Splice Now

Avids now make much better use of a mouse with a scroll wheel. But many editors don’t know it. I’ve mentioned this before, but thanks to Greg Staten at Avid, I’ve discovered a few additional uses for your favorite computer rodent.

1. You can use the scroll wheel to move up and down through text view bins, the project window, or the timeline. The scroll wheel is much more sensitive now and works the way you expect. And the sensitivity can be adjusted through the mouse settings panel.
2. If you hold down the control key and scroll through a bin in text view you will move horizontally through the columns.
3. If you first select a clip and then hold the control key down and scroll through a bin (in text view), you’ll move vertically through the list of clips, selecting individual items in turn. When you’ve got the item you want, hit return to load it into a monitor. Add the shift key and you can select more than one item. (This also works in frame view, but it’s hard to control.)
4. If you use a mighty mouse or trackpad, you can scroll horizontally in the timeline. This moves the timeline to the left or right. This is a terrifically useful feature, but it’s marred a bit by the fact that scrolling works backwards relative to other programs (try it to see what I mean).
5. If you hold down the control key while you’re scrolling horizontally in the timeline, you’ll move the blue bar a frame at a time. Hold both control & alt and you move by ten frames.
6. In effect mode or color correction mode, you can select a slider or control point and, with the control key held down, change its value by scrolling. Add the option key and you’ll change values by ten instead of one.

All in all, very useful and intuitive.

Technorati Tags: avid, edit, film, video

This entry was posted on July 19, 2007 at 6:41 am and is filed under Avid Technical Tips, User Interface. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.