[Philip Boal]

Excellent help gentlemen. Thank you. Its a little easier than I was thinking.

Editor, Muscular Dystrophy Association

[Philip Boal]

It sounds to me like the previously used tape had audio on all 4 tracks. The BVW-75 has the ability to record on tracks 3 & 4 with the video signal (I forget what they call this, its been a long time) and then you can insert audio edits on 1 & 2. You we’re probably monitoring all 4 channels after you recorded your bit.

Editor, Muscular Dystrophy Association

[Philip Boal]

I often crop each brochure cover and fly in each cover over a BG, either a digital juice BG, or a shot that I roll focus on.
Then I fly in the inside pages of the parts I want to highlight.
In the end, you get the look of a stack of brochures & pages that have magically fanned out onto a BG.

Editor, Muscular Dystrophy Association

[Philip Boal]

I’m new to the corporate world as well, having been a staff editor for years at cable networks or production companies. At this shop we love to use digital juice type backgrounds; I do lots of layering and split screens. We shoot a ton of green screen for presentations and then key the people over various backgrounds. The Avid editors use After Effects for most of their cool work; lots of rotoscoping, interesting text treatments.

the bottom line is … Yes, we want to make as compelling videos as we can.
I hardly ever just cut together full screen images … I like eye candy.

Editor, Muscular Dystrophy Association

[Philip Boal]

Thanks for the posts everyone. I didn’t realize that the Toaster was still active; I’m going to check into it and maybe get a demo at NAB.

[Philip Boal]

I was hoping to find a current system that might handle both linear & non-linear editing. The Toaster is long gone, the Axial has unlinear capability when used with a DDR; it lays off footage to the DDR and then re-assembles the EDL. The Editbox can control 2 VTRs but it becomes a cuts only system.

Thank you for the suggestions … I think its hopeless, but the search continues.

[Philip Boal]

One of my pet peeves … and i just saw a horrific example of this on a video produced for a well known professional athlete speaking about cancer survivors … is white balances that are all over the place on interviews that are cut back-to-back all on white backgrounds. One person is on white, the next is on an orange-white, someone else is on a blue-white. Its just a pet peeve, but it bugs me.

By the way, I consider this an issue in editing more than in production. A good editor should be able to match up the whites to match. The Quantel Editbox was tremendous at this, but all Avids and onm-line bays should be able to give you consistent color.

my 2 cents. Thanks. Good Luck on your shoot.

Editor, Muscular Dystrophy Association

[Philip Boal]

well there’s always blue-screen, so you can change out the BG to whatever you want.

or, in post, you could do split screens of the same bites but doctor up some of the images, like make it grainy, B & W, color tints, etc.

[Philip Boal]

Digital 8 has a firewire port and the Avid regards it as DVCAM, just like it does mini-dv. It works very well. Hi-8 is analog, and needs to be converted. When I use a Hi-8 tape in my Digital 8 camera it digitizes thru the firewire but skips the occasional frames.

I actually like digi-8 better than miniDV, bigger tape, more robust, but certainly the cameras will never be on par.

[Philip Boal]

Its difficult tracking down these kind of problems. Rendering is always the first step, so you’ve done that. You might try splitting up your digital cut – do the video first and then the audio in a 2nd pass. Hardware under runs are often caused by the audio & video not playing back together. hope this helps. Phil B