[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Mark,

I work for ABC News and we try not to focus on a face or the paticular wound, and most times you try to do it from a far, so that it isn’t quite in the foreground. As for a PSA, maybe blur the face or some sort of treatment to tone it down some.

btveditor, out

[John Grote, jr.]

Hey Rob,

You shouldn’t have much of a problem unless you are using Title Tool. It seems to get a little funky going from PC to Mac. I usually have to reformat or tweak the titles.
Just a little heads up.

btveditor, out

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Justin,

In your effects palette you have 2 options, you can go into key and choose animatte to create a garbage matte or you can go into image and choose paint effect. Either one of these can do the trick, it just depends on what you want to do.

btveditor

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Daniel,

A stringout when you take the source material and string it out in a timeline so that the editor can come in and look in a sequence to see what material he/she has to work with. Depending on the project, it could be the dailies strungout or a loose version of a script strungout.

I hope this helps.

btveditor out

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Bill,

The CDs are at what I call “CD level” meaning that they are mixed for listening to and they are extremely hot to bring into AVID. Most times once I bring in the CD tracks I’ll take them down at least -10db or more depending on what I am using the music for. As far as the Pro Tools, is the audio engineer mixing to CD level? If he is then this is what is causing the problem as well.

I would do a couple of tests with the audio engineer and see what he needs to do make it work for the editor.

Thanks,

btveditor

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Andrew,

I freelance at a couple of places in Washington, DC. area and my feeling is that I am a hired gun and you are paying me for my knowledge and expertise. If I start tutoring the hired staff or for that matter another freelancer, than I start taking money out of my pocket. I don’t like haviing money taken from my pocket, especailly when some of the freelancers are clueless and are charging lowball rates for what they are doing, or in some cases what I am fixing because they don’t know. As a freelance editor, I have to know not only AVID, but FCP and a multitude of other ever changing programs and equipment. I do this on my time and my dime to get new tutorials and reading up on new systems and also what is coming out from the various companies. Why should I give someone else that information, especially a staff person who I don’t even know?

That being said, I do and will help out my friends and even some of the assistants who I work with or know. It doesn’t pay to be an ass, if you know what I mean. A strong network of people is your best asset. Be kind and polite to all around you, because this business is a very small community and you never know when you’ll need to call on someone for a favor or need their assistance.

btveditor, out

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Marco,

I agree with Steve, give them the package price. To many times an hourly rate scares clients and even more so if it is broken down to everything you do.

I would make them a fair offer as Steve suggested, but make sure that you will make a couple nickles off of it. I can’t stress that enough, it is one thing to help a new client out, but it is another to give them the farm. Reason being (take it from someone with 20 years experience), once you give them the farm, they’ll expect it everytime.

My feeling is I got in this line of work because I like what I do, but I need to keep a roof over my head and food in my family’s tummys. If clients want it for free go get a college student who is looking to start a reel and prove themselves. Other wise, good talent costs money. Of course there is always exceptions, sometimes probono work for a worthwile cause can be good for the soul.

btveditor, out

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day,

I went with the new Macbook Pro (Intel Chips). It screems.

btveditor, out

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Thomas,

First off let me say that I have never had to do a mixdown of audio in 13 years of working on AVID, not even when I was using optical drives, and I’ve used video mixdown maybe a handful of times and that was in the final online. That being said, if this project was meant to go to online, the editor should have a clean sequence before he/she did the mixdown. In other words, i would have duplicated the sequence and used the duplicate sequence for the mixdown and labeled it as such, with the audio tracks split.

So to answer the second question (remember no mixdown) I would output an audio only edl and bring that into the ds to do the conform or and I’m not sure of this with the DS, but export the audio as an OMF sequence for the DS editor to bring in. This is of course if the DS will allow it to be brought in. If not just reconform the audio edl.

As a side bar, you should never deliver the online with mixdown tracks, because just like your situation someone want to make changes.

btveditor, out

[John Grote, jr.]

Good day Dan,

Well, I’m happy to say that your company made a good choice. I use both AVID & FCP and they have their up & down sides, but I like the AVID for it’s media management far above FCP.

There are a bunch of places around the states that have AVID training, Future Media Concepts is one that comes off the top of my head, but if you do a little research you should have no problem finding a place. Do your homework though, don’t go on blind faith about a training place. Some of these places have people teaching that are certified on the machines, but they are not editors and I have found that it becomes very frustrating as an editor that they can’t offer multiple solutions to a problem.

I wish you luck and much success!

btveditor, out