[Mike G.]

Not sure how much this will help, but I know from experience that the “da Vinci” telecine system reads Avid EDL’s exported in the CMX format.

[Mike G.]

The best AudioSuite plug-in, in my opinion, is “Time Compression/Expansion”. As a frequent network promo Editor, this function is priceless. You can speed-up or slow down any audio clip, without changing the pitch. Especially handy if you have a VO that you need to be, say, 20 seconds, but was read at 22 seconds.

[Mike G.]

Depends on how badly over-modulated your audio is. If the distortion is minimal, you can play around with EQ a bit, but as far as I know Audio Suite doesn’t have any “fix-it” options for badly over-modded audio. In most circumstances (especially if the distortion is bad), there’s not much you can do about it except to work with it, or hire a new audio person and re-shoot.

[Mike G.]

I usually edit on Symphony, but I assume this solution should hold true for both Symphony and Xpress:
Go into your Digitize Preferences (“Capture” prefs on Xpress?), and un-click “Filter drives based on resolution”.
That should do the trick.

[Mike G.]

Capturing from MiniDV perhaps? The only times I’ve had this error have been from MiniDV camera tapes with numerous time-code breaks (even using a DSR-2000 deck). Just re-name the tape -DF or -NDF, and go (and remember that location on the tape if you have to go back to it for up-rezzing). Not sure why the Avid has a tendency to intermittantly read DF & NDF codes from the same MiniDV tape…
If you’re not using MiniDV, but Digi or SP, the problem is not internal within the system, but external in that someone has in fact mixed DF& NDF codes on the same tape. Avid hasn’t failed me yet when it comes to reading correct code on Beta formats.

[Mike G.]

Great thread, and great solution Rat! OK, I want to make sure I have this straight: if I access Console, and type in “subsys monpane debug”, then I’ll have the ability to match-frame Matte Keys?
[I’m always a little nervous doing anything in Console, so I want to make sure I’m not screwing myself if I try this.]

Furthermore, Rat wrote “To turn it off, restart the application.” I take this to mean that my ability to match-frame Matte Keys is de-activated every time I restart the application. Is there a way to permanently enable this option in my User Settings?

[Mike G.]

I’ve been shocked in the past by Avid Tech Support’s lack of knowledge. I’m not getting down on ALL of their techs (as many have been very helpful in the past), but there seem to be some who need a little more training before working the phones.
About a year ago, I called Tech Support because of a problem I was having with my audio input (can’t recall exactly what the problem was). I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with a “tech”. Before long he had me crawling around under the console with a flashlight, checking connections, codecs, and all sorts of hardware. His final solution was to have me physically disconnect all of my peripherals, re-boot, reconnect the peripherals, re-boot again, then call him back if it didn’t work. This seemed a little extreme to me, so I called up one of my fellow Editors, and he walked me through a simple process of changing some settings and running some tests, and my problem was solved in about 5 minutes. This is just one of numerous ‘Tech Support’ debacles I’ve encountered over the years. For the money we pay, we should expect a little more knowledge at the other end of the phone.

[Mike G.]

If you’re not running through a Mojo, you can use any old-school TBC. DVD player>TBC>Avid’s composite input. Voila!

[Mike G.]

I edit for a major network in NYC, and we swear by StageTools “Moving Picture”. I used to use ‘pan & zoom’ extensively before recently discovering ST, and I’m never going back.

It will only import uncompressed images (like tiff ot bitmap), and for the best results, use only the highest-rez images you can get your hands on. Image merchants like Corbis offer HUGE images, which are cool because you can zoom waaaay in, with very little distortion.

“Moving Picture” is a very simple application to learn (took me about 20 minutes), and it produces beautiful results.

The only issue I’ve had is with Avid dissolves, which becomes a non-issue after this thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=45&postid=855968

[Mike G.]

As a suppliment to my previous post…

As long as you consolidate all of your “outside media” (associated with other projects) into the Unity workspace associated with your current project (or any drive, if you’re not on Unity), it will most definitely be preserved in the project you’re working on.

When you select “Consolidate”, a window will pop up with a list of available workspaces or drives to consolidate the selected media to. Just select the workspace or drive associated with the project that you’re currently working on, perform your consolidation, and relax.

I don’t know how knowledgeable you are about Consolidation, but I’ll take the low-road on this one (nothing personal):
The simplest way to explain Consolidation is this: you’re making copies of your clips. You can highlight individual clips to Consolidate, or you can highlight a Sequence, and it will break the sequence down into individual clips with handles. After Consolidation, the media for these clips will exist in 2 places: the workspace/drive that they originated from, and the workspace/drive that you just Consolidated them to. If the media from the old project is deleted, you’re safe, because your Consolidated clips (or sequence – but only the shots that appear within the sequence) now exist as exact copies in your current project, and linked to the project, no matter what the original “Project Association” is. Consolidated clips have no association to their parent project. They’re considered ‘new’ in the current project.
It’s magical, man, as if you had just digitized them straight from tape!