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

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

A great portable way to show off your video projects is through your very own iPod.  We accomplish this by exporting movie files to iTunes first. 

First choose your sequence in the bin.  Enable all tracks for the sequence.  Mark the entire sequence in/out then right click expert render in/out.

Next, right click on the sequence in the bin and choose Export.  Choose Save As:  project_name.mov on the Desktop.  Now for your Export Setting:  Send to QT Movie, then Options.  Export As:  Quick Time Movie - Use Enabled Tracks

During NAB 2009 GeniusDV will be providing private video post production training in Las Vegas from April 19th to April 22nd. During these four days you will have the opportunity to schedule a two hour customized one on one training.

We will have certified instructors on hand to create customized work flows for your specific needs. The Final Cut Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, as well as the Avid line are all applications we will be providing training. We will also be providing work flow consultation. We can assess your workflow, and make valuable recommendations that will save you both money and time.

Previous GeniusDV students will be receiving the first opportunity to schedule training. Now until March 27th we will be scheduling for those who have already recieved training from GeniusDV. On March 28th we will begin open enrolement. Click here to arrange for a training session, or to request a time slot upon open enrollment.

We questioned Mike Willats, a member of the GeniusDV team, about how he deals with the tens of thousands of clips he uses when editing Disney projects here in Orlando, Florida.  His answer, not surprisingly was, stay organized!  Here is one method he uses:

Whether you are using Avid or Final Cut, a large portion of the battle is staying organized.
For some, this is second nature but for others it comes with a lot of arm-twisting. No matter what your style as an editor the process by which you get to the end product has several organizational elements along the way.

Digital Rapids -- a leading developer of solutions for bringing television, video and movie content to the Internet and the latest generation of viewing devices -- today announced the appointment of Barry Fairhurst as Vice President of Sales.

Based in Digital Rapids' Markham, Ontario head office, Fairhurst will be responsible for the development, implementation and management of sales strategies and processes in support of the company's continuing strong growth and broad customer base. Fairhurst joins Digital Rapids following 13 years at Avid Canada, having managed Avid's direct and indirect sales and customer support operations.

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.

 

As you know, fonts normally come in a single color. Essentially, each letter is a shape - and the computer needs to describe your logo as a shape as well. Therefore, you need to reduce your logo into one or more black-and-white images that correspond to the regions you want the computer to fill when you're using your font.

Incidentally, the very basic techniques we'll use in Photoshop might help you with other matte and compositing work as well.

Installing the free software you need to create your fonts can be a little bit tricky.  Read on to find out how to set up the font software and the auto-tracing plugin on Mac or Windows.

Most modern titling software allows you to import logos or graphics to incorporate with your text.  Avid's Marquee Title Tool does not, at least in any sophisticated way - which is a shame.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do the easy 3D manipulations to logos just like you can to letters?

That's what motivated this little tutorial series, but, depending on your workflow, the implications may be even broader.  If you have a set of many logos or shapes that you use often, for example, you can put all of them just a keystroke away.  You can use them as an easy way to make mattes, as some of our other tutorials describe.  For that matter, you could create characters (glyphs) for things like your signature.

Also, the kinds of fonts that we'll be using are vector-based - meaning that they're a set of equations that completely describe each character.  In English, that means that you can zoom the characters up to the size of a skyscraper without worrying about the ugly, fuzzy, pixelated edges that a normal image would show.

* - If you're just doing one-off work with logos (or anything else for that matter), the process we're about to go into is probably overkill.  Interested in a tutorial on vectorizing these more "expendable" images?  Drop us a line, and we'll get one in the pipeline ...

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.

Importing a picture or a Quick Time into your Avid editing system requires that you change some of the import settings. When you import alpha from an Avid QuickTime codec, select Alpha > Use Existing in the Import Settings dialog box. When alpha is imported from a non-Avid QuickTime codec, select Alpha > Invert Existing. This is because the Avid QuickTime codec inverts the alpha during the movie’s creation, saving time on import into your editing applications while not significantly adding to the creation time in a third-party program. This step will save you time and will also preserve the intended alpha setting. 

Have you ever wondered how much space is required for DV, HDV or HD media?  This can be a tricky question, because DV and HD is based on a fixed compression scheme and HDV is based on variable MPEG compression.

Keep in mind that HDV offers approximately 3 times better quality that DV.

DV uses 3.5 MB/sec

HDV uses 3.3 MB/sec

DVCPro HD (1080i 60) uses 13.9 MB/sec

So how is it possible that HDV uses less space than DV?  Well, this isn't always true, because it depends on the footage you are compressing.  HDV uses MPEG compression which is a variable compression format.  In general HDV takes up a smaller footprint than DV.  I find this to be quite amazing.  There are some drawbacks in that HDV requires a lot more processor power and longer render times than standard DV. 

Remember, this file size of HDV depends on the complexity of the footage. 

 

 

 

If you plan on working with full HD, notice the file size is roughly 4 times the size of DV or HDV.  That's a lot of bandwidth.  If you plan on working in full HD, make sure you have a high-speed drive array with a lot of storage.

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.