[Phil Lowe]

“That seemed to work in Avid, but on my Reference monitor, the graphics seemed to “bounce”.”

Are these animations or stills? If animations, check field dominance on your import settings: if DV, set for even (lower) first.

Now, if these are animations and they were rendered progressive (non-interlaced) for interlaced video, that may be the source of the “jerkiness.”

Also, depending on whether the graphics have very fine lines in them can contribute to this effect: interlacing “flicker” happens when a line less than 1 TV line in height “bounces” between fields.

[Phil Lowe]

But Phil you seem quite content with Avid Media Composer?

Yes. It’s stable and – once you get to know it – fast. I migrated to it when Avid killed Xpress Pro. I had been using that since it was known as Xpress DV starting with version 2, and was a beta tester for Xpress Pro 4.6, still one of the finest versions of the software ever written. That’s because Avid opened it up for public beta, and quite a number of us kicked it around until we broke it, then gave Avid feedback on how to fix it and make it better.

Not sure they do that anymore but, if they aren’t, they should.

Here’s a screen cap of my laptop interface (desktop uses 2 monitors).

But keep in mind, I also use PPro because Avid needs 3rd party software for DVD authoring. I like PPro a lot, too and agree with Tim: if you’re on a less than optimal system any piece of software is going to give you problems.

[Phil Lowe]

Worst case scenario I’m looking at under 2 minutes to restart and get back to work. Does it really take the Avid that much longer than this?

5 minutes from cold start until ready to edit is about how long it takes, but we’re still running on HP xw-8200s Avid said were still qualified for use with the software we’re on. (Don’t have the version number we’re on in front of me now, but it not the latest).

I run MC 3.1.2 on a Core 2 Duo laptop with 3GB ram (2.0 GHz cpu) and on a Quad Core 2.8 GHz desktop with 8GB ram (64-bit system) and get great results from both. Fast and stable.

I’m just disgusted and frustrated as hell that Newscutter doesn’t work as well, since I have to spend most of my day working on it.

[Phil Lowe]

No offense taken, as I’m not a fanboy of Avid’s networked “solutions”. Here are just 2 very recent rasons:

1. Spent 2 days working on 6:28 project that airs Monday night on Unity/Isis system. Last night (around 10:30 pm) after laying in last piece of music just before last shot was to go in, Newscutter XP on said Unity/Isis system informs me that the “Filesystem is busy” when it tries to save the bin to the network project folder. When I “raise the error”, I get a very cryptic message box that reads, essentially, bin not found. So I try to create a bin with a different name and save to that. Same error.

This goes on for 15 minutes (I’m on overtime) and so I make a QT backup of sequence to local storage then close Newscutter and reboot my system. When I get system back up and proceed to jump through all of Avid’s login hoops, I find that the renamed backup bin is there, but the original bin has completely disappeared from the server. Gone. Thank god the backup was there and I didn’t lose my project, but this is the kind of bullsh*t I’ve come to expect from Newscutter XP on a Unity/Isis system running Interplay.

Meanwhile, I’ll be asking my boss on Monday if I can cut next project on Media Composer with local storage (no networking) and send out as QT file to newscutter for air, turning Newscutter into nothing more than a very expensive import/transfer station for air. Otherwise, everything with this Newscutter system is one huge freaking disaster waiting to happen!

Which brings me to point…

2. Newscutter is worthless when it comes to importing QT animations with alphas! It does stills just fine, but whenever I import an animation with an alpha (premultiplied or straight, no difference), I get a black line along the top edge of the “fill” about 8 lines thick. Every time I get this, I have to step into the track with the matte key on it and add a resize effect to the fill, scaling it up by 5% or moving it by 8 lines up (moving it just send the black line to the bottom). It’s yet another workaround I have to deal with regarding Avid’s vaunted professional networked solution, Newscutter!

OK, while I’m on a roll, here’s point…

3. Major latency (lag) when hitting the space bar to start/stop playback of clips and/or sequences in Newscutter on Interplay (this was a new “feature” introduced with Interplay that we never had with Media Manager).

Hit the space bar to start playback and wait for as much as half a second for playback to start. But hit same spacebar to stop, and the timeline or clip may continue playing for up to 2 or 3 seconds past the point you actually wanted it to stop!

The most maddening thing about this one is that when you anticipate the lag on next attempt to get a tight outcue, it stops immediately, leaving you a couple of seconds ahead of where you should be! Yet repeat the start/stop process, and you get the same lag you had before!

