ProVideo Coalition.com: the EDITBLOG on PVC by Scott Simmons

Adding an effect in Media Composer is a click and drag proposition. Unlike FCP where all clips could be considered to have basic effects like scaling, cropping and positioning “built in” to the clip and waiting for adjustment in the Motion tab of the Viewer, Avid clips do not so you have to add an effect to a clip to do any kind of changes like scaling, cropping etc. The easiest way to get access to these basic clip adjustments is to add the powerful 3D Warp effect to a clip.

To add the 3D Warp effect (or any other effects for that matter) access the Effect Palette by either the Tools > Effect Palette menu (command + 8) or the Effect Palette tab in the main project window. The categories of effects are listed on the left with the specific effects and their icons listed on the right. For the 3D Warp choose the Blend category > 3D Warp. Click on the 3D Warp icon and drag it onto a clip in the timeline. The effect is now applied. You can see the little icon on the clip in the timeline:

A clip with the 3D Warp effect applied

Now time to adjust parameters. With the playhead parked on the 3D effected clip (be sure the V1 icon is turned on in the timeline patch bay) enter Effect mode by clicking the effect button at the bottom of the timeline

or using the Tools > Effect Editor menu option. With that the Effect Editor will open:

The Avid Effect Editor with the 3D Warp parameters

The Effect Editor is very similar to FCP’s Viewer > Filter tab. It’s the place where all of the parameters for a given effect can be adjusted and keyframed. At first it doesn’t look the same as there is no timeline available for keyframing the effects. In older versions of Avid all keyframing took place by adding keyframes in the mini-timeline below the source monitor. With later versions Avid added the Promote to Advanced Keyframes command which opens a timeline just for keyframing of effect parameters. To access advanced keyframes look in the lower right corner of the effect editor and click the Advanced Keyframe button:

A timeline will open in the right of the effect editor where keyframes can be added for all the different parameters of a given effect on the Keyframe Graphs. This Effect Editor timeline behaves like any other keyframing timeline that you might experience in Adobe After Effects and FCP as well. Pick a parameter like Scaling and twirl down the little disclosure triangle to the left of Scaling to open up the x and y parameter controls. You can then move the playhead within the clip and begin to add keyframes and adjust parameters just like in any keyframe based animation timeline. Move your playhead into your 3D Warp effected clip, either on the Timeline window or the advanced keyframe timeline in the effect editor. You can add a keyframe by clicking the pink keyframe icon

at the bottom of the Effect Editor or hitting the ’ (apostrophe) key

on the keyboard. When you click the pink keyframe key at the bottom of the Effect Editor you will get a pop-up asking you exactly where you want to add the keyframe. These different options are pretty self-explanatory and offer nice options when adding keyframes. I like to choose Add to Open Group as that will add keyframes to whatever parameters are twirled open at the time. I can control where to add keyframes by what I have opened. Do this and adjust the scaling parameter, then move forward a bit, add another keyframe and adjust the scaling parameter again. You’ve just made a scaling animation in Effect Editor. Play it back to watch the animation in the Record monitor.

If you twirl down the little triangle to the right of the parameter sliders you will open the animation curves graph. This is Avid’s version of the familiar animation curves editor and right clicking on a keyframe in the curves editor will give you a pop-up with all the usual keyframe eases and options:

Avid has done a lot of work to make keyframing easier. You can move single keyframes by selecting a keyframe triangle either in the Effect Editor timeline or the mini timeline under the record monitor and holding the option key down while dragging to move a keyframe. You can also move multiple keyframes at once by shift + selecting all the keyframes you want to move and then option + dragging on one to move them all. If you look at the advanced keyframe pop-up menu when you right + click on a keyframe you will also see two options called Fixed and Elastic. One of those options will have a dot next to it to tell which is selected. When set on fixed, the duration of a set animation will not change when you change the overall length of the shot via trimming in the timeline. If set to elastic the keyframes will move either stretching or shortening the duration of the animation in proportion to how you have changed the length of the shot. If you’ve ever copy and pasted and deleted and reapplied keyframes in FCP then this is a welcome addition to keyframing. When working in the advanced keyframes timeline I enjoy really stretching out the Effect Editor (I wish it would get even bigger) so it really feels like any other animation program. Spend some time playing around with at least the 3D Warp effect and the advanced keyframes and the use should feel very natural if you’ve used this type of thing for motion graphics. When finished hit the escape key return to Source/Record editing by hitting the y key on your keyboard or clicking the Source/Record button

at the bottom of the timeline.

It’s also important to know how to apply multiple effects to an Avid clip. If you were to apply another effect, say a Flip, right on to the clip where your 3D Warp was applied then the 3D Warp would disappear. You have to do what Avid calls a “Step In” and apply the effect. To Step In place your playhead on the clip where you applied the 3D Warp effect and click the Step In arrow at the bottom of the timeline:

You then get a view of only that single clip in the timeline with no effect applied. Drag another effect from the Effect Palette to apply that effect. You can keep stepping in as many times as you need to apply multiple effects. It’s a clunky way to apply multiple effects but that’s how it is done in Media Composer. While you are stepped in begin to add keyframes and tweak parameters using the Effect Editor like we did above with the 3D Warp tool. Some effects don’t have keyframing options (like the Flip effect) so there will be no parameters to keyframe. If the effect supports Advanced Keyframes click the button to open that timeline. If the Advanced Keyframes button is missing from the lower right corner of the Effect Palette then keyframes can be added in the mini timeline below the Record monitor:

If Advanced Keyframes aren’t available for a particular effect add keyframes in the mini timeline below the Record monitor

