Results tagged “Media Composer” from Final Cut Studio, Avid, Adobe, and Video Streaming

Adding video inside a title or graphic is a very simple task if you are using Boris FX. 

For those of you who are Media Composer Users, "When I talk about Avid FX, think Boris FX red.'  Same exact thing.  For Final Cut Studio user's you'll have to purchase Boris Red software seperately.

Even though this Giant Crawling Title effect  can be created outside of Boris FX, you may find it easier to use because it's resolution independent. This means you can create titles that exceed the resolution of your sequence.  Another great thing about Boris FX (Avid FX) is that you can use the Boris FX engine.  You don't necessarily have to use it as a plug-in.

Read on to see how to add video to an Boris FX title.....

You can easily create your own customized transition effects using Avid's animatte feature within the Avid Media Composer software.

First, create your own custom paint effect using Avid's animatte effect that's found within the effect's palette.

This is very cool.  It means you can create an unlimited number of customized transitions by using Avid's paint / animatte tool

Avid Marquee is an incredible 3D titling program. Here are the steps to create a 3D title that follows a path.

Head's up for those who upgraded from Avid Xpress Pro to Media Composer.  If you are lucky enough to own one of those fancy Avid Xpress Pro keyboards with the colorful keys, you may notice that some of the keys don't translate perfectly to the Media Composer default keyboard layout.

Fortunately, a company called 'logickeyboard', provides an upgrade path by providing a whole new set of  keycaps that you can simply pop out and replace. Replacing the keycaps is much cheaper than purchasing a new keyboard.

 

 

It's well worth mentioning that the latest version of Avid Technology's Media Composer software now supports real-time processing based on CPU and GPU resources.  This is a dramatic improvement over previous versions in terms of how the software processed effects.  This ehancement has been introduced in version 3.05.

GPU stands for 'Graphics Processing unit', and was introduced by the NVIDIA corporation. By assigning tasks to a GPU, the Media Composer software can now process more effects in real-time.

I ran a quick test using NVIDIA's Quadro 3500 Graphics card with 256 megs of ram. I was able to run 10 layers of real-time without a performance hit.  Of course, this card is classified under NVIDIA's High-End Products. 

The minimum graphics card to run Avid Media Composer 3.05 is the Quadro FX 560.  Bottom line, a faster graphics card with more video ram will give you an improvement in real-time processing.

For optimal performance, make sure you use the certified NVIDIA drivers for the Avid Media Composer software.

In case you missed it, Avid Xpress has been discontinued, and you can still upgrade to Media Composer from Avid Xpress. It is well worth the upgrade price.  There is a downloadable upgrade, and an upgrade that ships on a DVD.  It is best to order the upgrade that ships with a DVD because you'll also receive an additional suite of components. 

The additional suite of components includes:  Boris Continuum Complete, Sorenson Squeeze, Avid DVD, Avid FX, and Sonicfire Pro. Avid DVD is basically a bundled version of Roxio's DVDit 6 Pro., and Avid FX is equivalent to Boris FX Red 4.3.  No doubt about it, this is an incredible deal.

For those of you who have upgraded from Avid Xpress Pro to Media Composer, Avid Technology has an incredible deal where you can add Avid FX, Boris Continuum, Sorenson Squeeze, and Avid DVD at a nominal cost.

This special bundle is labeled as 'Avid 3rd Party Application Bundle' on Avid's storefront. It is available to any Media Composer 3.0 customer who purchased their software 'via download'.  It's an incredible value for only $195.00.

Avid FX is basically the equivalent of Boris FX, but it is licensed under Avid Technology's name. 

 

 

One of the interesting features within Avid Media Composer is the ability to use the animatte effect to create a paint brush wash effect.

 

This effect is done by using two video layers and then drawing with a large paint brush to reveal one layer underneath the other. 

Here are the step by step instructions:

This Avid Media Comopser training tutorial for Avid Marquee demonstrates how to create simple but yet stunning looking titles that include 3D extrusion, beveled edges, and textures with lighting effects.

Avid Marquee is an incredibly powerful 3D titling package that is included with the latest version of Avid Media Composer.  The lastest version of Avid Xpress also includes Marquee.