I’m told this has to do with the “spring buffers filling and dumping” but – again – this was never a problem on MM, and is certainly not an issue with Media Composer on my laptop! Avid’s response to these issues is “use the J-K-L keys”, (instead of actually fixing things they’ve clearly broken) but when your keyboard is set up for a workflow you’ve been using for 15 years, changing habits is not an easy thing to do. Chalk this up to another Avid workaround.

4. Avid Pan & Zoom plug in: Stills or scanned image brought in through this ALWAYS import extremely blurry, even in RT mode, until you render them. My workaround for doing documents using this P.O.S. plug in is to keep Windows’ Picture and Fax viewer open in second monitor as a roadmap to see where I need to move virtual camera. Just another example of how some of Avid’s “solutions” create more problems than they solve!

I could go on: a capture tool that causes exception errors and crashes almost every time you open it (even though Avid’s soluion is to keep it closed.) Memory leaks, media ingested into server that shows up one second only to appear completely offline another, constant other workstation crashes and system hangs, a media tool that can’t read P2 media until you add a half dozen steps to the process (like refreshing media databases, mounting, unmounting, then remounting cards, etc.)

And if none of this works, dance naked in the light of a full moon with copies of the manual soaked in Jack D. burning in a circle at your feet! (Better yet, just drink the Jack then burn the manuals anyway for all the good they do!)

Avid’s response to the things they’ve broken in a new release? “Upgrading to the next release fixes that”. You get to the next release only to find half a dozen new things broken that were working fine before! On top of that, the new release may force you to upgrade to all new servers and workstations to handle the new workarounds you’re going to have to implement!

And no offense to the FCP fanboys, but I’ve heard horror stories from some of my colleagues who work on those systems, too.

There is no perfect piece of software out there. If one is in development, it hasn’t been released yet and when it is it will cost more than the national debt.

But come on: for the amount of money stations and networks pay Avid for this stuff, you’d think they could do better!

Hate Newscutter. Like Media Composer. Your mileage may vary.

[Phil Lowe]

“If you’re censoring the Osbournes, then the high-pitched variant can get annoying.”

Hehe. More annoying than the Osbournes? 😉

[Phil Lowe]

Or use the Marquee Title tool. While this will allow you to create true 3D shapes and text, once you save its output to Avid, you’re going to hit the same wall with the 3D Warp tool: you won’t be dealing with true 3D objects anymore, as Avid only does 2D. So the “3D Warp” tool is still only 2.5D.

[Phil Lowe]

Check your version of QuickTime?

When I upgraded to my new HP, the pre-installed video card wouldn’t let MC load at all. I went to eBay, found a Quadro FX 560 video card for $99 and that solved the problem.

I’ve never had luck using ATI video cards with Avids, although when Xpress DV came out, Matrox cards were supported.

Loved those days. 🙂

[Phil Lowe]

Yes it will run on home built systems, but it’s at your own risk.
at home i’m running Media composer on a home built system and it solid as a rock, but i did a ton of research before i built it.

Agree 100%. I do, however, use my systems to make money. I recently had to upgrade my homemade desktop system that was 4 years old to a new system. I decided to buy “off the shelf” for the first time since my first computer purchase in 1986. I studied the latest Avid specs and got a system as close as I could to an Avid supported system. The machine works great (better than the ones we have at work), but attention to detail is important when shopping around.

[Phil Lowe]

Not sure I get what you’re trying to do, but I just created a 2D box in the title tool and took it to the timeline. The 3D Warp effect doesn’t apply to a matte, so I deleted the alpha channel on the box (remove effect) and applied 3D Warp to the remaining fill channel. I had no problem manipulating it doing it that way.

If you’re looking for Z-depth from Avid’s title tool, forget it. To get true 3D Z-depth, you have to use a dedicated 3D application like LightWave or Maya (I use LightWave).

Anything “3D” in a 2D application – like Avid – is 2.5D: not true 3D.

[Phil Lowe]

First of all to pull in a file to use as a matte key it just needs to be “high contrast”. So I went back into AE, placed a plain white background as the bottom layer, exported without alpha, followed the manual and it worked fine.

Wow. Sounds like you went to a lot of trouble for nothing. unless I’m misunderstanding something here, all you have to do is render out of AE as either a QT Animation with RGB + Alpha, or as a TIF or TGA sequence with alpha.

Import into Avid with Alpha inverted and as 601/709 color space (if NTSC video original) or RGB color space (if RGB original) and voila: Avid imports as a Matte Key.

If your animation is importing into Avid “washed out”, make sure the opacity of your AE composition is 100%: anything less and it will start to “key out” as the alpha channel controls transparency.