filters, specialized lenses, optical lab processes, film grain, matte generation, exacting color correction as well as natural light and photographic effects–all in a controlled digital environment with either 8 or 16 bits per channel processing.

https://www.digitalfilmtools.com/55mm/index.htm

Digital Film Lab simulates a variety of color and black and white photographic looks, diffusion and color grad camera filters, lighting gels, film stocks and optical lab processes. The power of the plug-in lies in its presets which can be loaded to achieve a variety of different effects. There are over 135 useful presets organized into black and white looks, color looks, diffusion, grain and temperature. Feel free to use our presets, modify them or create your own.

https://www.digitalfilmtools.com/dfl-2/dfl2.htm

Composite Suite includes 28 visual effects plug-ins that were, until recently, only available in-house at Digital FilmWorks, a Los Angeles based film effects facility. Tested in the rigors of everyday production, the Composite Suite plug-ins provide all that is needed to combine multiple images including in house compositing tricks and techniques, color correction, blur, grain, matte manipulation and edge blending using 16 bit processing even if your system is limited to 8 bits.

https://www.digitalfilmtools.com/cs-3/cs.htm

Hope that helps!

Dan Warvi
After Effects, Avid, Motion, Broadcast Systems & PC as nec