 

Have you ever run into a situation where you can't seem to find a particular clip within an Avid sequence?  Well, you can assign various colors to clips as a nifty way to quickly find cips within an Avid sequence.

To do this: click on the 'text' tab within an Avid bin.  Then navigate to the bin menu and select 'headings'.  Activate the 'color' heading. 

Now, click underneath the 'color' heading within your Avid bin and assign individual clips their own unique color.  You can also asign a group of clips a specific color by highlighting them and using the 'edit' menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After you've assigned colors to individual clips, you can tell Media Composer to display those same colors for matching clips within an Avid sequence.  To do this:  Navigate to the timeline menu and choose:  clip color > source.

This provides a great method of tracking down and finding cilps within an Avid sequence.

Avid Technology announced today that it is shipping new version's of Avid Media Composer.  This version of Media Composer 3.0 is the first qualified version to work Mac OS Leopard (10.5.X), and Windows Vista.

This is one of Avid's the next generation editing platforms to conform with the latest operating systems.  New pricing and upgrades are available for older versions of the software.

 

In the Avid Audio Mixer tool there are gang adjustments that allow you to group adjustments across tracks and have two or more sliders move at the same time. This is very useful for stereo tracks or even adjusting multiple tracks in your timeline. In Avid Media Composer there is also a gang adjustment tool in the media composer window and its function is of a different nature. The Gang function does not combine tracks into a synced relationship but locks monitors in sync so that you can move through footage in two or more monitors simultaneously. This function is convenient for viewing and marking the sequence and source material simultaneously, based on syncing of the position indicators in each monitor. For example: you can perform a match edit in your timeline and then gang the source and record monitors together, then you you scrub through either monitor the frames will always match. By default you will not see the gang button you must turn on the second row of buttons in the composer settings in the project window. They will be available to you through either the second row of buttons on top or bottom. Once you have a sequence you need footage in the source monitor to gang your clips too. I use the match edit function and then gang my monitors. You can also gang pop-up monitors but just remember the record monitor is always ganged. Just remember these steps: 1. Load a sequence into the Record monitor. 2. Load one or more clips into the Source monitor and pop-up monitors. 3. Click the Gang button for each monitor that you want to synchronize The button changes to green when the function is enabled. 4. View the footage in any of the monitors using standard playback methods. As you move through footage in one monitor, the footage in all other monitors freezes. The footage is updated when the play stops. Simultaneous full-motion playback is not possible, although sync is maintained at all times.

What is AVCHD?, and what exactly is HDD? 

AVCHD is a combination of AVC (Advanced Video Coding) and MPG2.  Some of the newest cameras now support AVCHD which records to a hard drive.  You may see the term HDD, which simply refers to (Hard Disk Drive).

To simplify, this technology records High Defination Video within an MPEG-2 transport stream directly to a hard-drive.  In fact, the Sony HDR SR12 is completely tapless!  It contains a 120 gig hard drive, which is enough storage to record over 20 hours of high defination footage without stopping.  It also has the ability to take 10 megapixel still images.

 

User's of Final Cut Pro can use the Log and Transfer tool to bring these clips into their editing system.  You must have one an intel based MAC, and you must be running the latest version the Final Cut Studio software.  The conversion process is close to real-time, but it can be automated. 

Also, Final Cut Studio converts the video stream to Pro Res 422 which is approximately 4 times the original size of the file(s) that sit on the camera.  To make sure you have sufficient space on your hard drive before ingesting the media.

Unfortunately, users of Avid Media Composer will have to convert the footage using a third party software product.  I am hopeful Avid will adopt AVCHD technology in their Media Composer product line soon. As a professional alternative,  Media Composer supports P2 media in it's native format.

GeniusDV teaches the AVCHD workflow in it's Final Cut Studio 5 Day training class.

 

With Avid technology's recent annoucement of discontinuing Avid Xpress, users should read the latest Media Composer Upgrade fact about upgrading their software.

Avid is offering a one time upgrade option for Avid Xpress users to upgrade to Media Composer for only $495.00.  List price of Media Composer is $2495.00 so it's deffinately worth the upgrade price.

