[David Frisk]

Thanks very much for the reply.

One more quick question. Does that mean that when I’m done with a project and want a master file for it, that I should render out of Premiere uncompressed even if it just started as DV material? Let’s say within Premiere I did some motion effects and color correction (let’s take After Effects out of the equation), the best bet would be to export uncompressed? As you say, exporting back to DV would re-introduce extra compression now that the footage has been altered, but is there maybe a happy medium in another codec that could be used as a master file without the gigantic file sizes that uncompressed gives? (I say “master file” because the place I freelance for never ever masters back to tape, for reasons I won’t get into, but they want to save and keep a file of the finished piece so that they can use it if they have to encode it for the web or whatever else they need). Obviously keeping uncompressed files around of all projects can start to take up a lot of space. So long question short, is there a better codec for this purpose, or is the answer pretty much no?

Now that I think about it, wouldn’t mastering the program back to a MiniDV tape basically do the same thing as rendering out a DV file and reintroduce more compression to my altered and effected footage?

[David Frisk]

Awesome. Thanks very much. I’ll have to download that when I get off work.

[David Frisk]

Who has a free download version to play with? Avid or the class? If it’s Avid, could you provide a link on their website, cause I’d like to get my hands on it if possible.

[David Frisk]

Not to hijack this thread, but I just recently (a few posts down) was asking about whether Avid’s DVDs are worth it. I’m talking about the effects DVDs in particular (not AvidFX, just effects). If you don’t mind, could you take a look at the post and give me any insight on that you may have?

[David Frisk]

Hmm, looks interesting. We don’t have Boris Red at my work, but we do have Boris Continuum Complete. I wonder if the knowledge learned in that course could carry over?

That page you linked me to was pretty interesting though. The “Advanced Media Composer Effects” class caught my eye, but unfortunately they don’t have an Alex class for it, it’s an in-person class only, and Avid’s training locations are severely lacking. I live in Michigan and unfortunately there’s nothing close by.

Not sure what to do yet. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy those DVDs I mentioned. If anyone else has any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

Thanks again Joe for looking this stuff up for me!

[David Frisk]

The examples I’m talking about used to be on the avid website, but it doesn’t look like Avid carries it anymore. You can still see what I’m talking about at student discount stores. Here’s some examples.

https://www.academicsuperstore.com/market/marketdisp.html?PartNo=717748&qk_srch=avid

https://www.campustech.com/c/campust/94021.html?id=oGcoySwU&mv_pc=937

And then they also carry bundles, but again, I’m not sure if they are different than the ones you’d get if you bought the DVDs separately.

The Alex training looks alright, but I guess I’m really looking for more advanced stuff. They just have courses like Introduction to Effects and such. It just seems so hard to find any training, books, DVDs, anything, that teaches advanced avid effects (and we don’t have the studio kit here at work with AvidFX and Avid3D and all that stuff).

Thanks for helping me out. I really appreciate it.

[David Frisk]

Hey Joe,

Thanks for the reply. I’m checking out Alex right now.

As far as the DVDs go, do you know which is the most up to date ones? I’ve found ones with the purple gel X on it for xpress pro, then there’s one with screen shots on the front, and there’s some that come in bundle packs but I’m not sure if the ones that come in bundles like “effects and color correction” give you two separate DVDs, or if they combine them into one and will just give me a stripped down version of effects overview as opposed to me just buying the effects dvd by itself.

Sorry if this is a lot of questions, it’s just that two hundred bucks or three hundred or whatever they run for is kind of a lot of money for me and I just want to be sure about it before I purchase. Have you personally watched any of them, and if so, which ones exactly?

[David Frisk]

I have the same problem on my computer. I’ve tried doing what you’ve suggested, both by picking AE from the open with menu and choosing the executable from “Choose Program”. But after choosing it, the same error message comes up. Weird really.

[David Frisk]

Thank you guys for your thoughts on it. I think I may just end up picking up that book afterall. TonyTony, I was even looking into some of those books before that you named in hopes of getting an overall understanding of design concepts. And as Justin said, I think part of my problem is that I don’t just jump in there and do it. I’m always waiting for a time that I have some perfect thought in my head of what I want to do.

Thanks for all the advice you guys. It’s been most helpful.

[David Frisk]

Thank you guys for your thoughts on it. I think I may just end up picking up that book afterall. TonyTony, I was even looking into some of those books before that you named in hopes of getting an overall understanding of design concepts. And as Justin said, I think part of my problem is that I don’t just jump in there and do it. I’m always waiting for a time that I have some perfect thought in my head of what I want to do.

Thanks for all the advice you guys. It’s been most helpful.