[Christopher Travis]

It’s for my editing showreel. I want to create a montage to my own choice of music track featuring shots and bits of sync from all the shows I’ve worked on. I want to bring the voice out as much as possible from any background music that may be on the master so it doesn’t interfere with my montage music.

[Christopher Travis]

Lovely stuff, thank you Shane.

[Christopher Travis]

To trim an edit to the left: Mark an IN point at the frame you want to trim to, then press “extend”. Ensure the correct tracks are activated.
To trim an edit to the right: Mark an OUT point and do the same.

LEFT = IN POINT
RIGHT = OUT POINT

hope that makes sense

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks but I’ve already got that one. Along with the Media Composer Cookbook and Avid Editing by Sam Kaufman and Ashley Kennedy.

I’m still interested in hearing people’s personal favourites, maybe things they’ve remapped themselves to save time.

[Christopher Travis]

I was thinking just yesterday about how, as freelancers are expected to be more and more diverse in their skills, it seems that this expansion is happening from editorial, outwards.

Rightly or wrongly, I think editors are seen as the most crucial player in the post production workflow, and that their storytelling skills are the most nuanced/hardest to learn skills in the chain. Also, usually they are on the job for longer than the other roles such as graphics/compositing/sound designers, and are there from the start so it makes sense to add to their role and have them carry it further to completion than to ask someone who traditionally comes on board later to start moving back along the production process.

This is (sort of) good news for editors as they are well placed to keep their jobs as long as they can diversify. As for the others, editing is actually really easy, so they can just learn it and say they were an editor all along. Win-win.

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks for your response Bill. I never got to check him out and the job is done now. It was pretty full on but managed to get the cut to the channel in time in the end.

I must say my initial thoughts on 3D broadcast are not all that positive. Granted, the main problem with this show was that it was done in an “observational” style, which meant run and gun shooting. As you can imagine this led to loads of illegal shots with edge violations and what not. The worst part of it was the broadcasters defined minimum percentage of 3D shots. Throughout the show, much of the best footage was from go pro cameras, but because they weren’t 3D, we had to keep replacing the best shots with inferior, but 3D shots. In my opinion that’s no way to make good telly.

[Christopher Travis]

As an aside…

The needs for speed isn’t only about the times you have a client over your shoulder, it’s also about the ability to implement ideas as quickly as you can have them.

Yes, a lot of editing is about planning and knowing something will work before you do it. However when it comes to fine tuning and adjusting, fluency is required if one is not to loose patience and settle for something ok.

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks for the fast response. I’ll check out the macbreak studio podcast today.

I’ll also have a look into baking the keyed comps into one track. Then I could just use opacity keyframes on that layer which should improve performance and tidy up my comp a bit.

Thanks again for taking the time to edify an ignoramus like me. I’m an editor by trade but do like getting my hands dirty in vfx / mograph when I get the chance and people like you on creative cow have always been a godsend.

[Christopher Travis]

Sandeep, thanks again. I’m getting a much better result by doubling up the layer, and using two different keys, with a mask to separate the head from the shoulders.

I have two further questions;

a) is there a way of doing this without using a duplicate layer? I now have a much messier timeline and I’m always keen to find out more efficient ways of doing things. My comp looks a little like this; Bottom layer – White Solid. Next up – Clip with shoulder key, Above that – Clip with hair key, and rectangle mask to reveal clip below.

b) having 2 layers is causing me another problem; I want each clip to fade in and fade out, and for this I’m using the fade in/out behaviour. However, if I apply this to both top and bottom layers; I can see the edge of the mask during the fade. Instead I’m now using a white solid colour on a new layer at the top and fading that in and out. As you can imagine this is always quite messy as I’m making a new solid block for each fade. This bothers me as I’m sure there must be a more elegant way of doing this.

I can definitely get this one out of the door as is, but if you have the time I’d love to hear some tips for simplifying this comp.

Thanks,
Chris

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks you so much for your detailed response Sandeep. I will give this a try first thing on Monday and let you know how it went.

As for purchasing Motion 5. It certainly is good value and I will think about it. But I so rarely use my own equipment for paid work, I wouldn’t get that much use out of it. Also, my iMac is about 6 years old so not exactly ideal for doing lots of vfx work. If I can just get by with what I have for now it would suit me better.