[Erik Pontius]

Correct….it would only work with full length imported up rezzed clips…otherwise it’s going to lose track of where various pieces are and break the link between the clips in the sequence.
However, clips that you didn’t use at all wouldn’t need to be recreated.
Perhaps, you should be looking at a few terabytes of storage.
I’ve had a lot of luck creating 1920×1080 comps in AE, and exporting renders using the Avid DNxHD 145 codec, which imports rather quickly into Avid and looks great..creates smaller files than uncompressed as well.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

You could theoretically build your comps in AE the way you want them, then export a low resize format. Import them into Avid, at a low rez, cut everything up, then re-export the comps at full rez from AE, then delete just the media from your old imported clips keeping the master clips and offlining the media in your sequences. Then select all your master clips in the bin, choose “batch import” and re-import your new high rez clips at high rez…this will then replace the edited clips in your sequence with the new hi-rez stuff.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

I usually use After Effects for these kinds of things since I seem to have more control over what’s happening and it seems to me to do a better job. You can very easily do what you want there. Import the jpegs as a image sequence, drop it into a 1920×1080 comp and position your image sequence to suit.
Yes. Express Pro has the “pan & zoom” effect. I think its behavior will depend on how you imported your images…You can import your images into the “pan & zoom” and use the image resolution…then manipulate it to get what you want…

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Trapcode Sound Keys perhaps linked to expressions for blur, position wiggle…

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

You might be missing something. HDV and HD use a 16×9 aspect ratio. Your graphics are are 4×3. When importing graphics, you have a choice as to what you want Avid to do with items that are not the same aspect/size as your project…leave it as is, squeeze/stretch, maintain aspect, etc…
Since the aspect ratio of the graphics doesn’t match the aspect of the project, Avid is a stretching the image or adding black bars to make it so.
You could either recreate your graphics to 16×9 square pixels (ie 1920×1080), use Avid’s “pan and scan” effect to crop a portion of your image out or use After Effects to do something similar and export a Quicktime file to import into Avid.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Check the version of media player on the systems that are showing the interesting colors….you’ll most likely find that they are running an older version. Your WMV files were most likely encoded using newer codecs which require the latest version to playback properly. The latest version available from MS is Media Player 11.
Probably the only way to guarantee playback is to use the age old Windows Media Video 8 codec…which is pretty mediocre quality compared to WM9. With Media Player being a free download, you might just include a note that your videos might require the latest version.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

there is are buttons that looks like an up and down arrows or triangles that will allow you to “step in” and “step out” of a clip. In order to put two effects on you have to step in to the clip and add another effect..then step out to get back to your timeline. Not the most intuitive thing….

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

If you are going to edit native HDV, I would suggest saving, and saving often. Since HDV is “long GOP” there is a lot of extra processing overhead that Avid has to handle as it goes through the mpeg2 information trying to reassemble frames….so Avid has a tendency to get a little hung up in my experience or odd things like the source/record monitor’s not playing and other quirks.
Also, if you are working with HDV, all of your effects, transitions, imports, etc… while in an HDV project, will be created at DNxHD 145…just how it works.
The other hitch with working with HDV, is that you will need to create a MPEG2 “transport stream” or M2t file if you plan on exporting it back to HDV tape or converting it to DVD. I’d suggest once you get your edit locked down to transcode a duplicate of the sequence to DNxHD 145 as it will be easier to export to a file which can be imported to a Adrenaline or such to be sent to HDcam tape, etc…

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Ben answered that question a couple of threads down in the “best quality DVD compression” thread.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

since you’re limited to Xpress Pro…you’re really limited as to what you can do. Start experimenting layering footage and effects together until you end up with something interesting.
You can put a 3d picture in picture effect on a clip, then use the effects controls to crop, resize, move the clip. Add another effect or layer on more video until you get something you like.
Save your pennies to buy some real stuff to enable you to do better effects.

Erik