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Quickest way to “extend” edit
Gradually making the move away from FCP7 to Avid.
After some initial frustrations and plenty of “WTF” moments – which still crop up – I am starting to get into the Media Composer groove and for certain jobs I think it’s exceptional. Much better than FCP ever was for certain tasks, and the stability/media management is superb.
There continue to be little everyday editing tasks that I just know I am doing in a painfully slow manner, however.
One such task is a simple “extend” edit. So, in FCP7, I would simply select a cut point in the timeline and then scrub the playhead to the point in the timeline where I want to shift the cut to. Then just hit “e” and the cut would shift to said point.
Is there an alternative/similar way of doing this in Media Composer? Obviously there are numerous ways of achieving this, which I’m aware of, but I guess what I’m driving at is – is there a similar shortcut to doing so with just a few keystrokes. It’s really that smooth motion of extending to the playhead position that I miss.
Any thoughts welcome.
Thanks in advance.
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5 Replies
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There is a button called “extend edit” whose icon looks like >|< that does this function. Instead of the blue bar, it uses the Mark IN and Out to define which edit and new position. Look up “extend edit” in the user guide or the online help for detailed information. Another great shortcut for you to look at is “top and tails”.
Michael
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Terrific! Sounds like just the ticket. Thankyou Michael, much appreciated, will certainly look into this in more depth when next in front of Avid.
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Like you, I use this all the time, and the workflow in MC is very easy to adopt. I mapped the Extend function to the N key (as it seems a logical place for it and I don’t think there was anything there before) and always remember ‘exteNd’. (also mapped Fit-to-Fill as shift-N)
– activate track you want to extend
– park play head where you want to extend to
– clear any ‘IN’ / ‘OUT’ marks
– mark ‘IN’ if you are extending backward / mark ‘OUT’ if you are extending forward
– hit Extend -
Amazing! Great idea, Mark. I have mapped the keyboard in the same way you have and it works great.
Such a small little bit of timeline agility but I know I’ll use it constantly! Thanks.
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I also suggest you look at head and tail, I use this feature all of the time.
One time saving use fir extend us if you have multiple tracks you want to all start/end at the same time, an extend on all of the tracks ave having to zoom right in and adjust separately
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