Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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Avid’s networked storage (Unity and the like) can be very expensive.
If you can’t afford to go this route, consider capturing at one station (the teacher’s) directly to an external firewire drive (how well this works will depend on what resolution you’re capturing at–1:1 won’t capture directly to a firewire drive, DV25 will). If you’re capturing at a low enough resolution that you can go straight to the drive, you can then copy the project folder to this drive, take it to the first system, plug it in, consolidate clips to that system or copy them from the desktop level. Repeat. If you’re capturing at a higher resolution, capture first, then consolidate to the external drive. Transfer that drive to another system, consolidate the clips from the external to the local media drives (copy the project file too). Repeat on the next system, etc…
Transferring files this way will likely be faster than over a network. Plus, once you transfer the files to one system, you can have that system send them over the network to the next one as the drive moves to another. As soon as one system has all the files, it copies them to another while the drive continues to make the rounds. In theory, you could have multiple computers using the network to transfer files to edit stations while another student/teacher uses the external drive to copy them to other edit stations.
Off the top of my head, that’s the best I can come up with.
Michael.
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You’ve found one big drawback in Avid–you can’t export anything with an alpha channel. You have to export the matte and fill seperately.
Since you’ve already keyed this in Avid:
First, export the keyed video in your sequence in whatever format you want it. You can do a targa or png sequence, a self contained quicktime, a quicktime reference (if you’re compositing on the same computer as your Avid), avi, whatever works for you. This is the Fill.
Depending on the keyer you use, there will be a button somewhere that lets you Show Matte. In some keyers it’s a button you turn on, in others it’s a menu item. When you turn this on it will give you the black and white image of your key–the Matte. Turn this on for all of the keyed clips in your sequence and export these.
You now have the Fill and Matte as seperate clips, outside the Avid. Take them into your favorite compositing program and use your Matte exports as a Luma Matte for the Fill. You should be good to go!
Let us know if you get stuck somewhere.
Michael.
PS. The link you provided above covers which codecs support Alpha channels when exporting from a program into Avid–say exporting from After Effects to take the files to Avid. Unfortunately, as I said above, Avid doesn’t export Alpha channels at all, even in their own codecs.
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Contact your reseller before you open the box. There was an additional upgrade cost from 5.5.x or 5.6.x to 5.7–if you paid for the full upgrade to 5.7 you deserve to get that upgrade. No reason to pay more because they screwed up.
If they can’t guarantee the upgrade you got is for 5.7, you can probably take your dongle and your upgrade back to your reseller. Explain that you bought the full upgrade to 5.7 and the box doesn’t specify that it’s for 5.7. Have them open it, pop your dongle into one of their demo machines, and run the dongle updater. If it only goes to 5.5 or 5.6 they owe you another upgrade. If it goes to 5.7–take the box and your dongle, thanks them for their time and patience and head home!
Michael.
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The Timecode plugin isn’t realtime, so you have to render. If you haven’t rendered, when you play your video it will disappear, then reappear when you pause/stop it.
Select the track your timecode is on, right click and select Render. When it’s done, play it again. It should be onscreen now.
Michael.
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If I recall correctly (and I haven’t tried this on MC 2.7, so it might indeed be broken), but you have to unlink your clips before you can modify timecode. It will go through all the steps, give you all the warnings, but unless you’ve unlinked the clip it won’t affect it. I could be wrong, but that’s how I’m remembering right now.
Michael.
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Yeah, $50 is the cheapest upgrade I’ve seen on an NLE. I’d go for it–if anything, you get a new Audio plugin. Pretend like you paid $50 for that and got the upgrade for free!
Glad I could help. Let us know if you have more questions.
Michael.
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RHewitt is dead on with the graphics card–buy the best approved card you can. Your system will thank you for it, and the likelihood of your system being outdated in the next release won’t be so great.
Regarding sound cards–the Audigy 2 works, and it’s cheap. The ironic thing about Avid–they don’t have a list of qualified sound cards like they do with the graphics cards. Unless you find out from your reseller or on a forum like this, you don’t know what to get. Huge oversight on Avid’s part.
Regarding AMD processors. The only system they’re approved for is the Symphony, maybe the DS. From Media Composer on down the only approved processors are from Intel. Some have had success with their AMDs, many do not. What works for you now might not work after the next upgrade, so beware of that. Running an unapproved system can lock you to certain versions of the software.
Michael.
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The whole thing feels faster, as far as I know we’ve had no crashes or Access Violation errors (unlike the last version).
Scrolling timeline can be nice. When you have longer projects it’s great to hit play and not have to worry about zooming out so you can see what cuts are coming.
On version 5.6.x it took forever for the media tool to load. Doesn’t anymore. Scanning the databases? Doesn’t take nearly as long and isn’t needed as often.
Overall, it just feels more solid.
In case you’re wondering why we upgraded–we have an Assurance contract. After a few weeks, if there hasn’t been an uproar on the Avid forums, we upgrade because we can and because it’s “free”. The money’s already been paid–we might as well get something for it.
Another reason we upgraded–we have one P2 camera with (hopefully/supposedly) many, many more to come. The newest release allows you to write back to the P2 cards. This helps us because our news editors use Edius Broadcast which plays very nice with P2’s MXF. I’m thinking we might soon be able to take files from Avid to Edius without the constant transcoding–just load it, edit, load it back on the P2 and take it downstairs. Haven’t tried it, might not work, but I think it will. That will be nice if it does.
Note, version 5.7 defaults every project to MXF media, so if you still use OMF like we do you’ll want to change it back to OMF and make this a site setting.
If you can afford it, go ahead and buy the upgrade, clone your hard drive, install it. If you don’t like it, roll back to the last version you liked. Then, when the next release comes out, if it fixes problems you were having you can update again and be on the newest version. It will only get more expensive to upgrage and future releases come out.
I think most importantly–are there issues with your release that you want fixed? If so, what are they? They might have been fixed, but without knowing the problems–it’s hard to know! 🙂
Michael.
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Here’s a start:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/45/860517?
and
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/45/864038?
If those two posts don’t answer your questions, post back and we’ll go more in depth.
As far as whether this question is too simple for this forum–that’s exactly what this forum is for! No question is too simple or too stupid–if it was, I sure wouldn’t know what I know today, because I’ve asked some really stupid/simple questions. 🙂
Michael
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Edius offers P2 support but I think it’s painful to edit with.
Avid offer P2 support and I prefer it as an editor. With their latest release, Xpress Pro 5.7 or Media Composer 2.7 (now software only–Adrenaline hardware optional), you can read and write to P2 cards.
We only have one P2 camera and I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet so I can’t tell you workflow issues (if any) for either edit system, but one of our guys uses it regularly with Edius and it seems to work well for him. I personally don’t like Edius as an editor, though, so I don’t recommend that route.
Michael.