Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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20:1 isn’t supported on Xpress Pro, and if Xpress Pro can’t see the resolution it can’t transcode it to something it can see. I understand limiting the resolutions to drive people to buy Media Composer, but I really wish Xpress Pro could transcode unsupport resolutions to something it can support. The code is the same–Avid needs to include the other resolutions but lock them from playback until transcoded.
Your solution? Take it back to the other system and transcode it to an Xpress Pro friendly format. It’s the only way, short of deleting the media and recapturing.
Wish I had better news.
Michael.
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You should be fine with dual 2.33 GHz processors, but like Bouke said your performance may suffer some if you’re doing HD. Otherwise, it should run fine.
SO why go with 2.66GHz? NLE software is only going to become more and more demanding on the processors and GPU. Get the best you can possibly afford so you can run the system longer before you have buy another one.
My opinion.
Michael.
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If you’re seeing a color shift between stopped footage and playback you need to adjust your overlay settings for your graphics card. Check the readme for your version of Avid on what to set the overlay to. You may also be using the wrong driver–check the Readme again to ensure you’re using the right driver.
Regarding quality–this is normal. When you stop playing your footage you’re seeing only 1 field, not a full frame. You are essentially seeing half resolution. That’s why titles look terrible when the playhead is parked and look great when you hit play. It’s normal.
Michael.
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For the original poster, I would charge hourly, give them an estimate of how many hours you expect it to take, and charge a fair rate for your work. Only you can figure that rate out, but if it helps–for straight graphics work we charge between $60-$80 bucks and hour. $60 for print, $80 for motion graphics, and we bill hourly for everything we do.
[Gary Chvatal] “If you are still learning it’s not fair to charge them for learning on the job…”
I think you have a fair point here–if you’ve only used After Effects a few times and you take a job that requires extensive use of it, you’d be ripping the client off to charge them while you learn what track mattes are. But you’d also be likely lying to the client by saying you can do the job (if it’s way over your head). This poster said he/she’s done graphics for 8-10 minutes videos, so I read that as having a real working knowledge of the program.
On the other hand, I’m constantly trying new things and trying new things in all the programs I learn. Everyone sh ould. Of course, this increases the number of hours I put into a job, so I take that into consideration when I bill a client.
For example, lets say I spend three hours learning basic expressions because I need to use them in a project. Once I learn them, I know in the future it should have taken about a 1/2 hour to set them up for the entire project. What do I bill the client? All 3 hours? No, I bill the 1/2 hour it should have taken me if I already knew how to do it (and I do now, because I learned on the job). I don’t expect them to pay for the full 3 hours because I was reading help files and searching for and watching tutorials on the COW. I could have done it with keyframes but I knew it would be faster to use expressions and I knew I need to learn them. For this project, of course, it was slower because I had to learn them, but the client doesn’t pay for the that and now I can use it in the future.
As long as you’re honest with the client and you bill a fair rate you should always be trying to learn on the job. You spend 40+ hours a week there–who wants to spend that many hours at home in the off hours improving their skillset? Learn on the job and everyone wins–the client gets a better product and you increase your knowledge!
My 2 cents, for what they’re worth.
Michael.
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[Phillip Byrd] “the kid wants to buy an academic copy of Media Composer which he’s learning at school.”
Then you have nothing to worry about–Media Composer Academic isn’t available to students–only the school can purchase it for instructional use in the classroom. Students are only eligable to buy Xpress Pro at an Academic discount, so unless the kid wants to spend $5K I’d suggest they just get Xpress Pro.
However, when your kid graduates, they can upgrade their Xpress Pro to Media Composer. Avid was actually running a deal where they could upgrade their Xpress Pro Academic license to Media Composer Commercial License for about $1,000 upon graduation. That deal may still be available when the kid is done with school.
Michael.
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No, there’s no expand tool. To undo a collapse just step into it, mark all the clips and select all the tracks, then hit Alt+C or Option+C to copy everything to your source monitor. Step out of the collapsed tracks and recut your source monitor back in where the submaster effect is.
A lot of people have posted requests on the Avid Feature Request forum for an Expand or Uncollapse effect, but if there was one you would run into issues where an uncollapse would overwrite titles/video you’d placed over a collapsed stack, or you’d hit the track limit (24–techinically unlimited, though, because of the collapse feature, but 24 uncollapsed is the limit) and some of your stuff would be lost. It would be too complicated, in my opinion, to figure out how you wanted it to function. Much easier to just step in, copy to source or clipboard monitor, step out and cut.
Glad that helped, too. I’m a big fan of collapse–the last Avid I worked on was an Xpress Meridien where I was limited to 8 tracks at a time! Needless to say, I collapsed a lot.
One last thing–if you have a stack of clips and you want to dissolve from all of them to another shot, collapse them first then dissolve. It will give you a clean dissolve (and it’s easier) than adding a dissolve to every track. Add a dissolve to every track and the layers start showing through themselves and you get nasty ghosting.
Michael
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Avid can’t export with an alpha channel (unfortunately).
Your best bet would be to select your video tracks with your PIP effects, mark your In and Out, then Collapse them. This will drop them into one layer with a submaster effect and free up additional video tracks.
To make additional changes/tweaks to your collapsed tracks just step into the effect or go into segment mode (Red arrow) and double click the submaster effect. This will expand them in the timeline so you can make adjustments and still see your background (if you step in you won’t see tracks below the submaster).
Michael.
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It could be that the logos belong to two companies in such different industries that a reasonable person would not confuse the two.
You said the black and white logo belows to a company that makes sailing gear? That’s an industry far removed from Target, which is basically a superstore for household goods, groceries, electronics, and other personal, lower cost consumable items–hardly sailing gear.
There was a case where a sex store called Victor’s Secret was sued by Victoria’s Secret. Victoria’s Secret lost because they couldn’t prove that by keeping the name Victor’s Secret (which changed its name to Victor’s Little Secret to settle the case before court) it would cause Victoria’s Secret economic harm. Reasonable people wouldn’t confuse the two companies. Here’s some more details on that case:
https://www.out-law.com/page-3369
May be the same thing in this case. Such different companies that it wouldn’t confuse a person enough to hurt Target’s image or “sails”.Michael.
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The blacks probably don’t match because the default black in the Avid background is video safe–blacks at 16.
You could use your color picker to select the blacks in the background so they do match, or eyeball it. Unfortunately I don’t think Avid lets you input actual color values in the Picture in Picture tool (for example, Reds at 16, Greens at 16, Blues at 16).
Regarding the thin line to the left–you could try a small crop left–4 or 5 value, maybe. I think the border goes on after the crop, so maybe this will fix that issue.
Michael.
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I’m not sure it’s a great idea. Although they both install into seperate folders (Xpress Pro folder versus Media Composer), there might be conflicts elsewhere where they try to install registry settings or something similar in the same locations.
You could great a dual boot system to be completely safe.
Otherwise, I have to know why you’d want to do this? Media Composer does everything Xpress Pro does and then some. Having Xpress Pro on your Media Composer machine would simply limit what you could do when you opened that project–it would gain nothing.
Michael.