Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
-
If you’re just wanting to take the footage from Avid to After Effects for compositing and keying, and you’re working on all of this on the same machine–capture in Avid, export as a Quicktime Reference file. It will point to the MXF on your media drives but After Effects will read it as though it’s a quicktime. To take it to Illustrator, export from AE to Illustrator and back again.
If you’re exporting from Avid, burning to a Data DVD, an dtaking this to another system for the AE and Illustrator work, you can export standalone quicktime files from Avid. I would do Uncompressed or the Animation codec–3 hours is a lot though. Be prepared to wait awhile for the export, export in chunks, and be ready to burn a boatload of DVDs.
You could also do Targa sequences–they play nice with AE and Illustrator, but it also takes a while to export and will take up a lot of space. Burning them to a DVD would take A LOT of DVDs, and again–you’ll have to break it up into chunks. I suggest sending them to an External Drive and just taking the drive to your AE/Illustrator workstation. For the cost of all of these DVDs, you can get a decent sized External Drive. It will make your life much easier.
Does this help?
Michael.
-
First, we’ll clear up one misconception–consolidating doesn’t get rid of timecode.
If you consolidate a sequence it creates new master clips and media based only on what was used in that sequence–if you capture 10 minutes of footage, use 3 seconds of it in a sequence and consolidate that sequence it creates a new master clip and media file of only those 3 seconds, plus handles. It how you “trim the fat” of unused footage after a sequence is finished and still have some room to tweak.
If you consolidate a clip it creates a new masterclip and a copy of the media. Consolidate a 10 minute clip and Avid creates a duplicate 10 minutes clip with a new master clip pointing to it. Useful when transferring media from one computer to another, but you should have consolidated from the PC to the external drive for this to work. If you can’t see the media on the Mac, you can’t consolidate it.
To fix your problem on the external drive, try this:
Is all of your media in a folder called OMFI MediaFiles and is it in the root of the drive, meaning not in any other folders. For example, if this external drive is drive R:\ on your Mac, it should go R:\OMFI MediaFiles\all of your media. If it’s not, that’s why your Avid isn’t seeing the media. It has to be in that folder, at the root of your drive. Note the spelling, spacing, and capitalization of OMFI MediaFiles too. It any letter or space is wrong, Avid won’t see it.
If your media is already in the right folder, go to your Media Creation settings in Avid and make sure Filter Based on Resolution is not checked. It might not be seeing the drive if this is checked. If this is checked, uncheck it, then go to File–Mount All. This should mount the external drive, then you do a File–Refresh Media Directories and Load Media Database. This should force your Avid to scan all of your drives and rebuild the databases on those that are missing (like the external, possibly).
Hopefully there’s something here that will help.
Michael.
PS. What’s a ProMax Avid? I’ve not heard of it.
-
Given no more information, I say upgrade. 5.7 is more stable and is much, much more responsive.
More importantly, though–what problems are you having now on 5.2? What’s slowing your editors down? We haven’t had problems with 5.7, and I’m not really sure what your reseller is talking about. What problems does your reseller see with 5.7? The general consensus on the Avid forums is that it’s a much better release then 5.5.x and 5.6.x. It definitely has been for us.
Give us some more information on what’s happening on 5.2.4 and we’ll let you know (if we can) if upgrading will fix any of your problems.
Michael
-
I believe you’re mistaking the Pan and Zoom effect with the Pan and Scan.
Pan and Scan is used to reformat 4:3 footage to fit 16:9 and vice versa, I think. I haven’t used it. If you’re blowing up footage, you will lose quality. Unfortunately there’s not CSI “zoom and enhance” feature in the real world.
Pan and Zoom is used for still images. It will allow you to zoom in on an image–say a 2000 x 1500 pixel image–without losing quality until you get to your screen size. Blow it up past that and you’ll your image will suffer. You might not notice it, though, depending on how far you zoom. Zoom a little, you won’t see it. Zoom a lot–say 200%, it will degrade a lot.
Michael.
-
Actually, there is. Open your capture tool, go to Log mode.
Start playing your tape–JKL through it. I for In, O for out, F4. It will put your clip in the bin you chose, activate that bin, and get the clip ready for naming. This is a pain, particularly if you have name your clip while it’s playing. So…under (I think) Capture settings–you can change it to not activate the bin after logging/capture.
If you change that setting it’ll put your logged clip in your bin but keep the focus on your capture window. I log entire tapes without touching the mouse–it’s sped my workflow up exponentially.
Michael.
PS. If I remember right, if you don’t have an In point marked you can hit F4–it will mark an In, then hit F4 again it will mark your out and send your clip to the bin. And let me know if you can’t find the setting to not activate your bin after logging.
-
[justin] “Beacuse of various reasons, I am un able to edit the TC of the clips.”
What are the various reasons you can’t change the TC? Is the Avid not allowing you to? Once you capture a clip, you can change the timecode, but you have to unlink it first, then select the clip–right click, modify, change the offset (it will give you a lot of warnings about how dangerous this is), then relink. It should work.
Michael.
-
[Kevin Hodes] “I may be misunderstanding you but I don’t wish to bring over any media files as my only goal on the other guy’s G5 is to digitize some new footage.
I’m thinking I have to bring over the project file with its bins but no media.”
If you’re just wanting to digitize on the other machine you don’t have to bring anything over. Just start a new project, give it the exact same name as the project on your other system, and start digitizing. Or you can bring just the bins over. If you’re going from one version of Avid to another (say Xpress Pro 4.6 to 5.5) you’ll want to make a new project. Carrying projects across upgrades like that has been known to cause problems–carrying just the bins over doesn’t.
Hope this helps.
Michael.
-
AJA and Blackmagic don’t make I/O boards for Avid because, if they did, Avid couldn’t sell you their hardware.
I guess that kind of makes it proprietary–Avid doesn’t want someone else to cut in on their sales. Kind of like FCP only running on a Mac–make it run on a PC and suddenly Apple loses a huge number of sales on hardware. Doesn’t bode well for any company that makes the hardware and software.
Michael.
-
If you take an Avid project, say from Media Composer 2.7, and you open it on an earlier version–say 2.2–and there are features/effects/etc… available on 2.7 that aren’t on 2.2 they just won’t show up. If there’s an effect you use that’s unique to 2.7 it will still be there if it’s rendered (and you transfer all media and render files), but if you try to change the effect or remove it it will disappear. If you use an effect that’s unique to a higher version but it’s not rendered you’ll see the effect icon but it will be blank.
Otherwise, pretty much everything is backward compatible. We take projects from the newest Xpress Pro and Media Composer and we can open them on our old, hardware based Xpress Meridien without problems. You just have to watch that you’re using resolutions the earlier versions recognize and you aren’t using MXF files (pre-MXF media isn’t recognized).
Otherwise, it isn’t a problem. It’s a huge benefit to Avid–you can keep legacy systems around and still use it them to start projects OR finish them.
Michael.
-
You can store transition effects in a bin called:
Quick Transitions
It must be spelled and spaced exactly like it is above. Put your custom transition templates in there, then go to a cut and hit the Quick Transition button on your keyboard. You know, the one that pulls up Dissolve, Fade to Color, Dip to Color, etc… In that drop down menu you’ll known see all the transitions that are saved in your “Quick Transitions” bin. Just select one, set the time, hit Add and you’re done!
Michael.