Once you have added keyframes to a stepped in effect click the Step Out button

to step back out to the full timeline. You can then open the Effect Editor and see all of the effects you have applied. If you have promoted an effect to advanced keyframes and animated a parameter while stepped in you can then adjust, keyframe and animate all parameters of all effects in the Effect Editor. This is similar to having multiple effects applied to a clip in FCP and opening those effects in the Viewer under the Filters tab:

Multiple effects applied to a clip. Notice the Bezier curves applied to the Color Effect

Let’s try just a few other things before we wrap up this installment of The Basics of Avid Media Composer for a Final Cut Pro Editor. Avid has an Add Transition button for adding basic transitions like dissolves and fades to black. Put the playhead near and edit and hit the \ (backslash)

key. A pop-up pops up for selecting the type of transition, the duration and the alignment. There’s a mini timeline in the popup that shows the transition visually. You can also click and drag both sides of the transition in this mini timeline to adjust it.

Use the Quick Transition popup to apply dissolves, fades and dips to color

There’s also a number of transitions in the Effect Palette like wipes, peels and pushes to name a few. They can be applied by click + dragging them to the edit between clips in the timeline. Then park the playhead on the edit and enter Effect Mode to adjust.

To create a title in Avid Media Composer choose Clip > New Title. You will get a popup asking if you want to create this title in Marquee or the Title Tool:

Check Persist if you want to avoid this pop-up. This can be turned on and off in Settings > Marquee Title

For our purposes here choose Title Tool for the simple titler. Marquee is an advanced titling application that is kind of like After Effects for titles. You can do advanced titles and animations with Marquee and could spend many hours learning how to use it well. The simple title tool is very basic but does offer a WYSIWUG design approach with shapes and borders and the ability to do rolls and crawls. The Title Tool will also show you the frame you are parked on in the background to aid in design.

The Avid Title Tool showing a black background

If you’ve made it this far in the article then you must have been using this as a guide as intended to try out Avid Media Composer 3.5. Thanks for taking the time to work through some of the basic features of Avid and through this article. As I stated at the beginning the purpose of this article isn’t to persuade anyone to move from Final Cut Pro to Avid Media Composer or to say that one application is better than the other, though there are features in each app that is better than comparable features of the other. This article was meant to help anyone curious about Media Composer be able to download the free demo and “kick the tires” on some of the basic features that make Avid Avid. If you learn to use Media Composer properly and understand the differences between it and FCP and understand why things are different it can be a great tool to add to your editing tool kit, especially if you are using Avid Media Access supported media like DVCPRO HD and XDCAM. Happy editing on whatever platform you may choose!

Final Cut Pro X Multicam Editing webinar now available on-demand

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Plus a little screencast in this blog post on a topic we didn’t get to cover.

I had great fun last week presenting the Final Cut Pro X multicam editing webinar…

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These are a few of the things that I found myself searching for as I’ve been moving over to Premiere Pro CS6 as a FCP 7 replacement

Adobe is making a big play for Final Cut Pro users with their CS6 release of Premiere Pro. It’s vastly improved over the Premiere Pro of old and is a lot like Final…

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I promised to post a bunch of helpful links for migrating editors so here they are.

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Great article, Scott. It was very easy for an Avid newbie like me to follow. I made sure to bookmark it for future reference.

Posted by Jon Chappell on 07/04 at 12:49 AM

Great work Scott. Even for an someone like me - with thousands of hours driving an Avid, I managed to learn a few things.

Posted by Dylan Reeve on 07/04 at 01:52 AM

Great resource Scott!
Just last week I found the AVID MC Trial a gem. My first reaction to MC 3.5.1 is, OK I remember a similar scenario just a few years ago. AVID MC were resting on their collective laurels and just wasn’t keeping up with what some of the market needed, and so some of the market went with Final Cut Pro. It had(has) some great stuff to offer! Now we are living it all over again, tables turned 180 degrees. Apple is now resting on their “Pro-App” laurels and AVID has come to the table with formidable foe and great tool with lots of features and compatibility that frankly FCP should have built in months ago. Example: AVID actually handles XDCAM like it is supposed to be handled with true Proxy support. OK sorry about the rant, just really happy with the way MC 3.5.1 feels, its got that new editor smell too.
Cheers!
j

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/13 at 07:37 PM

Brilliant write up - you REALLY know these two programmes.

I however am utterly biased having been hitting brick walls and a massive slowing down of scattered unintuitive sequence of key-presses in FCP that Avid achieves far quicker for the same result. There isnt a plethora of options in Avid - generally only what they consider to be the best ‘client paying by the hour’ way!

I have been delighted by the many more helpful ways in which FCP operates but have also been disgusted by some of its shortcomings (cant save to bin say a 3 layer custom of keyframed plugin ‘house style’ effects/transitions (with audio Fx too) to quickly drop over any cut! ; trimming doesn’t show incoming/outgoing frames (unless you inaccurately mouse drag or add a bizarre additional standalone viewer window); weak custom user settings support for us freelancers switching suites often; never shows you that a clip has had CCR or an effect applied - its not just one editor per project you know!!! Also Easy Setup is an absolute laugh as anything called ‘easy’ usually is!

Currently wildly preferring Avid in an industry ‘freelance editor’ based scenario; it is undoubtedly quicker and with better trimming. However FCP excels in other, more user friendly but less mission critical situations and does that very very OFTEN!

Hey ho - I’m paying the mortgage for a month now on FCP so I hope to love it more soon!

D (future fruit fan!?)

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/21 at 01:48 PM

Apple is now resting on their “Pro-App” laurels and AVID has come to the table with formidable foe and great tool with lots of features
How do I go about becoming a freelance editor/writer?
Freelance Jobs

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/18 at 10:13 PM

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