In case your wondering about the funtionality differences between Avid Xpress and Media Composer, here is a short list of some of the major items:

• Improved Chroma Keyer using Specta-matte
• Vector based paint system with keyframing capability
• Motion Tracking
• Customizable time warp (variable slow motion) controls
• 9 camera multicam support

If you are an Avid Xpress user and you plan on upgrading to Media Composer you'll find a new feature called TimeWarp.  The TimeWarp feature in Avid Xpress was limited in terms of its functionality.

The TimeWarp feature allows you to play video as variable speeds within the same clip.  Here is a short tutorial on how to use it.

For those of you who have not yet upgraded to Media Composer, you can create something similar by using the traditional motion effect within Avid Xpress to create a speed ramp.

Finally a way to output realtimeHD with your Avid editing system! The new Mojo DX is the latest edition to the Avid editing hardware accelerator! Make sure you check out the full specifications and make this latest release supports Leopard and Windows Vista! f you are editing with HD footage or plan on it in the very near future then this is the best way to get you Avid system into the future! Here is a list of the all the features included in the Composer MOJO DX. 

• New I/O hardware for SD and HD, with SD/HD SDI I/O and HDMI monitoring
• Support for Mac OSX Leopard and Windows Vista
• Additional HD codec support, such as Sony XDCAM-EX (using the Sony Clip Browser software), Panasonic AVC-I, JVC 23.976p & 25p HDV
• Real-time playback of non-full-raster HD codecs through video output
• Improved timeline responsiveness
• Improved real-time effect performance with optimized CPU/GPU acceleration
• Improved render performance with optimized multi-threading on multi-core CPU's
• MetaFuze tool, for quickly merging single-frame files (such as DPX and TIF) from film scanning or CGI systems into a single media clip (Windows only)
• Real-time multi-window timecode burn-in tool
• SubCap subtitling tool

There are certain things about Avid Xpress or Media Composer that may drive you nuts.  One of those things is Media Composer does not allow you to add filler at an end of a sequence.  Wouldn't it be nice if you could tell Media Composer to always display 30 seconds of filler, even if you are zoomed all the way out?  This would give you an idea of how much additional content you need to fill.

Well, here is a fantastic trick on how to configure your timeline when you are doing spot work so you are always dealing with a fixed timeline. 

 

Did you know it's possible to add clip comments directly to clips within the Avid Timeline?  This is important for a few reasons.

#1 The comments will stay embedded within the clip, so if you move the clip, the comments will stay with it.

#2 If you edit a title directly from the timeline, the clip name doesn't change.  You can add a clip comment to reflect the real-name of the title template, instead of having to deal with a generic name.

 

 

To add comments to clips within Avid Xpress or Avid Media Composer follow these steps:

 

UPDATE: After this article was written, Media Composer 2.8.3 will no longer allow you to install the software on Leopard.  This means you'll need to download Media Composer 2.8.1 or 2.8.0 in order for the installer to work.

You have heard the rumors and read the blogs that Avid Media Composer will not work on the awesome Mac Leopard OS.

Well, we here at GeniusDV have found otherwise. There are a few quirks to installing Media Composer and a quick trick that allows the task bar to remain open. First and foremost you need to make sure that you download the latest version of Leopard OS but do not allow the latest version of Quicktime to be installed. There is no uninstall for Quicktime on Mac and you will be in big trouble with the Avid software if you do not have the correct version.

When adding multiple effects with Avid Xpress or Media Composer it is important to understand how nesting works.  It is a common mistake to auto-nest effects in a backwards fashion. Many Avid novice's use the alt-key when stacking multiple effects on top of each other.  Using this method may produce undesirable results.

Remember, with Avid, any effect placed on a layer will affect all the layers below it.  Therefore, it is important to nest items in the correct order to avoid potential problems.  Here is a typical problem many Avid users encounter:

Creating a black and white picture-in-picture effect often produces these results.  What if you only want the pip to be black-and-white without affecting the background layer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the steps to produce a black and white picture in picture effect without affecting the background layer.