[Scott Cole]

I deal with this all the time. I’m also at a network that deals with 4×3 footage in 16×9 pieces. The fact that both Media Composer and Newscutter stretch 4×3 media to fit the 16×9 frame is one of my few real pet peeves with Avid. Just leave it as it is, with black sidebars. I’m a professional, I’ll make the decision on how to handle it.

Regarding how to tell if it’s right or wrong, there is no “easy way.” The simplest way is to just switch your client monitor between 4×3 and 16×9 and make your best guess as to which is right. Look at faces, obvious circular objects, etc. and go from there. I wish I had a better answer for you, but as far as I know, there simply isn’t one. Oh and be careful you don’t take something that is already correct and squeeze it into Anamorphic. Good luck.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

GenArts Sapphire has such an effect… not cheap, but it’s a toolkit any effects driven editor should have.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

Another workaround, with a major caveat. Prior to tracking, make the shot/shots with the effect as long as you can anticipate it being. Extract a subsequence to go back to if you need to make changes again. Do your tracking and other work and create a mixdown and place that in your final working timeline using only what you believe you need at the time. You’ll have more of the created effect if you need to trim, but you won’t need to recreate the effect or the tracking data every time you trim. The major caveat being, is that if you are replacing the shot with uprezzed or color corrected video, or want to change the segment in any other way, you’ll have to go back to the subsequence, make the changes there, remake the mixdown etc.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

Scott Cumbo,

I respectfully disagree with you regarding training. I’m certainly not implying that Mr. Burke or any other FCP editor needs days of edit training, but if they are having the kind of trouble as Mr. Burke appears to be having, than an orientation to Avid may be helpful.

I’m very much a big fan of help files, I often access them myself and encourage others to do so when some new process comes along. But to call training “crap” is wrong, Training is a very viable process that can give someone that boost of confidence, and that orientation to the terminology that can make the difference between failure and success when beginning to use a new piece of hardware or software.

Help files can help you when you have one specific question you want answered, but training opens up the whole ball of wax. The fact is, you often don’t know what you don’t know, and training opens your eyes to what you don’t know that you don’t know, while help files usually only answers those things you know that you don’t know.

One other thought, My guess is that Mr. Burke works as a one man band with no one sitting in an edit bay right next door to bounce questions, tips and techniques off of. Knowing what I know of Broadway Video, you have several editors within earshot most of the time. I’m sure you interact with each other on a constant basis. Training gives someone that human interaction that helps far more than a help file can ever hope to.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

Here’s the facts, Avid is a program with lots and lots of features. A simple thing like fading out audio has worked in Avid for years. When I see people bitching that something like that is “difficult to do in Avid,” perhaps it’s time for the person bitching to step back and find some training. I had been editing for 30 years including 20 years of flying million dollar linear edit rooms (CMX) prior to learning Avid, already had a few years with another non-linear program (Lightworks) before finally getting behind an Avid keyboard. Two co-workers and myself were given three days of training, and since then, 15 years ago, I’ve continued to learn new things every day. Avid works, yest it has issues, but so does every technology. If you can’t make it work, then get some real training at least to help you learn the concepts and the basic terminology that the program uses. It will do you wonders and save you lots and lots of rage.

Respectfully hoping you work things out.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

I’m at home, so I don’t have the software in front of me, but I’ll point you to the right terminology and you can use the help files. The effect you are looking for is Time Warp in the effects palette. If you search out “Time Warp” you should be able to find everything you need to know.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

It’s a mixed blessing that Media Composer et al do not have a “recycle bin.” There are several things you can do to protect items. First of all, anything that is important should have a lock put on it. Highlight the master clips, subclips, sequences, and effects you want to protect, rightclick and select “Lock…” This will make it all but impossible to delete the selected items. Note that locking a sequence does NOT protect the media only locking master clips will do that. And also, media can still be deleted at the OS level even with locks on.

