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Clip Comments/Bin Comments

March 30, 2007

I don’t know about you, but I’m always wishing that I could see clip comments in frame view bins. I make a lot of sequences (and sub-sequences of different versions and alternates) and even though you can create clip names of any length, sometimes it’s helpful to make longer notes. Yes, I know I can see comments in text view, but I arrange sequences in a visual grid where position means something and I don’t want to switch views to see comments. I’d like to see a second line of text under a clip, or have the comment pop open if I pause my cursor over a clip.

By the same token, I’d love to have a comment column for bins. It’s galling enough that I can’t make a bin name that’s longer than 27 characters, even though the OS no longer has a problem with this, but I’d like more. A description of what the bin contains and why I might want to open it, visible in the project window, would be very helpful. A typical project for me lasts six to twelve months and produces hundreds of bins. In the Avid I can’t search across bins, so getting some help figuring out what a bin contains would be welcome.

These two features seem pretty simple to me and I venture that they’d appeal to a lot of people. For my money, they’d be a lot more desirable than some other features that would take a lot more effort to create.

Technorati Tags: avid, edit, film, video

Categories: Avid, Avid Wish List & Bugs, User Interface

Comments: 4 Comments

The Best Editor on the Planet?

March 26, 2007

Is it me, or does this business of calling the machine the “editor” seem inappropriate to you? Last time I looked, editing was my job. The machine is a tool — a better tool, sure, but something that only works in the hands of a skilled and creative human being. Calling the machine the editor is like calling a hammer a carpenter or a pipe wrench a plumber.

Last year Avid added to the confusion by using the advertising tagline “the best editor on the planet.” I tend to agree with the sentiment — for me, the Media Composer remains the best piece of software for the work I do. But it’s a tool. We never called a Moviola or a KEM an editor. And we don’t call Photoshop a designer.

Maybe this use of the word has its origin at big facilities. If you’re dealing with 25 or 100 systems, buying them, upgrading them, making sure they work, then maybe you start calling them editors. You don’t really think about the people — as far as your balance sheet is concerned, the room and whatever is in it is indeed the editor.

In the early years of the digital revolution, the mantra of the entire industry was that the software was just a tool, a much better tool, sure, but something that only worked in the hands of a skilled and creative human being. Avid advanced that perspective very consistently. The Media Composer will allow you to be more creative. It can’t edit for you, you don’t want it to do that and we don’t claim that it can. It won’t put you out of a job.

Today, Avid marketing seems to have forgotten that fundamental point. To me, and I’ll wager, to a lot of people like me, calling the machine the editor is at best tone deaf and at worst, downright disrespectful. As we ramp up to this year’s NAB, I hope that Avid retires that tagline as soon as possible.

Technorati Tags: avid, edit, film, video

Categories: Avid, Avid Wish List & Bugs, Quality of Life

Comments: 6 Comments

Keyframe Madness

March 22, 2007

Can it really still be true that when you trim a shot that carries a segment effect, all of its keyframes move? Presumably, the original idea was that if you have an effect on a shot and you change the shot length, then you must want the effect to change proportionately. This was probably harder to implement than the alternative — chopping off keyframes. But for me and for everybody I know, it creates hidden effects that are almost never desireable.

Keyframes are generally aligned with action and need to stay attached to the frames I put them on. Or the distance between keyframes — ie. the speed of an effect — was deliberately chosen and I don’t want it to change. So every time I trim or extend a shot with a segment effect I have to laboriously write down the positions of all its keyframes, make the trim, and then move them back where they were. A minor adjustment can cause dozens of keyframes to move.

The workaround is to use lift or extract rather than trim. This leaves keyframes where they were. But you can’t lengthen something that way.

(Transition effects are immune to this kind of thing, by the way. If you trim a shot that carries a fade, the fade length is preserved. Ditto with a dissolve.)

This “feature” can’t be that hard to fix. If lifting/extracting does the right thing, then some of the needed code is already written. If people at Avid are worried that customers won’t be happy with such a change then make it a preference. But I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t welcome it.

