[Stacy Lincoln]

Hi! Quick answer…your original file will never be altered.
You’re only importing it…so you’re safe!

[Stacy Lincoln]

Linear is almost always the best “default” choice for effects. They will flow smoothly. It’s what I use the most. Ease in/out can often create those weird snapping motions. Accelerate and Decelerate also can be good choices. But Linear is usually the best choice. At least, for the editing I do. You can set it to be your default option, which is what I do. But not sitting in an edit suite right this second, I don’t remember how to navigate and do that. I usually need to be sitting at the machine to remember. I think it’s in settings while you’re in AVID FX.

[Stacy Lincoln]

Where I work, we have a specific Hard Drive where we save all digital media files. It’s quite large and automatically backs up files for permanent storage. You don’t want to save your files on the AVID hard drive…such as an ISIS. This is your work environment, but not where you’ll store files permanently.
An external hard drive is what you’d want to store your files if you’re working on a personal computer.
Then, import the quicktime files into your AVID bin. At that point, the quicktimes are in your project and should never go offline until your project is complete and you clean out your project.
I hope that makes sense.

[Stacy Lincoln]

To my knowledge, you can’t remove the smart tools. I hate them too.
You just have to click the box surrounding them and make them “stop” activating.

[Stacy Lincoln]

Sounds like you are only “linking” to the files and not actually importing them. So, when your hard drive is disconnected, it doesn’t see your files anymore, thus they are “off line”.
Usually, I transfer the quicktime files from the CAnon to a hard drive. Then, I import the quicktime files to my bin. It’s a fairly easy process and AVID sees the quicktime files just fine. That’s really all you need to do.

[Stacy Lincoln]

To my knowledge, Audiosuite is the only way to time compress audio. If I have to do this, I make an audio mixdown of the compressed track…so I can then tweak the audio levels (because if you adjust them after the compression, it unrenders…which is really annoying). I have never found another way to do this. Because of that, I make the original timeline my “work” timeline, duplicate that, and put the audio mixdown on the “final” timeline. That way, I always have the original audio timeline if I need to go back and fix it.

[Stacy Lincoln]

Well…I’ve been working in TV for 27 years, so you meet a lot of people along the way.
Most production photographers have a good sense of lighting. So if budgets are small, I rely on them. But when I need extensive lighting and have a budget, I hire a gaffer or go through a company that has grips/gaffers and a truck with all of the lights I need. AZGrip and ReelMen are my go-to folks for lighting in Phoenix. AZGrip travels all over the world, so it’s an excellent option.
As far as sound…the best resource I have is a book put out by the Arizona Production Association. Lots of folks list their services there, including grips, makeup, equipment rental etc. See if your state has a production association. They might and that helps you nail down a crew. And if you like one crew member, they often recommend others they like working with as well. Hope that helps!

[Stacy Lincoln]

I’m a writer/producer/director and editor. But not an engineer. So some of your questions…I can’t answer.
First, The size of your monitor makes no difference in your final work. If it’s coloring you’re concerned about, the color tool and waveform monitors keep you inline. You can watch tutorials about using color in AVID on youtube. I prefer the 27 inch because it gives you more work space if you only have one edit monitor, as opposed to two. Of course, MC6 keeps bins as tabs now..so that helps.
I know nothing about the other monitors you mention. That would be more of an engineer question in my world.

You Mac monitor is not the same as an output monitor you find in edit suites. It’s a computer screen, afterall, and not a TV. So, I wouldn’t edit on a lesser monitor and expect your Mac monitor to be the “output”. You should have an excellent product, after adjusting your shots in the color tool for brightness, contrast etc., however. If you don’t have access to a true monitor, burn a DVD and watch it on your tv at home. That’ll show you what it looks like. Then again…every TV is set to different color tones. (sigh) We all deal with that. But it’ll be close.

[Stacy Lincoln]

I have my AVID software on an Imac. I bought the 27 inch..and upgraded to i7 with 8 G of ram. That was a bit more than 2K.
It works just fine on that. My bigger problem was updating the software. So far, I have been unable to update it. AVID requires you to uninstall the version you have before upgrading to a new version. I didn’t know that at first. Still, I can’t get anything above 4 to upgrade on my machine. It still isn’t working and won’t activate. When it did work..the imac was great.

[Stacy Lincoln]

I believe, as an amateur, she’s simply cutting out all of her mistakes…her breaths, her stumbles…all of the bad takes. It’s a bit annoying, I would agree. Though, she has a nice presence on camera, which somehow makes it a bit more tolerable. It probably works as a current day “blog”, since so many people are doing this on youtube etc. I wouldn’t recommend it for television, as it would drive the viewer nuts if it continued on for several minutes.