Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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If you want tracks 1, 2, 3, and 4 to all change together, just click the little chain/gang icon in your audio mixer.
If you want to gang 1 and 2 to each other and 3 and 4 to each other, but have 1 and 2 change seperately from 3 and 4, you can’t do it. You have to gang 1 and 2, adjust your audio, ungang them, then gang 3 and 4 and adjust them.
Unfortunately Avid doesn’t allow (as far as I know) for you to great sets of ganged audio that operate seperately. It’s all or nothing.
Mike.
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You should definitely be able to see your footage in Xpress Pro HD–what version are you running?
Another thought about transcoding–are you renting time to capture everything at 1:1 at your online house? If you are, do that then take it home. No reason to pay for the extra time to transcode there. Hook up your drive to your Xpress Pro HD and do your transcode at home, consolidating and transcoding the files off the hard drive to your media drives on your own system. While transcoding doesn’t typically take long, there’s no reason to pay for that time at your online house when you can do it on your own system on your own time.
Also, I’m curious as to why your system doesn’t let you play your 1:1, especially with a mojo. If you want to solve that little problem post exactly what your configuration was, as well as your system specs and the version of Xpress Pro HD you’re running. We’ll try to get you up and running so you can skip the transcode alltogether.
Mike.
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Well, if you want to run Avid buy a certified system, don’t build your own. Especially if you don’t know much about computers. If you insist on building your own, decide what version of Avid you’re going to buy and go to http://www.avid.com and do a search for the system requirements for that particular software. Then build your computer based 100% only on that–don’t go for a “faster” or “better” card that “must work because it’s so much better than the one Avid recommends”. It probably won’t.
Off the top of my head, nVidia FX1400–it’s approved for Xpress Pro and Media Composer. If you’re going with Avid Liquid, I don’t know. Not familiar with it. But we have the FX1400 at work and it’s approved and works.
Break out boxes–only Mojo or Mojo SDI. If you go with Media Composer you can get the Adrenaline box but be prepared to pay a lot of money. Nothing else is approved to work with Avid and, as far as I know, nothing else works. At all. It’s all Avid hardware and software or nothing.
As far as getting a video card that outputs to two monitors and a client monitor–there isn’t one. At least, not that I know of and if there is one it’s not on Avid’s approved list.
Start checking Ebay or HP refurbished for an HP xw8200–it’s a great system, certified (make sure it matches Avid specs exactly), and it’s getting cheaper by the day because they’re out with the 8400 now. If you plan on editing for money and not for fun–BUY CERTIFIED. If you plan on editing for a hobby and not for a job, you can build your own. But your hobby might not be much fun because you’ll probably spend a lot of time troubleshooting.
Just some friendly advice. Avid is incredibly picky about what it wants, but give it what it wants and it can be a workhorse.
Mike.
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You probably could get away with Pan and Scan–I’m not sure if it works in 16:9 mode–but I personally hate it. I’ve never been able to get really nice moves with it and my image often has a bad case of the jitters. If you had the Moving Picture plugin by Stage Tools you’d be all set–it does beautiful moves on high-res pictures and works within the Avid. For the best control, however, and for guaranteed great quality I’d go with After Effects. It’s a bit of pain going between two programs, I know, but exporting a Quicktime Reference won’t take long and rendering in AE–if you’re only doing simple moves on 2D images–will be pretty fast as well.
Plus, rending out of AE in an Avid codec will mean incredibly fast import times. I think the trade off of working in two programs would be worth it given the quality of AE.Best of luck!
Mike.
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Ok, now we’re rockin’. Dealing with such a small amount of footage, import everything into your Xpress Pro system at 1:1. It will take up more space than necessary but you won’t lose quality. Do your edit, export a Qtime Reference to AE, do your stuff in there, and render it out to Meridien 2:1 codec. Better yet, since each piece will be self contained after rendering out of AE, do it to the Meridien Uncompressed so you aren’t compressing the graphics you add in AE. Then you can import your rendered quicktimes into your Media Composer at work or your Xpress Pro with Mojo (whichever you’ll be outputting from) at 1:1 and lay to tape.
Sounds like defintely you know what you’re doing and were on the right track all along. Best of luck and let us know how it turns out!
Mike.
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Xpress Pro does 1:1 (with Mojo–forgot to mention that), DV50, DV25 411 NTSC, 420 PAL, and 15:1s (offline resolution). If you do 1:1 you’ll need a Mojo and a lot of drive space, and fast drives.