Technorati Tags: avid, avid media composer, edit, film, video

Categories: Avid, Avid Technical Tips, Avid Wish List & Bugs

Comments: 7 Comments

What New Features Look Like

March 19, 2007

I was going over my book, “Avid Media Composer Techniques and Tips” this weekend. It was originally published way back in 1995, when MC development was advancing very quickly. The book starts with a list of the new features that appeared in Version 5.2. Take a look at this:

Basics

Bigger Source and Record Images
Track Panel in the Timeline
Tear Off Button Bar
Locators
Script View in Bins
Find Bin Command
Configurable Go-to-Next
Improved Deck Controller

Effects

More Real-Time Effects
Dissolves Made from Trim Mode
Easy Real-Time Title Fades
Better Film Fades & Dissolves
Film Blowups

Editing

Simpler Full-screen Play
Better One-Frame Audio in 3-Button Play
Trim Sides Play Together
Dupe Detection in the Timeline
Better Waveforms
Control+Drag to Split Tracks
Control+Lasso to Select Transitions
Multi-Camera Capabilities

Lists

Lockable Sequences
Multi-Sequence Change Lists
Optical Lists Handle More Effects
Preview Codes in Change Lists
Frame Images in Lists

All of that appeared in one version of the software! And frankly, the previous upgrade, from Version 4.5 to Version 5, was even bigger.

Needless to say, software changes most in the beginning, when developers are still realizing their initial vision (or getting the kinks out of it). It’s unreasonable, and probably undesirable, to see changes continue at this pace throughout the life of a product.

The Media Composer rocked in 1995. And it’s no slouch now. But there were plenty of things that needed work back then, and today there’s a lot of stuff that feels just plain archaic. It’s time to see some new thinking.

Technorati Tags: avid, avid media composer, edit, film, video

Categories: Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Avid Wish List & Bugs

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Why Are Our Mixing Tools So Bad?

March 16, 2007

A couple of days ago I sat beside a friend while he did a one-day temp mix on a Pro Tools. We were shoulder to shoulder in a small room and that gave me a chance to learn a lot about how PT works.

Over the years I’ve been struck by how many feature and TV editors refuse to use Avid’s volume graphing features. Instead, they simply make add-edits in audio clips, set levels on the clips and connect them with a dissolve. I use keyframes and can’t see why others don’t. I recently debated this with a friend and she focused on how you change a volume graph. And she made some good points. In fact, it is easier to move a series of volume changes when you do them with add-edits and dissolves — you do it by slipping them.

I was thinking about all of this while watching my friend mix. It turns out that Pro Tools has a whole host of mixing features that I’d kill for in my Avid. There’s a reason that so many people use this program.

For example:

Waveforms are on all the time, they’re very detailed, and there’s no performance penalty for looking at them. Why have we waited so long for this?
Background saves. You can work all day and never see the system saving. But the saves are happening, and at any time interval you like. You get the PT equivalent of the attic, too. You just don’t have to wait while the save takes place.
As many tracks as you like. No artificial limitation.
The ability to easily mute a clip.
The ability to “nudge” a clip. Want to move something a frame to the right? Just select it and tap the arrow key. (Final Cut has this feature, and muting, and unlimited tracks, too.)
You can “spot” a clip into position by just typing a timecode onto it.
You can mix and handle a stereo pair (or a 5.1 mix) as a single object with one set of keyframes. You don’t have to laboriously create (and adjust) two separate volume graphs.
You can raise one or more keyframes, very precisely, by dragging them with the option key.
You can grab a whole series of keyframes and move them up or down by dragging, and when you do it you see a clear numerical display showing you what you’re doing in DBs.
You can move a group of keyframes in time (left or right).
Keyframes can be created automatically. In the Avid, to lower a section of music you have to create four keyframes and then move two of them. That’s a lot of clicks and drags. In Pro Tools you just mark two points and drag the line between them.
You get a separate graph for panning. So you can pan something just by dragging the graph and you can move a sound from one place to another easily.
You can route (bus) all your dialog into a single track and mix that track as a whole with a single volume graph. You don’t have to individually manipulate the volume of every single clip.
You can copy automation and filters — everything — from one clip to another. So if you carefully mix a piece of music against dialog and then need to replace it, you can keep your mix and just change the cue.
And — eureka! — the timeline is live. You can scroll it vertically or horizontally, change magnification, change views, all while your sequence continues to play.

