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How does Avid handle still images?
It has been a while since I have had to heavily work in Avid. I am working on a job now with a ton of still images. Some are huge, high quality TIFF, some are low quality JPEG files. When importing a still image into Avid. It is creating a new and unique piece of media independent from the original still, right? An MXF video file of whatever length is set? Now, when a move is desired you use the pan and zoom effect and link to the original still image, correct?
My bottom line question is; does it matter what size or format a still is when imported as Avid creates media for it anyway?
Scott Davis
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9 Replies
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All you said is correct. The bigger the file to reference with Pan & Zoom, the further you can zoom in without degredation. If simply importing and creating MXF/OMFI media file, then you would want the resolution to be equal or greater than your project resolution – SD 4×3 NTSC = 720×540(486) would be smallest resolution of the image to fill the screen.
Ricky
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The only limiting factor I see is how many P&Z effects you’ll have on the timeline and the file sizes of the original images you’ll be referencing. In my experience P&Z will choke and throw memory errors on large images.
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What, ball park wise, is the recommended still size? We are working in a 1920×1080 project. Have a 12 core mac and a very good raid.
Scott Davis
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That I don’t know. As you can see I’m on a rather old Avid with just 2GB RAM and yesterday I had a SD timeline with maybe 6 P&Z plugs and the system began choking on .jpg files that were in the 4-8MB range.
Maybe memory management has improved since v2.2.
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Keeping P&Zs rendered helps the memory issue. When you initially import files, size won’t matter cuz you’ll probably import with ‘resize’ option selected. I can’t remember which effect either P&Z or Avid FX (Boris Red)doesn’t like images bigger than 3k in either direction. The system hangs when linking to that file and you’ll need to relaunch. Not 100% sure if the 3k limitation is there in HD project.
Nick Hrycyk
Digital Image Studios -
just animate your stills in AE then import the quicktimes. Messin with pan and scan will only frustrate you. Limiting yourself within the 3D DVE from 1995 will only frustrate you all the more.
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Highly recommend checking out if your copy of BCC has the Pan & Zoom plugin that they use. It’s way more versatile than the built in Pan & Zoom.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
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Stage Tools gets my vote. Designed by a film editor and very simple to use.
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without a doubt the best plugin ever developed for stills has been stagetools’ moving picture. it works very well and is easy to use.
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