Splice Now

This won’t be news to some of you, but over the years Avid has made it easier to cut and paste clips in the timeline. Not everybody is aware of this feature and it may appear quirky, but in certain situations it can be a godsend. For example, if you need to make a series of similar titles, just make one and copy and paste it where you want the others. Then simply change the text on the copies. All the formatting remains intact.

Here are a few pointers:

Copy obeys tracklights and marks. So first select the tracks you want to copy, then mark the timeline where you want the copy to start and end. Then select Command-C. The material you’ve marked goes to the clipboard.

But paste (Command-V) doesn’t obey marks or tracklights. When you paste, whatever was in your clipboard is inserted at the blue bar position, regardless of where your marks are, and in the same track(s) from which it was copied. A paste typically works like an insertion, a yellow edit. That generally isn’t as useful as an overwrite (red edit). To do that, you must select red segment mode before pasting.

If you want to paste copied material into a different track, you have to put your copy into the source monitor, patch your tracks, and insert or overwrite. In Media Composer the easiest way to do this is by selecting “Clipboard Contents” from the menu above the source monitor.

Xpress doesn’t include that menu item so you must use the command palette to do it. The button is in the Edit tab and is called “Clipboard Contents.” Put it under your source monitor and click it to load whatever you’ve last copied.

Even simpler, you can copy something from the timeline directly to your source monitor simply by marking it, selecting tracks and then option dragging from the record monitor to the source monitor. Voila, you’ve got a copy of that material, ready to be edited somewhere else. But note that this feature broke at some point and could corrupt your timeline. I’m told that it’s fixed now, but you should use it at your own risk.

Finally, note that every time you lift or extract something, a copy of the material automatically goes to the clipboard. If you want to use it somewhere else, just paste it directly or load it into the source monitor.

______________________________

Wish list:

1. In most Mac applications, including the Finder, you can duplicate an item by option-dragging it. A copy is created wherever you end the drag. Pro Tools allows you to do this in the timeline, and sometimes it sure would be great if the Media Composer did, too.
2. Allow the editor to choose the type of edit a paste defaults to. I almost never want an insert. I almost always want an overwrite.

I do an awful lot of assymetrical trimming, especially when after I’ve started to build sound effects and music into a sequence.

After a cut is trimmed this way, I naturally hit play transition to look at it. But sometimes that isn’t enough. I need to get a longer run at the cut to evaluate it — go back a few shots and play from there. To do that I have to exit trim mode, check the cut and then, if I don’t like it, I have to set up the trim again, which can be time consuming.

There are two ways around this. One way is to use “recreate last trim.” This puts your rollers back where they were the last time you were in trim mode. You invoke this by holding down the option key and hitting the trim mode button. So you’d make your trim, exit trim mode, check the cut, and then return to trimming by hitting option+trim.

But you can also simply move one roller and fool trim mode into playing more of your timeline than it would otherwise.

Here’s a typical assymmetrical trim:

But let’s say you want to see the entire previous shot play before coming to the cut you’ve been working on. Easy — just add one more roller, by shift clicking on an earlier picture cut, like this:

Now the Media Composer plays from before the first picture roller to after the second one. When you’ve seen what you need, deselect that roller by shift clicking and you’re ready to make additional changes.

Most of us have been making our motion effects the old fashioned way, using Avid’s trusty “Motion Effect” dialog box. This is reliable and predictable, especially for work that has to be reproduced on film with an optical camera. But today, most of us are working in environments where effects get conformed digitally, and that means we no longer have to restrict ourselves to integer speeds (1/2x, 2x, 3x, etc.).

The alternative is to use Avid’s Timewarp tools. They allow you to create motion effects at any speed you like. Modern effects workstations can conform these things very cleanly in most cases.

The easiest timewarp to use is the “Trim to Fill” effect. It’s initially a bit counterintuitive, but once you’ve tried it, I think you’ll find that it becomes a standard part of your toolkit.

First, cut the clip you want to slow down or speed up into your sequence. Then drag the “Trim to Fill” effect icon to it. Now go into trim mode and grab either end of the clip and stretch or shrink it. You’re not actually trimming the clip. It’s first and last do not change. Instead, you’re adjusting the speed of the clip. If you lengthen it, you slow it down. If you shorten it, you speed it up. To reflect the change, a percentage gets apended to your clip name. “27A-1” becomes “27A-1 (150%).” Note that the percentage refers to speed, not length. 200% means the clip is running at double speed. 50% means it’s running at half speed.

You can use all the standard tools to trim the clip and thus create any speed you like. Depending on your hardware, you may have to render the effect to see it play properly. That’s a disadvantage, but the old motion effects had to be rendered, too.

There is one surprise, though. Since trimming the clip changes its speed, if you really do want to trim it, you’ll have to remove the effect, make your trim, put the effect back and readjust the speed.

Trim to Fill is a subset of the “Timewarp” effect. The full timewarp option allows you to ramp your speed changes, gradually speeding a shot up or slowing it down. But it isn’t needed in most cases. Avid also offers other timewarp presets including a reverse motion effect and a 50% slow motion effect.

Note that even the simplest effect created as a timewarp looks smoother than the equivalent effect made the old way. That’s because timewarps do “motion interpolation,” creating additional frames as needed to smooth things out. If you make an old “print every frame twice” effect and compare it to a 50% timewarp, you’ll see the difference instantly.