Avid has focused much of their development effort in the last decade on visual effects, while the audio interface has largely remained untouched. Today, our sound tools just don’t reflect the kind of work we’re routinely asked to do, and they turn temp mixing into a real chore. Meanwhile, the upgrade rate in LA has been glacial. Bringing over only a few of the features listed above might just get the attention of a lot of editors.

Technorati Tags: avid, edit, film, video

Categories: Audio, Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Avid Wish List & Bugs, User Interface

Comments: 3 Comments

What’s Avid Up To?

March 15, 2007

What does the recent Avid Insider seminar mean to editors? That depends on how you think it fits into Avid’s plans for NAB next month. The seminar itself was well done, and the company certainly has been busy, but what we saw was mostly focused on workgroups.

It’s possible that will be some surprises in April, but if this was an NAB preview then there just isn’t that much in the way of bread and butter features for editors to get excited about. Specifically:

Avid Interplay is an interesting product but it wasn’t designed for typical feature and TV cutting rooms. For reality TV and large installations it’s another story. If you are trying to coordinate the work of dozens of editors, producers and writers, or have to handle lots of new visual effects every day, then you need something to help you, and Interplay might be that thing. Unfortunately for editors, it requires the learning of yet another user interface and frankly, one that looks awfully crude and Windows-centric.

DNx36 is probably going to be adopted in a lot of cutting rooms and for Avid folks it’s going to represent a small revolution. But editors have been cutting compressed HD for some time with Final Cut, using DVCPRO. Avid’s codec is arguably superior, but the process is nothing new. It requires Adrenaline, so adopting this format will nudge editors and facilities to trade in their old Meridien machines.

Automatic script mimic is a very slick idea and I certainly plan to try it out. But, so far, the large majority of editors haven’t been attracted to Avid’s script tools and I’m not sure whether this will sway them.

A realtime burn-in effect for timecode and footage would save cutting rooms a lot of time, but it’s not here yet and we’ve been waiting for a long time.

Avid running on Intel-Mac should be released any day now. That’s probably the biggest news for editors and it should help make our machines, particularly our portable machines, run a lot faster. But like all Avid products, it’s probably going to be buggy at first, and for that reason, the adoption rate is going to be slow.

That leaves Avid Satellite, which seems like a good solution for Pro Tools video until you realize that it costs roughly $6,000 per seat. I expect that many sound and music editors, when told what the ante is, are going to decide that Quicktime is plenty good enough.

What was missing in all this were new usability features for editors. A new title tool, new mixing tools, a live timeline, background saves, automatic backups — the list is long, and I’m sure you all have your favorite items for it.

Instead, the changes we’re seeing mirror the kinds of things that came in with Meridien, namely improved speed and image quality — along with a lot of new bugs and quirks. Editors never got excited about Meridien, and we’ve largely been staying away from Adrenaline for the same reasons. That can’t be good for Avid’s bottom line.

There’s plenty on this list to think about and some of it will certainly be used widely. But at the same time. I’m struck by the fact that while Avid continues to avoid changing the core application, Apple pushes the envelope, bringing out major new features, or whole new applications, almost every year. To some extent they have to do this, because they’ve been coming from behind. But that time is ending. Though I still prefer Media Composer, both applications are now roughly similar. And with Final Cut you get DVD Studio Pro, Motion, Compressor and Soundtrack.

The question now is what each company will offer at NAB. Rumor has it that Apple will show a beefed up Final Cut, able to play, cut and conform 4K materials, perhaps running on an 8-core Mac Pro. That’ll be a show-stopper for sure.

Technorati Tags: avid, edit, film, final cut pro, video

Categories: Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Avid Wish List & Bugs, Final Cut, User Interface, Workflow

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