Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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I’d use an external drive. And thanks for posting that it was a read/write permissions error–if anyone turns up this thread in the future with the same problem they’ll have the answer! Glad you got it sorted out.
Michael
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Well, you shouldn’t use your system drive as your media drive. Avid defaults to filtering out the system drive for this reason. If you go to your Media Creation settings you have to uncheck “Filter System Drive” in order for Avid to see your system drive. Check that and see if Avid will let you use it for a media drive.
Or it’s because you upgraded to Snow Leopard, which is an unapproved OS and may have broken something.
Let us know if this works.
Michael
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Are you on a PC or Mac?
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You’re welcome, and glad that worked.
Your 2.7 projects should have carried up without issue, but something obviously got messed up. Thankfully Avid’s project creation makes every bin a seperate file so you can recover the import stuff if the project settings get corrupted.
Michael
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Try making a new project with the same name as the old one and copy the bins into it at the finder level.
Michael
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If there’s no audio and you choose to Ignore Alpha, it should import it just fine. If there’s video and audio and alpha it needs to know what you want to do–make it an A/V clip, or import with Alpha (losing audio).
You shouldn’t lose any quality because it was rendered to Millions+. The alpha is basically full screen so it’s not actually trying to cut out any portions of your image. You may have gotten smaller files if they didn’t render with an alpha, but otherwise the quality should be the same. I wouldn’t bother with re-encoding them. I’d just import and hang out by the desk to hit A/V on clips that need it.
Of course you could always open the files in Quicktime, strip the audio, resave them, import the new files (sans audio) with Ignore Alpha checked, import the audio separately, then resync in Avid, but that’s a lot of extra work.
Good luck with it. It’s always a pain when you get some footage that’s been messed with and messed up.
Michael
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If you open the file in Quicktime and hit Cmd+I (Mac) or Ctrl+I (PC) it will open the Movie Inspector. Check under the Format section–if it says Millions+ it thinks it has an alpha. If it just says Millions–it doesn’t.
Michael
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I’ll answer as best I can, based on what I’ve picked up on the Avid L2 and Avid forums. I’m not a beta tester so I don’t have first hand knowledge.
[Shane Ross] ” When you mix frame rates…which frame rate is the dominant one?”
I believe it’s your project’s frame rate. If you’re in a 29.97 project and play a 23.98 clip it conforms 23.98 to 29.97.
[Shane Ross] “Does it do it WELL? FCP does this, but not well. “
Word on the street is yes. Considering Avid’s standing with the film world, if they screwed that up they’d never hear the end of it.
[Shane Ross] “And “Full quality.” Which quality are we talking? Does each clip play back at the full quality of it’s settings, so DVCPRO HD 720 at DVCPRO HD 720, then DV at DV, then XDCAM 1080 at XDCAM 1080? Or if you have an HD sequence, does the DV get upconverted to HD? “
I picked up the “full quality, realtime” from an Avid employee on the Avid forum. I interpret it as–you can mix frame rates and play to tape. No transcoding required, no rendering. I reserve the right to be completely wrong about that, though.
Avid is definitely giving its users a lot of bang for their buck this year, rolling out updates faster and faster. I just hope the momentum continues well into the future.
Michael
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[David Roth Weiss] “Michael,
Keep in mind that Ron can offer a certifiable and quantifiable audience to the potential new customers that he cold calls. We can’t do that in the video business.”
I actually never considered that Ron could use the COW as a quantifiable audience. This is a niche website (although that niche is obviously growing). If he’s cold calling a corporation that makes wood flooring, they don’t care about the COW. They care about selling their flooring, and that’s where the importance of focusing on the message and not the medium comes into play.
What I liked most about Ron’s post was that this is a communication business, whether you’re doing video, print, web, podcasting, etc… It’s all about the message, and that message either works or it doesn’t. Now if he was doing a project for AJA or Apple or Avid or Adobe, the COW would be a huge asset to point to and say, “I have X number of people who use your products and go to my site. I can deliver them to you”. But outside of video/audio/graphic production the COW probably doesn’t apply when cold calling.
As far as offering a quantifiable audience–I work for an ad agency with in-house production, not a production only house, so we can offer an audience that’s quantifiable. We can target via print, broadcast, cable systems, satellite, web, etc… But if we don’t deliver the right message the audience won’t buy. That’s something we consider when we cold call–where are they advertising now, and are there better ways to spend their money to increase when their ads are seen, who sees them, and how often.
If the client is buying directly from the media outlets it gives us a huge leg up on a cold call as we can make their jobs easier. Instead of the marketing person dealing with multiple reps and having to determine where to buy and when, they give us a budget and tell us to maximize it. We do the legwork, negotiate often lower rates than they could get on their own, and if they have a problem with media they contact us and we take care of it. That alone can get our foot in the door and land a face to face meeting. That said, I despise cold calling. All the respect in the world to those who do it and do it well.
Michael
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[Ron Lindeboom] “The important thing that I remember is that I am in the Communication business, not the video business. Video is just ONE of the things that I do. My real business is to be a communicator and that may sometimes be best served by the web, by print, by video — or maybe a combination of two or more of them. My goal is to serve the need of the client and in doing so, collect a check. My goal is not to sell video.”
This is the best advice I’ve ever read on the Cow, and I’ve read a ton of great advice.
Clients never need just “a video”. They need a way to communicate their message. Now if a video is the best way to do that than it’s the route you take, but producing a video for the sake of producing a video to get a paycheck will end up being the last video you make for someone. If it doesn’t effectively communicate a message that drives predetermined results (direct sales, name recognition, sales leads, etc…), it’s just wasted dollars.
I think too many times we get caught up in the hype of new gear, awesome effects, and crazy flashy flying graphics and forget that it all means nothing if it doesn’t tell your message effectively.
The best spots I’ve ever done consisted of 1 graphic that fades on at the end and straight cuts throughout. Usually no more than 3 or 4 cuts in a full 30 second spot, but the message is crystal clear and effective. Sales for the client are through the roof. They’re not the most glamorous spots we’ve done and definitely not the most difficult to produce but they work. And that’s all that matters in the end.
Michael.
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