Editing With Media Composer

Avid Media Composer, in common with many other programs, has a monitor window which has both the source and destination windows, although this can be compressed into a single playback window if preferred.  We should not really say " like many other programs" since most of them took the idea from Avid in the first place.   You can see these at the top in the screen shot.  Underneath is the timeline which again is pretty standard showing the video tracks at the top and audio tracks at the bottom.

This picture also shows the audio mixer in the bottom left, a typical bin above it and the main project window behind that.

The timeline and filmstrip

The look of the Avid timeline can be varied and different layouts can be saved and re-used. 

The film strip view along the top of the timeline shows the edit as it is as a composite of all the layers of video - so you can see here shows the 5 layers of video (4 pnp and a background) made from the edit.  The same result is seen in the destination window.  The way this is redrawn can sometimes slow down performance if you have a complex timeline so you can always turn it off.

The clip frame at the start of each clip always shows the frame of the timeline at the present location.  You cannot show the clip as a filmstip - the only film strip available is the one on the top track showing the final edit. 

Sound can be seen as a waveform like all other editing programs. Unlike most programs Avid draws the wave form every time as needed so as you zoom in and out you wait while the waveform is redrawn although it redraws a lot faster than it used to in Media Composer 6.  A useful feature is that you can zoom the waveform on the timeline - so if the sound is quite you can increase the size of the waveform display without changing the volume.

Clip colours

One very useful feature of Avid is you can assign colours to different types of clips - so you can instantly see any missing clips because they will show up as red, for offline. 

You can have different colours for different types of media such as SD and HD.

Window layouts & customisation

This picture just shows the different standard layouts that you can use with Avid - but it is far from showing the whole story.  Everything is Avid is customisable from the size and location of the buttons, to the size and choice of font used in the bin window, to the amount of bevel on each button.  Alll the settings are saved in your "user profile" which you can move from machine to machine as required.

The Project Window

The Avid Media Composer project window.  Here these are shown as a series of icons, although you can show a text only view with lots of different information shown.  You can customise these views and have as many different versions as you need.

You can play the clip directly in the bin - just select the clip and press play.  This means play clips, move them around and effectively storyboard them here in the project window. 

The amount of detail you can show here is amazing and you can also manage all the clips on the hard drive through the project window - using a special version called the Media tool.  Here you can show clips, together with render files and a whole host of other useful items.

Avid Capture

Like all programs Avid can capture DV and HDV footage down the FireWire and with the latest versions happily handles all formats of 1080i and 720P. 

Capture of tape based material is one area where it excels.  For example if you have a sequence all capture at a low, off-line resolution, and you want to change this to full quality just select the sequence and choose capture and Avid will capture just the sections used on the timeline.

This image shows the capture window where you can add clip names and annotation as you capture and you can also choose to put clips straight onto the timeline.

Avid captures into its own media directory into its own format.  These days they use a format called MXF  (in previous versions Avid used a format called OMF).  An MXF file is just a different type of file, a bit like an AVI file or a MOV file and video can be stored in all sorts of types and sizes.  Panasonic DVCPro HD is stored in MXF files for example.

Avid has several formats in which you can save video - these include some low resolution formats for "off-line" editing.  The lowest will let you store and hour of DV footage in a file which is about 2GB in size, rather than the original 13GB. This means if you want to edit on a laptop, for example, you can convert all your footage to "offline", edit on the laptop, then re-connect to full quality files when back at your main machine.  You can capture standard definition footage into these formats directly or covert the files after capture using the Avid "consolidate and transcode" function.

Because Avid uses these special types of MXF files they cannot be read by every application.  Normally to get the clips out of Avid and into something else you have to save them into a different file type.  This is not quite as convenient as having common "AVI" or "MOV" files which other programs can simply load without any effort.  However, the advantage is that Avid can manage all the files itself which means that, especially with large projects, organising all the files, renders, low res and hi res versions is a lot easier than with other programs.

Capture with Avid Media Composer.

Deck compatibility is an important factor to consider when using Media Composer.  Compatibility improves with each new version, however, I would ensure that you check that the deck you are using is thoroughly compatible with Avid.  We have had more compatibility problems with Avid than with other programs.

If the deck is listed as compatible you should be ok.  Even if the deck is not listed it may still work but we recommend testing it first.

These days, of course, people also film a lot using card-based cameras and formats like Panasonic DVCPro HD (from P2 cards) and Sony XDCAM and XDCAM-EX can now be imported and directly edited from the cards using Avids AMA feature.

Avid Locators

Media Composer can your video on capture into individual clips, or it can do it afterwards, as long as you capture into DV or HDV (rather than one of the other formats Avid supports).  You can also just add locators (markers) to the clip on capture to denote new scenes.

The locator window will then show you not only the name and timecode of the locator but also an icon of the picture where the locator is found.

Locators in Avid are very sophisticated.  You can have several different colours and the comments on the locators pop up on screen as you play through the video. 

You could even use them as a way of cataloguing your video clips rather than "sub-clipping".  Using the Locator window you can show the different locators with an icon and other comments, and a quick click will take you to that part of the clip, ready to splice it into a sequence.

The Effect Editor

The effect editor pallet is the same for all effects.  Once you know how to use one effect you can essentially use them all. You can save any collection of settings as a preset and apply it to other clips or multiple clips at once.  The keyframes can be either "elastic" or "static".  This means that if you carefully set up an effect and then make the clip longer you can choose to either scale the effect with the clip - so, for example, it flies along the same path but just takes longer to do so, or leave the keyframes where they were - so it does exactly the same motion and then just stops for longer at the end of it.

You can save out a preset for any effect just by dragging the little purple icon to the bin.  You can apply an effect to multiple clips just by selecting all the the clips and double clicking on the effect icon in the bin.

The control and range of effects you get with Media Composer is unmatched.  It is comparable to the range of effects you have using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects together - except it is all in the same program.

You can do even more effects using AVID FX (which is a rebadged version of Boris RED) which is also included when you buy Media Composer 6.