Archive for category Avid
Horses for Courses - Avid vs. FCP
I am an Avid editor really. I know Avid, I use it every day and I am totally at home with it. But I’m not afraid of FCP, I can operate it, feel pretty comfortable with it, but it’s not my ’safe place’ and I’m not a quick or effective.
But one big issue for me, not being as familiar with FCP as I am with Avid Media Composer, is where are the strengths and weaknesses of each system. What jobs suit which system best. So I’m appealing for feedback from those better acquainted with the two systems.
Avid editors who’ve switched to FCP, or vice versa, or even better people who are using both systems actively.
Supposing you have both Avid Media Composer and Apple Final Cut Pro at your disposal, cost is not a factor, what jobs end up in what system? And why?
My overall impressions are that FCP is strongest overall in situations where you’re doing it all in one, capture, edit, finish and output. While Avid is much stronger for offline/online workflows. Also, I consider Avid a much stronger contender for multi-editor networked work, with Unity. While FCP requires a very careful approach in the same situation to avoid media management problems.
Where are the real traps? Anything that you think should be totally avoided in one system or another?
Have you shifted a regular job from one system to another? Why? What have been the pros and cons of that shift?
I’m keen to hear comments about this, but I’m not really interested in any comments that can’t at the least acknowledge that both systems have genuine strengths and benefits. Fan-boys need not apply. Would be good to know the type of work you’re doing, and what version or generation of each system you’re most familar with (ie. are you making your judgements based on Xpress DV from 2004?)
XDCAM EX Workflow in Avid
Posted by in Avid, High Definition, Video/TV on February 23rd, 2009
I’m a fan of XDCAM EX. I like the format and think it offers great quality given it’s bitrate and cost. The cameras are good the SxS media is pretty decent. I have my general reservations and concerns about Solid-State recording, but assuming you have a reasonable process for managing backups you should be fine.
When EX first came out there was no EX support. It was added in Media Composer 3.0.5 I believe. Shortly after that happened Sony released version 2 of their Clip Browser software which had a ‘Avid AAF’ export function that made it a lot easier to get EX footage into Media Composer. Avid even posted a tutorial about the process.
Essentially this feature unwraps the MP4 XDCAM EX files and re-wraps them as MXF Op-Atom (Avid’s mediafile container) and places those files directly into one of Avid’s media directories (such as F:\Avid MediaFiles\MXF\2) and then creates an AAF file that contains a clip describing that shot (basically the easiest way to get the shots into a bin). This process is simple and reasonably quick and works fine… Or so I thought.
What is lacking in this process in Metadata control. When Clip Browser generates the MXF files it’s creating files that lack some of the metadata that Avid would normally use to relink a clip to media. Most obviously there is no Source or Disc Label associated with any of these clips. What this means is that Avid cannot relink this media. So if the Avid MXF file you create from Clip Browser is lost at all it cannot be relinked. Even going back to Clip Browser and re-exporting the same clip or clips to the same media directory will not create media that Avid will reassociate with existing clips or sequences.
Basically if you import clips this way you are absolutely locked in to those specific media files. No backup short of storing the actual files as they are created in the Avid MediaFiles directory will allow a recovery or relink.
The easiest way to avoid this problem is actually to use the older process. Using Clip Browsers ‘MXF for NLE’ export setting. This will create OP-1A MXF files that you can then import into Media Composer (the Avid will rewrap them as OP-Atom and relocate them to it’s media directory). It is a slower process, but as it’s a standard import process all the necessary Metadata will be stored with the clips to allow a Batch Import later.
Ideally this will soon not be necessary if Avid incorporates EX import directly into Media Composer, cutting out the Clip Browser middle-man.
Dylan’s Templater
Because I needed something to do the job, and I’ve been rediscovering Windows application programming, I created a simple application to make it easy to create Avid project templates.
It’s a pretty simplistic application, but seems to do the job, there’s more detail on the Dylan’s Templater page (linked above).
DV Generational Loss in Avid
There has been some disagreement about the potential for generation loss in DV video via Firewire in Avid. The idea is that DV video, as data, is transferred and ‘captured’ as a simple data stream via a Firewire connection - there should be no loss, as it is simply moving data back and forth.
But is that the case?
Wayne’s World Transition
A user on one of the Avid forums asked about recreating the Wayne’s World ‘doodly-do doodly-do’ transition. Here is how do to it…
The only non-standard plugin (from modern Avid releases) you will need is DFT Composite Suite GFast Blur, it is a freely available plugin as part of the Composite Suite package trial version - download it from Digital Film Tools. Without registering, only the Fast Blur plugin will work properly, but that’s all you need.
Step 1. Add a 20 frame disolve to the vision cut on V1.
Step 2. Use the Add Edit tool to cut filler on V2 at 18 frames before and 18 frames after the V1 edit, making a 36 frame block of filler on V2.
Step 3. Add the Illusion FX Wave plugin to the cut filler on V2.
Step 4. Use Add Edit to cut filler on V3 at about 10 frames before and after the V1 cut, creating a 20 frame block of filler.
Step 5. Add the DFT Fast Blur plugin to the filler on V3.
Step 6. Set keyframes on Wave plugin - three keyframes, one at 0 frames, one at 18 frames (lining up with V1 cut) and one at the last frame. Apply the settings, as in the illustration above, to the first and last keyframe. For the second keyframe, change the Amount slider to 100.
Step 7. Set keyframes on Fast Blur plugin - three keyframes, one at 0 frames, one at 10 frames (lining up with the V1 cut) and one at the last frame. Keyframes 1 and 3 should have horizontal and vertical blur set to 0, keyframe 2 should be set to 10 for both attributes.
An idea of what the finished timeline should look like.