New to Avid – simple question I think

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Jamie,

Let me give a little background here, AVID for better or worse was one of the pioneers into non-linear editing. It wasn’t the first or maybe the best at the time, but good marketing and a willing to make it better as it went along, made AVID top dog. Sort of like Betamax and VHS in the 70s, VHS won the war. That being said, the other two programs FCP and Premiere were built with what AVID had already established, so as the other two products evolved they added their own way of doing things within each program. Every program has its good and bad points and things we’d all like them to have, the ultimate editing interface, but they don’t. I have been an AVID editor for over 13 years and yes there are things that I’d like to have them change, because a program like FCP has been able to come up with some nice features. But, at the same time there are some things that I’d like FCP to have that AVID does.

Now to answer some of your questions, in AVID the splice tool is named “add edit” and it works with what ever tracks you have highlighted in your timeline.

You can move clips around with the splice or overwrite arrows at the bottom of the timeline, the red arrow at the bottom (segment mode lift/overwrite) will allow you to move the clip in the timeline and when you release the clip it will overwrite what ever media there is in the timeline. The yellow arrow (segment mode Extract/ Splice-in) will allow you to move the clip the same way as the red arrow, but when you release the clip it will splice it into the timeline.

As far as the Audio goes, you can mark in and mark out just the audio by selecting just those audio tracks and doing a lift of that segment, or you could just overwrite your new audio back overtop of the audio you want to replace.

I’m out for now!
btveditor

[Jon Zanone]

I guess I’m not understanding the problem. If you don’t want audio from a clip, don’t edit it in. Simply deselect the audio track on the timeline, and add your video. When you add the audio, deselect the video track and plop the audio in.

Did I understand your question, or no?

I’ve not used FCP, but the advice I’ve heard from others is ‘try not to make Avid work like FCP’. Once you get the concept, it is very intuitive. Avid works in ‘modes’. Some people hate it, I personally like it. I’ve got the segment overwrite mode mapped to my keyboard, as well as trim and edit mode. It’s then a matter of hitting a key to activate a mode. To move a clip around, enter segment mode (it’s the little red arrow next to the yellow arrow at the bottom of the timeline). Using the red arrow will overwrite other clips. Using the yellow arrow will splice in your clip (meaning if you move a 5 second clip from V1 to V2, it will move everything on V2 down 5 seconds). I think in the 12 years I’ve edited on Avid I’ve used the splice tool twice.

The replace edit function is a seriously wonderful tool. I suggest mapping it to your keyboard as well (it’s in tools/command pallette under the edit tab). With it, you can replace either audio or video (or both), or edit in new clips using mark in/out, or even add an edit in black and use it there. There’s a great tutorial somewhere here in the COW, but I can’t find it. Anyone know where that is?

I know it’s frustrating using a new set of tools, but thats what it comes down to – they are tools. Please post if you have more questions!

Jon