[Jeff Kay]

Well call the forum “Boris RED” then. While many never bothered to pick it up and it is no longer being bundled, I’d wager that with AvidFX being included in both 6 and 7, the majority of Avid users have access to it.

[Jeff Kay]

Audition/AE roundtrips:

Back in 5.5 I had nothing but frustrations in [attempts at]going between MC and Audition. Audition imports OMF’s just fine, but I could never get MC->OMF->Audition to work correctly. I skipped CS6, but 5.5 couldn’t import MC AAF’s, so the workaround was MC->AAF->Premiere->Audition and even then I’ve still had more pains with AAF’s from MC than I care to think about. And the return trip is always a track long wav, which can prevent a lot of further editing once its back in MC. That said, for mastering its okay and if you only need to work with individual files (I usually end up with a few clips where the audio needs significant correction), its straightforward and easy as each software works just with media.

Though worth noting, MC has a reasonably robust set of audio tools. Unfortunately they aren’t completely intuitive.

AE can take AAF’s and many have had no issue with it, but I just haven’t been able to get it to work correctly. But MC->Mixdown->quicktime ref->AE works just fine. Going back AE->raw export->import into MC (which transcodes to NDxHD) is also easy (and faster than trying export as anything else from AE). I do a lot more MC-AE work than audition (mostly stabilization).

Avid licences are for either the mac or PC version. You can maintain more than one installed version of MC, but only one can be activated at a time and it can be a pain if you have to regularly deactivate and activate. The dongle is a thing, but Avid has been moving away from it for years and will try everything to keep you from getting one (not just the large additional price tag). But even then I am fairly certain that even with a dongle the licence is for only the mac or only the PC version.

It looks like Avid has discontinued MC7 sales. From resellers MC7 had a pricetag about $300 cheaper than the initial MC8 licence. MC7 also came with AvidFX (also called Boris Red, or Boris FX, it changes its name more often than Prince), which like After Effects is a compositing software. While I’ve found it not as powerful as AE, because it integrates amazingly well with MC (put effect on a clip, clip effect controls open AvidFX, once you are done it goes back to MC and the effect is rendered in MC the same as any other effect, can even create transition effects and change the length of the transitions in MC, or a template of an effect which can just be added and rendered in MC without opening AvidFX) I end up using AvidFX as a middleground when I want more than NLE but not as much as a large elaborate composition. Unfortunately it just isn’t included in any form in MC8.

You should be able to download a trial of MC, so do that. The purchase/support/subscription model of MC8 can get cumbersome with each version having different add-ons of various importance. If you aren’t completely sure what to do, I’d honestly recommend the rental subscription (and I hate the rental/subscription model for MC). The rationale here is that it takes 3 years for the subscription to start costing more than the most base MC licence, so there is much less of a financial commitment as well as the fact that the subscription version of MC has significant add-ons(of note ‘symphony’ has improved color correction options, though MC is no slouch itself, as well as Boris Compendium which are effects for MC that can often save a roundtrip to AE) compared to the base MC licence (getting the equivalent MC licence with all of the add-ons of the subscription version would take over 6 years for purchasing the licence to cost less than just subscribing). In either case if you know you are sticking with MC, switching from subscription to licence is not going to be that much of a hit (as well as I’m convinced that Avid will absolutely have to change their price structure and/or offer other incentives in 3 years).

[Jeff Kay]

There is a whole list of effects under distortion. Some wouldn’t be useful for this, but several of them will distort a layer in a similar manner as pinning, but the distortion is more defined and controlled.

I’m certain pinning would work, but its not something that I end up using particularly often, so I can’t give a lot of good tips. I’m sure there are others that could give a better explanation.

[Jeff Kay]

Subcomp it.

[Jeff Kay]

How about doing sound in Premiere? Or Audition?

Or the video from your render should have no issue, so just resync audio in Premiere?

Or bring the AE project file into Media Encoder, rather than using the render queue? Media Encoder will absolutely handle exporting audio better than AE (because AE really can’t).

Or rather than a transcode, have Media Encoder create a quicktime reference? That should preserve the audio keyframes and have Premiere look back to the original source audio.

Also your render settings in AE can greatly affect final results. Were you rendering raw or were you trying to have AE encode? Also the render queue default settings don’t export audio. If you didn’t change it when you exported, then there is no sound because AE didn’t even make an attempt to export sound.

[Jeff Kay]

Watermarks are not like a layer that can be turned off or deleted. Its like drawing with the paintbrush on a layer. So if the only version you have is watermarked and there is no history you can revert to, then the only way to get rid of it is the same way you’d get rid of the paintbrush drawing: use the clone stamp.

[Jeff Kay]

I am making the assumption that you are in a windows environment.

PS2014 is a separate application than the other version of PS. When you installed PS2014, the installation had windows make the default association of those file types be with PS2014. Since its a separate application it undid the old association with the previous version of PS. When you uninstalled PS2014 the file types of course could no longer be associated with a program that doesn’t exist. There is no saving of previous association, so they became unassociated with any software.

Simplest method. Right click the file you want to open -> choose default program -> select Photoshop make sure the box “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” is checked, and wham bam you’re done. File associations can also be done through the control panel, but I find this method to be faster and easier.

Practically the same method for MacOS https://osxdaily.com/2009/10/25/change-file-associations-in-mac-os-x/

[Jeff Kay]

Sequence nesting should work. Create a sequence of just what you want inside the grey rectangle, complete with the transitions. Then bring that sequence into your main timeline and set the scale/position such that it appropriately fits in your rectangle.

[Jeff Kay]

You could take the original clips offline, then relink them, but point Premiere to the 4-channel media instead. If Premiere doesn’t like have having 4-channel audio in what it thought was a 2-channel track, then you could just match frame and drop the 4-channel audio into an appropriate track.

Shouldn’t have any critical issues, but err with caution and duplicate your project files first.

[Jeff Kay]

First thought is to have a feathered mask parallel with the horizon such that only the top 3/5 or so of the frame actually has the sky replaced. At which point I believe you could create the matte via chroma.

While extremely lacking in fine tuning, I’ve had luck with using a chroma key rather than creating a matte for similar effects. Same process as green screen footage. Its one of those things that you should know very quickly whether or not it can be cleaned up sufficiently to be worth pursuing.

Its a pretty short shot, so you could always rotoscope.