Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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Easiest way? Don’t use Avid, or cut with Avid and make marks of where you need to punch in then take an exported Quicktime (or do this on a shot by shot basis) into a program like After Effects or Premiere and scale the shots in there.
Avid isn’t resolution independent, so if you shoot 1080 and edit in a 720 project all of your footage is scaled to 720. Scaling up to punch in a shot, therefore, results in resolution loss. It’s my biggest complaint about Avid. It needs to be resolution independent, or there needs to be a fast and easy way to reference the source file’s resolution for reframing without resolution loss.
One workflow I haven’t tried yet but am thinking about it cutting in Avid, sending to Resolve and resizing in there, then rendering out new .mxf media with an AAF. Maybe that will work – haven’t had a chance to test it yet.
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Michael Hancock
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Use Adobe Media Encoder, make a custom Quicktime setting, 1920×1080, square aspect ratio, 29.97, lower field first. Select Avid DNxHD for the codec and click Codec Settings. Choose the flavor of DNxHD you want (you’ll want the DNxHD 1080i/59.94), set the color levels (709 or RGB), then compress.
Are you sure they want lower field first though, if you’re delivering 1080i? I thought all 1080i footage was upper field first and only SD was lower field first (in NTSC).
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Michael Hancock
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If these are files from a 7D then they’re .h264. That’s a terrible codec to edit with and Avid doesn’t do well with it. Select your master clips in your bin and transcode them to the DNxHD flavor of your choice. If you need to, relink your sequence to the transcoded clips. Then it should be smooth as butter. Or just render your timeline, but you’d do better to transcode. AMA kind of sucks to edit with, and .h264 is even worse.
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Michael Hancock
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If you actually imported the original file (File–>Import) then just select the DNxHD115 master clip in your bin and batch import it (right click–>Batch Import). It will ask “Offline Only” or “All Clips”. Choose “All Clips”. A box pops up. Set the resolution to DNxHD175x, pick a drive for the media, then click “Override clip settings with current settings”. Click “Current Settings…” and make sure the import settings are correct (color, etc..). Hit Ok then Import. It will reimport the file and your sequence will automatically update.
Another option is to select the DNxHD115 master clip, hit delete, choose to keep master clip but delete media. This throws the media offline, Then batch import it. This gets rid of the DNxHD115 media so you aren’t taking up double the drive space. I’d do this option.
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Michael Hancock
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Not sure what’s happening, but try rendering out of After Effects as DNxHD-220 with alpha and import it again. Might be something weird happening with the Animation codec.
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Michael Hancock
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[Thomas Morter-Laing] “So my question is, is there a way to use Avdi in a similar manner to FCP7 regarding external footage, ie without having to transcode it to AVID’s native format every time I want to edit something?”
AMA – Avid Media Access. Avid marketing says you can use it to work just like you did with FCP (it accesses the footage directly where it lies, without converting it to Avid’s native .mxf format), but it’s not the most reliable. For P2 footage and XDCam I’ve worked entire projects with AMA and had no issues. For stuff like Quicktime files (from the Alexa, for example), Red footage, .h264 from DSLR, etc…I recommend you AMA the footage in, sort it and pull the selects you need then consolidate/transcode. Avid is much happier this way and working with the software is a much more pleasurable experience (faster response, no losing links to media, etc…). You’ll need to install the AMA plugins though. I believe you can go to Help –>AMA Plugins within Avid and it will take you to the download page. Might be under a different menu heading – not in front of a system right now.
[Thomas Morter-Laing] “However the RAID is not big enough to store AVID projects, with all of the media in them- which from the tutorials Ive seen is how AVID stores/organises for you. “
You can definitely store your projects on your RAID and your media on external drives. When you start a new Avid project, click External in the project window, then click the Folder icon across the top. Navigate to the RAID and pick where to save the Avid project. When you’re importing/transcoding footage just be sure to check your external drive to put the media on. It will be put in a numbered folder within this folder structure:
Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1/[footage]
All Avid media goes in a numbered folder in that structure, and always at the root of the drive. You can also hit Cmd+5 (Mac) or Ctrl+5 (PC) and set your media creation settings to always go to the external drive so you don’t accidentally put media on your central RAID.
That said, if you do end up putting media on the RAID just open the Avid MediaFiles/MXF/[numbered folder] and copy the media in it to your Avid MediaFiles/MXF/[numbered folder] on your external. Plug the external into your system, Avid scans and relinks and you go back to work.
Hope this helps. Let us know if you have more questions.
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Michael Hancock
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[Joseph Owens] “All you Final Cut people? Tell us your key numbers and we’ll hook you up with MC or Symphony for just under a thou’. But… then… point upgrades cost, and if you skip one? Then a full upgrade… which would be? Thousands.”
Not really. 6.0 was a major release. 6.5 is a major release. 7 will be a major release. These are all paid upgrades. Anything between a .0 and .5 release is free, and if you don’t upgrade Avid still typically patches previous releases (so even though 6.5 is out they’ll probably still patch some stuff in 6.0.x).
Also, the major point of contention with most Avid editors is that upgrading from 6 – 6.5 is $500, while it’s only $100 more if you’re pre-6.x. So if you’re on Media Composer or Symphony version 4, 4.5, 5, or 5.5 for example, you pay only $100 more than me, and I’m on version 6.
But that’s also kind of par for the course with Avid – upgrades are either priced way too high (compared to their competitors) or are surprisingly low for Avid (I believe there have been $195 upgrades in the past – might have been $295, though).
[Joseph Owens] “They still haven’t fixed enough to prompt me to do a full change over. No VANC-out from third-party (ie. Closed Captions to tape)? Maybe they will say that “nobody does that anymore”, and that would be ‘unfortunate’.”
I guess it’s one way to continue to sell their hardware.
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Michael Hancock
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I’m curious too why Avid is immediately out. It’s the cheapest of the three for institutions ($295/license), and students get it for $295 with 4 years of free upgrades, making it the cheapest there by a long shot.
However, if Avid is completely off the table I’d lean toward CS6 for the same reasons Chris said – the entire suite of applications is an incredible value. Plus, if the students learn to edit with Premiere they can transition very quickly and easily to FCP7 or Avid is a future job requires it. FCPX is such a different beast that I feel they will be at a disadvantage unless your market is all going FCPX. I’m not seeing that where I’m at or where my friends are at though – your area might be different.
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Michael Hancock
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May not be an official IBC announcement but Avid announced Media Composer 6.5 and Symphony 6.5 upgrades today. Got a marketing email from Blackmagic this morning on their announcements – do they ever sleep? They’re cranking stuff out like crazy!
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Michael Hancock
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It’s not approved, so who knows. I wouldn’t upgrade. Is there something specific in Lion you need?
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Michael Hancock
Editor