David Braswell
Forum Replies Created
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What kind of audio levels did you have on your mastered sequence? Did you normalize, compress, or otherwise raise audio level of your raw clips?
Unless Avid doesn’t support your camera you can do a crash record. Place your camera in VTR mode and select DV25 from the Digital Cut menu. Choose ignore time as well. When you hit the record button your camera should record your sequence from in to out.
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There are people successfully using AMD with Avid editors, however Avid lists Intel as the supported configuration. Unless you’re just “hobbying” around or you truly like computer tweaking, you’re better off sticking with Avid recommendations. Do some searching on the Avid forums to see what works and what doesn’t.
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Cybele, I noticed this about the Avid when I first began using it too. This differs from other NLEs I’ve used. I’m not an audio engineer but I think it’s basically to do with the fact that Avid’s “0” reference is (typically) -20 on the digital scale. With digital audio, your output can be clean (undistorted) right up to the “0” level. If you’ve ever ripped a CD track into an audio program that displays waveforms you know what I mean. For years it was common practice for analog audio guys to push the signal to that point. This used the headroom of the recording medium and minimized “tape hiss”. Zero in the analog world was pretty well understood and duplicatable. Zero in the digital world is less agreed upon, hence the confusion over playback levels. It even plagues the broadcast world.
Basically, for audio playback or multimedia (web files, WMVs, movs, etc.), you’ll need to increase the level until you’re approaching the 0 on the digital (left side) audio scale in the Avid. I suggest duplicating your sequence and working from the copy. You can try a combination of compression (to tame peaks and bring up overall level) and normalize (to boost loudness). Or, you can export a wav or aiff like I often do and sweeten audio in a third-party program like Audition or Sonar. Sorry to ramble on, hope this helps and maybe someone else can polish up my layman’s explanation 🙂
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Exporting a reference mov with mixed down audio doesn’t erase or destroy your original tracks: it creates a new aiff or wav file of the audio. Once you import the sweetened audio back in, you can simply place it on another set of tracks until you’re satisfied with it. Even if you overwrote your original audio in the sequence, you could still get back to it by matchframing the video clip you’re working with.
If you’re asking for a way to preserve the original mix of audio in layers so that you can sweeten the entire mix in your audio program, you can create an OMF file of your audio track. Upon import, your audio program should separate it into layers with each clip having the same name as in the Avid. Audition 1.5 doesn’t read OMF files, but I think 2.0 does. Recent versions of Cakewalk Sonar (I have 4.0) do read OMF files. I’ve tried this with a short film of mine and it was amazing to see all my VO, music, and SFX audio layers intact 🙂
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Carlos, individual workflow and personal preference will dictate the best way to handle Avid audio externally. I do corporate, broadcast, and web video work, and sweeten my audio in Audition. In preferences, if you tell the QT reference to “mixdown audio tracks”, you will get a separate aiff or wave (your choice) file when you export your ref mov. I then open the audio file in Audition, sweeten it, and import it into my project. This works great for me. I follow same flow when I burn DVDs.
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A quick question I’m sure you may know the answer to. Is the educational version of Xpress Pro upgradeable to the new Xpress Pro?
Glad to see you back BTW 🙂
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Avid offers the same support for Xpress Pro that it offers for Adrenaline and higher systems. It’s called Avid Assurance and costs $495/year. It’s kind of odd you were told they don’t support this product. While not technically considered “corporate level” or whatever their buzz phrase is, Xpress Pro is not the ugly stepchild some make it out to be. It’s a perfectly capable online editor and the backbone of many smaller pro operations.
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Not assuming you have After Effects, but if you do, this is a prime candidate for completing there. Import a reference movie and cut away. I’m hardly an expert, but I’ve found this kind of work terribly frustrating with Avid’s FX workflow. Even if it is possible, Animatte’s shape tools are clumsy and imprecise (my opinion).
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Things to check:
1-Verify you’re using an Avid recommended video card, or at least something in the Quadro family.
2-Verify display settings to ensure they match Avid recommendations listed in the Readme accompanying every software version.
3-Make sure “full screen” video is disabled for both video cards. This setting is in the advanced section of display settings.
4-Make sure all Power and monitor settings dealing with “sleep”, “hibernate”, or “standby” are disabled. If your monitors are disobeying orders not to go to sleep you have bigger issues.
5-If possible, borrow a “known good” pair of monitors to swap for yours. Also you might try your monitors on another computer.
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I’m not familiar with the NewsCutter machines. I have Xpress Pro at home (no Mojo so no 1:1 either) and I use DVCPro 50 for titles.