Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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[Simon Ubsdell] “So I would say that conceptually it is identical to what is happening in FCPX, although marginally less obvious.”
Not really, though. In Avid, you can select the gap and move it, but it’s treated as though it’s a clip so new filler is left in its place. The edit system makes no assumptions that you want to close that gap just because you selected and moved the filler that was there. If you want to close the gap, you select and delete or mark the filler and extract it.
FCPX, on the other hand, looks to close the gap when you move the gap clip – it’s assuming that’s what you want to do. In David Lawrence’s case, that’s not what he wanted so the software was wrong and now he has to fix it. If the gap clips were treated consistently with regular clips it would simply replace the gap clip you’re moving with another gap clip. In my opinion, Apple got this behavior wrong.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Avid’s filler is essentially a 100% transparent Gap clip, if you want to call it that. That’s why, when you select clips in Avid that are separated by filler you have to select the filler between them as well to move them up and down a track. It maintains sync, but the filler is the same color as the track so it appears as a blank space.
That said, Avid’s “gap clips”, aka filler, are very elegantly handled. You can add effects to them and they work like adjustment layers. You can trim them to shorten or lengthen them. You can select them and move them up or down or right or left and they will overwrite other clips in overwrite segment mode or push clips if you’re using insert segment mode.
If you use Mark Clip on a section of filler and extract it, Avid will remove the filler and close the gap but only on the selected tracks – it’s not an “entire timeline ripples”. This is both good and bad in that it makes it a little more complicated to move the entire track, but it also gives 100% control to the user, and the behavior is consistent across all modes. Filler is a transparent clip and acts as such. It’s rather brilliant, really.
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Michael Hancock
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That is brilliant. Learned something new today.
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Michael Hancock
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Try calling Avid Sales: https://www.avid.com/US/contact/video
I believe they have volume licensing for academic institutions – I’m guessing they have them for commercial use too.
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Michael Hancock
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Are you getting an error message when you try to start MC, or it just doesn’t do anything? Did you reboot? What are your system specs, and what were you doing when it crashed?
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
With MXF media you don’t import – you need to place them in the Avid MediaFiles/1/ folder (or similar numbered folder), then use the Media Tool to view the masterclips to that media, and copy the masterclips to your bins. Here are the steps, assuming you’re on a PC (if you’re on a Mac, substitute the drive letter with the drive name – everything else is the same):
The MXF media is on a portable drive, let’s call it P:
You want it to be on your media drives – let’s call them M:1. Open M:/Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1 (or any of the numbered folders – you can even make a new numbered folder if you want – say 50).
2. Copy the MXF media from drive P: into the numbered folder on M:. So you may be transferring P:/[MXFMedia] to M:/Avid MediaFiles/MXF/50
3. Start Avid. It will rescan M: and database your new files.
4. Open your project in Avid. Go to your Media Tool and open it. Choose to show Masterclips, select the M: drive, and select the project these MXF files are/were associated with (if they’re coming from another Avid and that project was called MXFProject, select MXFProject). Hit OK.
5. Your media tool will populate with the masterclilps of the MXF media you just transferred. Select these masterclips, drag them into your project bins. Sort as you like.
6. Take a coffee break and reflect on how easy it is to move media with Avid.
Let us know if you hit a roadblock somewhere or these steps aren’t clear.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
You don’t have to delete it, but if you don’t you end up with orphan media that takes up space on your drives, and I’m Avid isn’t the best at clearing orphan media. I prefer to delete it to preserve disk space.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
I don’t think Sorenson works with Max, unfortunately. But it’s a pretty fast encoder and if you have a copy (it does come with Avid) it would be worth testing.
Just export a quicktime reference and drop it into Squeeze, make a new preset or use one that fits the output you need, and start a compression. I believe it tells you how long it took encode when it’s finished, so you can walk away and come back. It probably won’t be as fast as Max, but I imagine it will be a lot faster than adding a watermark in Avid, rendering for an hour, then using Max.
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Michael Hancock
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[Joe Huggins] “Would Sorensen of some other software from Avid third parties fix this? “
Sorenson can add a watermark to your footage, and it reads Quicktime Ref files just fine.
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Michael Hancock
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[Matt Dragovits] “1. Is there a way to swap out footage in the timeline with an alternate shot while retaining transitions?”
Select the track the clip you want to replace is on, then mark the clip (T). Load the clip you want to replace it with in your source monitor, select your In point, and overwrite it. It should keep the transition.
[Matt Dragovits] “2. If I’ve already imported a graphic and it has been converted to the AVID format. How difficult is it to reimport a change to that graphic and have it update in the timeline?”
Go to the graphic in your bin – select it and hit Delete. Deselect “Master Clip” and select “Media” from the dialogue box that pops up (I can’t remember the exact terminology – I haven’t edited on an Avid in 7 months). When you delete just the media the clip will go offline. Now select it in your bin again and choose to Batch Import (File–Batch Import I think). It will reimport the clip from the original location.
If you changed the graphic and saved over it, it will import it and update it everywhere it’s used. If you changed the original but saved it as a new name, just point to the new file from the Batch Import box and it will import and update with the new graphic.
I think I’m remembering everything correctly – at least close enough that should be able to figure it out from here.
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Michael Hancock
Editor