Collapse the Composer Window
I explained in the last post how you can hide the Source Monitor, but you can also collapse the Composer window, hiding video entirely and showing only buttons, menus and tracking information. This can expand your screen real estate mightily, making room for a much-enlarged timeline with plenty of room to manipulate audio keyframes and see waveforms. If you’ve got a client monitor, you’ll view video there.
This view was once called the “mini-composer.” To invoke it on a Mac, simply hit the the green “+” button at the top left of the Composer window. Or right-click on a video image and select “Hide Video.” To go back to your regular Composer view, hit the plus button again or deslect Hide Video.
You can do anything in the mini-composer that you could do in the regular composer. Trim mode is available, for example, and works as you’d expect. You can even drag from a bin to the source or record monitor. Just drop your clip onto the mini-composer window.
Of course, you wouldn’t work this way all the time, but for audio work, it can be very useful. I make it part of my Audio Toolset. (For more about Toolsets see this video post.)
Explore posts in the same categories: Audio, Avid, Avid Technical Tips, User Interface
Splice Now 
November 19, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I use this feature every day and I’ve been looking for a way to map ‘Hide Video’ to a button on my keyboard, but Avid won’t menu map to buttons from a right-click contextual menu (at least 2.7 won’t). Is there another way?
November 20, 2009 at 7:25 am
One way to do this is with a Toolset. Go to the Toolset menu and select Audio Editing. Your windows will move around. Move them back where you want, and select Hide Video. Then choose Toolset > Save Toolset.
Then use the Command Palette’s “menu to button reassignment” function to map the Audio Editing menu pick to the button of your choice.
Then do the same for the Source/Record toolset — this time with hide video turned off. Put this on a button, too.
Then use those buttons to turn Hide Video on/off and to totally configure your screens (you can also turn timeline views on and off simultaneously).
There’s some work here to set all this up, sure, but it’s easier to do than it is to explain, and when you’re done you’ll be able to invoke a lot of customization with one button.
More here:
https://splicehere.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/toolsets-workspaces-video/
November 20, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Thanks for the tip. I already use workspaces with pretty specific setups, but I could setup an identical workspace and map that to a key.
December 30, 2009 at 12:03 pm
this program is very much time consuming, how can we teak the performance of this program