Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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[Daniel Schultz] “I still have a hard time believing there’s not an easy way to get regular ol’ XDCAM footage into Avid without going to a 3rd party situation.”
There is. You AMA link it and either consolidate or transcode. Something is amiss on your system since it’s not working.
When you try to AMA link to the your XDCam footage, what is the entire file path on the drive? Any illegal character in the file path will cause it to error our (so no special characters like !@#$%^&*(/).
Also, when you try to AMA link and it doesn’t work open your console (Ctrl+6 or Cmd+6) and you should see an error that may give you more details. What does that error say?
When you AMA link, don’t rely on “Autodetect” in the settings. It doesn’t work half the time. You need to select the XDCam option – then try to AMA the files in.
XDCam works great with Avid. It’s the gremlin in your system that’s causing issues, but I’m not sure what that gremlin is.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Russian program is MDV. It’s Windows only and I have no idea if it works anymore, but when I used it 4 years ago it was great.
https://community.avid.com/forums/t/7209.aspx
There was Media Copy by Automatic Duck, and was made available for free when they closed shop (the developer went to work for Adobe, I think).
The last option is MediaMover for Avid, by Random Video. I used this about 8 years ago and it did exactly what you’re wanting, but I haven’t used it since. I have no idea if it works with the latest release of Avid, but you could probably email them to find out.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
When you duplicate a clip they are separate master clips. So if you change the name of one clip the duplicate doesn’t change.
With a clone the metadata is linked, so if you change the name of one it changes the name of the clone.
Regarding doing it without a mouse – I don’t think you can. Would be a great feature request though.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Duplicate your sequence. Relink the duplicate sequence to your C300 footage. Transcode the relinked C300 sequence. But 1:1 10-bit is overkill. Isn’t the C300 only an 8-bit camera?
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Nick –
Are you on a Mac or a PC? If I remember right you run Macs, but if you’re on a PC you can use the subst command to make a folder look like a drive. It makes it really fast and easy to keep your media partitioned on a per project basis, and is great for bringing consolidated projects back to life (and for archiving them).
Here’s a forum post I wrote 2 years ago on using subst.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/45/885117
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Tim Wilson] “Needless to say, I haven’t looked at Adobe’s site.”
Unless they changed it recently, you don’t need a credit card to try the trial. You just download the software you want to try, hit “Trial”, and for 30 days you’re good to go. After that, you’re locked out unless you subscribe.
It’s not like Netflix where you basically sign up for their service and they give you 2 weeks for free as a “trial”, and it’s your responsibility to cancel before those two weeks are up. Adobe is 100% free (unless it’s changed recently).
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Bill Davis] “They aren’t as constrained to do things just ONE way because they know it’s going to be a pain to reset if they go astray – so they feel free to experiment more”
Does this actually happen? Are there documented cases where a person has stated, “I’d like to try that idea but I might have to undo it if it doesn’t work so I better not.” You duplicate your sequence, you try the idea. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you go back to the previous version.
I can’t imagine anyone editing professionally that would not explore a viable alternate cut simply because “it’s going to be a pain to reset”. This actually happens?
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Here’s a sneak peak at the 4K stuff in the next version.
https://youtu.be/i6-ZWanQJKg?list=UUVITunXO_-YkVUx-DrshzDg
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Francisco Antunes aka Chicão] “I’m tired of Resizing a transcoded 4K-image with 3D-Warp an tell the director “oh, this blow up here will be correct once we get to Post”. I want to Frame Flex-it in MC, as AVID is advertising.”
I expect the next release of Media Composer to address this. It’ due to be released before the end of the year. It will have support for 4K and a new DNxHR codec (I believe the HR stands for High Resolution) that I’m hoping will allow us to transcode the 4K footage to a low bitrate compression, but at 4K, so we can frameflex off the entire image and not just blow up a 1080p downconvert.
Regarding AMA and editing – listen to Shane. It’s Avid Media Access and should be used to access the media, select the clips you want to transcode, then transcode them. Especially with Red files. They’re terrible via AMA (fighting with some in an edit right now).
PS. We follow the same general workflow you guys do – transcode to DNxHD36, edit, then uprez at the end. I’ve run a couple of projects as all AMA and the lag and instability wasn’t worth the time saved waiting for the transcode. Especially since you can transcode in the background now.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Two other options.
1. Move your playhead to where you want to mark your In point, but before you mark the In point hit T to Mark Clip. This marks an In and Out point at the head and tail of the clip. Now hit I (or E) to mark your In point. You’ve now selected from the In point to the end of the clip. Hit X to extract, removing the marked portion and closing the gap between clips. One you get the hang of this you can execute all these commands in less than a second.
2. My favorite option: Top and Tail. Look them up in the control panel and add them to your keyboard. This does exactly what you want to do, in one keystroke. Move your playhead to where you would mark your In Point and hit Tails and it will extract from your playhead to the end of your clip. If you hit Top it will extract from the playhead to the beginning of the clip.
See point 1 of Scott Simmons post for more about Tops/Tails:
https://provideocoalition.com/ssimmons/story/some_avid_tools_you_might_not_use/
NOTE: Both of these commands behave according to your track selections. So if you’re just wanting to do this to clips on V2, don’t have V1 selected. Mark Clip and Tops/Tails actually look for the nearest common edit point of all selected tracks. So if you have V1 and V2 selected it will look for the nearest point where V1 and V2 have an edit happening at exactly the same time. Play around to get familiar with it and keep an eye on which tracks you have active if it’s not behaving like you expect it to.
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Michael Hancock
Editor