Speaking of which, what’s your setup on your Xpress system? What kind of storage, what version, and do you have a Mojo?
If you have the drive space and a Mojo do 1:1. It won’t improve the quality but it don’t hurt it either. And how big of a project are you working on? How many hours of footage?
As far as transferring goes, get an external drive if you don’t already have one, and you could consolidate all of your clips to that, transcode them to DV25 or 15:1s and edit offline on the Xpress system, then transfer the bin with the finished sequence back to the Media Composer on Monday, relink to your 2:1 clips and lay to tape. Or are your media files going to be deleted from the Media Composer? If they aren’t, will you have the option to jump back on to the MC to output from it?
I guess I was a little premature on my advice–I should have gotten a better a feel for what you’re workflow and final delivery is going to be.
I would definitely avoid editing in AE–painful, at best. Give us a better idea of what’s going to happen to your media on the Media Composer, whether you’re going to be able to get back on it Monday with a finished product, and what type of Xpress Pro system you’ll be working on. We’ll find something that works for you.
Mike.
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There’s no reason to export your clips at all, and working on your project in Xpress Pro shouldn’t be a problem. Here’s what you need to do:
Copy all of your media from your MC system to your Xpress Pro system. You can use Media Mover, MediaSift, or MDV. The links to each are here:
MediaSift(FREE)
https://www.senkou.com/MDV(FREE: It’s a Russian site, but the program is supposed to be in English)
https://fiool.nm.ru/progz/Media Mover(NOT FREE but you down download a fully functioning demo)
https://www.randomvideo.com/Product%20Info.htmTransfer your entire project to the OMFI MediaFiles folder of your Xpress Pro’s media drives. Copy the bins from your MC to your Xpress Pro machine. Make a new project by the same name and import the bins (you may be able to transfer the project but will likely run into problems. Transferring the bins won’t give you problems). Delete the database files your OMFI MediaFiles folder of your Xpress Pro system, start the Avid–it will scan the drives and relink everything.
Here’s the bummer–Xpress Pro doesn’t work in 2:1 so you’ll have to transcode all the media once it’s transferred. It isn’t hard to do, just a pain. I’d suggest the DV50 codec (you could do 1:1 but it won’t improve quality…only take up more disk space. DV50 may compress it a little more, so it’s your choice. I think DV50 is more like 3:1, but I’m not sure). Now you can edit.
You may have to recreate any titles rendered at 2:1 (do these at 1:1 for best quality), and batch import any imported graphics, but that can be done easily enough.
Good luck, and post back if you have any questions about the workflow or if you run into issues.
Mike.
P.S. I forgot to answer the screen size issue–you can go into your media settings and change your Xpress Pro from 720×480 to 720×486. I can’t remember exactly what setting it’s under–if you can’t find it let me know and I’ll look it up for you (not in front of the system right now).
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Yes, you can zoom in. When you’re in effect mode, just to the left of the starting keyframe, you’ll see a little bar. Grab it with your mouse and drag it (either to the right or left. Can’t remember at the moment). This will zoom in on your keyframes.
And if you didn’t know, once you select your keyframe(s) you can move them with the trim key shortcuts (m , . / ), as well as holding Alt+dragging them.
Mike.
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PIP works, as does the Resize effect (which I use more often). I’ve personally gotten really good results from the Blowup effect (it’s under Film in your effect palette). The problem with Blowup is that you’re not going to get nearly as much finite control over the amount of resize as you will with something like PIP or Resize. As far as quality differences go, I haven’t tried them both to see if there’s a difference. If I were a betting man, however, I’d go with PIP because Jon Zanone suggests it and he knows his stuff. Ultimately, though, test it yourself and see which one you’re happiest with. Let us know what works for you and if you see any quality difference between effects.
Mike.
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I personally think it’s nice to post back when a question you’ve asked has been solved–if it’s been solved by someone’s suggestions, note which ones worked and if you solved it on your own post what you did. That way anyone else searching for the same problem will have the answer.
There’s no closing of threads–the administrators are the only ones who can do that (as far as I know), and I’ve only seen it happen when there’s a violation of forum rules or when things get out of hand (and that’s rare…very rare. I’ve seen it happen maybe twice in a year). Otherwise, check the rules for more details. And welcome!! Have more questions? Ask!
Mike.