Book Image

Avid Media Composer 6.x Cookbook

By : Benjamin Hershleder
Book Image

Avid Media Composer 6.x Cookbook

By: Benjamin Hershleder

Overview of this book

Avid Media Composer has become the tool of choice by editing professionals worldwide. Whether your project involves editing television programming, independent films, corporate industrials or commercials, this cookbook shows you exactly how to do so in a step-by-step and practical manner, and get the most out of Avid Media Composer editing. "Avid Media Composer 6.x Cookbook" is an expert, clear and logically-sequenced resource with highly effective recipes for learning Avid Media Composer essentials and beyond. It's task-based approach will help users at all experience levels gain a deeper, more thorough understanding of the software. It will help you master the essential, core editing features as well as reveal numerous tips and tricks that editors can benefit from immediately. Just some of the topics include understanding Import settings, mixing frame rates and understanding AMA (Avid Media Access), along with thorough explanations of Trim Mode, Segment Mode, and the Smart Tool. You will learn to customize your work environment with Workspaces, Bin Layouts, Timeline Views, Bin Views, Keyboard Mapping, and much more. The recipes inside are packed with practical examples, time-saving tools and methods to get you working faster and more confidently so that you can spend less time dealing with technical and operational issues and instead focusing on being creative.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Avid Media Composer 6.x Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Tape capture tip: Making Subclips while Capturing


While Capturing a long Master Clip, you have the ability to divide it into Subclips at the same time, which will save you time since you won't have to perform the Subclipping and labelling in a separate step. For example, you have a tape of an interview with the President of the United States and you need to get it into your Media Composer immediately. You can begin capturing from the start of the tape and by using the tip that follows in the next recipe, you'll also be able to create Subclips of each question and answer.

Note that this tip produces different types of subclip behavior depending on whether you are in a film Project or a video Project. If you set up your Project as a film project (for example, 16 mm or 35 mm) when you first created it, then the Subclips will be locked in their duration and cannot be trimmed longer in the Sequence. This is intentional in order to protect vital Key Code/Key Number information that is specific to film projects.

Getting ready

This tip works while you're actively capturing from the tape (the red light is blinking). Note that this tip does not work when Batch Capturing.

How to do it...

The steps that follow help us make Subclips while capturing:

  1. Begin capturing (red light is blinking).

  2. Press the F1 key when you want to begin a new Subclip. If you want to update the location for the beginning of that Subclip to a later point, press the F1 key again. You can update the In point at any time. It is not locked in until the F2 key is pressed.

  3. Begin typing to name the Subclip, if you want to.

  4. You, optionally, can also press the Tab key to move the cursor into the Comment Entry Box and begin typing to add a comment.

  5. Press the F2 key to end the Subclip. If you want to update the location for the end of that Subclip to a later point, then press the F2 key again. You can update the Out point at any time. It is not locked in until the F1 key is pressed again.

  6. Press the F1 key to begin a new Subclip and repeat the preceding steps.

How it works...

During this process, you are creating one Master Clip that will refer to, point to, or, as Avid says, link to the media file(s) of video and/or audio. The Subclips do not create new media files; they are just shorter references to, or subsections of, the longer Master Clip.