Or you can take a more proactive approach as I do on 60 MINUTES where we have show elements for this week’s show and show elements that are used on a week to week basis, or need to be held for some future use. I maintain several workspaces on our network storage (ISIS without Interplay). One of them is labeled “Master Elements” and anything and that is thought to be of use over the long term production of the show, whether it be black and bars/tone, graphic animations, announces, or even generic “goodnights” and tosses to Andy Rooney are all consolidated to this Master Elements workspace and then “Locked.” I have one other workspace dedicated to “Future Air,” which is for pieces we’ve worked on that don’t yet have an airdate, including a couple of obits and pieces that were bumped by a breaking piece. Normally, I’m the only one who does actual deletions and I tend to do them on a 3-4 week past “rolling deletion” where I delete only material over 4 weeks old, but I unmount via the ISIS/Unity interface the above mentioned drives so I can’t accidentally delete anything on them. The other post production editors and production people are constantly warned, “If you don’t move it to ‘Master Elements,’ it may not be there when you need it.” I also do a sweep through our bins prior to my cleanups just in case. I know this process may not work for you, but perhaps elements of it may.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

Shane,
What I’m saying is that, if the media is already on the drives that the system is accessing, there is NO reason to have to copy media from one project to another. The media folders are common to all projects, so if you want to move or copy media from one project to another on the same system or a system on the same networked storage, you really don’t have to move or copy it, you just need to find it in one of the ways that both of us suggest. There really is no reason whatsoever to even go to the media folders if you are doing things correctly. Again, this does not apply to AMA, only traditional Avid media.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

Shane, I did a cursory read of your replies here, and most of the stuff seems spot on. However I noticed a glaring error.

BEGIN QUOTE
[Shane Ross]“[Sohrab Sandhu] “What happens when you want to use media from another project. Does it need to be ingested again (in a seperate folder) since avid follows file structure so rigidly?”

You add the media to the Avid MediaFiles>1 folder…and then use the MEDIA TOOL to look for it. OR, you have a bin that references that media, and you bring the bin into the Avid project. On the finder level, bins are folders. Add the folder to the project, and it appears as a bin. Add the media, and Avid will rebuild the database to add the media (it instantly knows if something is different…added or missing and rebuilds).

END QUOTE

First of all, I’m a PC person, not a mac person so please correct me if I’m wrong. Second, I’m in a world that sometimes works very slowly, so I’m not yet all that familiar with AMA, and none of what I’m about to say applies to AMA, this only applies to the traditional Avid file structure.

Each BIN is actually a single file on the Explorer or Finder level, or as the Operating System sees them. A BIN may contain multiples of sequences, master clips, subclips, effects clips, etc., yet to the OS, it appears as one entity. A BIN however contains no actual media, just the above items that point to the corresponding media.

Regarding moving or copying media from one project into another, all you really need to do is one of at least three methods, none of which involve replicating or moving the actual media. In Avid land, as you have pointed out, the media on any given system lives within a very specific file path on any of the drives attached to the system. So as long as you are mounted to those drives, either local or networked, any project can read and or write to those drive paths (based on log-in permissions granted to that user for the ISIS UNITY drives).
So then the question is, how do you use media from Project A in Project B? First you can search using Media Tool, which will show you media from any or all specified drivespaces, and any or all projects. Media Tool has sort and filter tools just like any other bin. Second, you can (with the Project Window on the BINS Tab) click on File|Open Bin from the pulldown menus and navigate your way to the project and bin that contains the master clips of the media you want (and remember BINS also include Sequences, SubClips, Effects, etc.) and all of what is contained in the bin is now available to you. Third, and this is a bit more cumbersome, but it’s a method we use as it allows media to be available to other software as well, is exporting and importing “linked AAFs.” This is basically a method that creates files that point to either media or sequences, yet creates an individual file that can be found on the OS level and then imported back again into a different application, or the same application, by a different user. Media within an AAF can either be “Linked,” “Consolidated” (copied as new files to a destination drive), or “Embedded” (create one large file with both data and media). If we are working on the same set of drives, then the Linked option is almost instantaneous in exporting and importing the media, as all it’s really doing is creating new pointers to the same media. AAFs are a little more cumbersome than the other two methods however they do have their uses, especially when dealing with other apps, like color correction and ProTools.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net

[Scott Cole]

If the wipe only appears once or twice in your promo, then Animatte is a way to go. However, if the exact same wipe appears multiple times, it may make sense to create a black to white (or white to black) matte signal of the wipe and used that to drive a matte transition. I think you’ll find the render times quicker.

M. Scott Cole
Senior Post Production Editor
60 MINUTES
CBS News, NYC
sc6@cbsnews.com
mscottc@comcast.net