Avid Media Composer Pointers
Getting better results out of your editing experience means learning a few useful tricks. For the next few posts, I’ll offer some suggestions intended to improve your efficiency on several popular editing applications. This first post covers three quick tips with Avid Media Composer. (Click images for an expanded view.)
Film strips
One of the features of Apple’s FCP X that I really like is the way the selected clip is displayed when the “event” browser (bin) is set to the list view. The selected clip is shown at the top of the browser window as a film strip covering the length of that clip. This makes it very easy to look at the strip and identify at a glance that the shot starts as a wide and zooms to a close-up. The Avid frame view won’t give you such information without scrubbing. But did you know there’s a similar film strip solution in Media Composer?
Most editors are used to double-clicking a clip in a bin to load it into the source viewer. For many, it’s a habit that ignores another approach. When selecting a clip in a bin, simply hit the enter key to load it into the viewer. No need to click or double-click. That’s the first step in this tip.
The Avid timeline window always loads two timelines – the edited sequence and the source. You can toggle between source and edit timelines with a keystroke. The timeline window can also be set to display a “film” video track. When doing so, you get a film strip view of the entire timeline. When you view the source side of the timeline window, the result is a film strip display of the entire source clip. By leaving the timeline window toggled to the source view with the film track enabled, you can quickly go through your bin selections using the enter key and checking out the clip in this film strip display. This will give you a fast way to review your footage with minimal scrubbing and clicking.
The Find menu
When you call up the Media Composer Find menu (cmd-F on a Mac), you get several search options, including Phrase Find, if you’ve purchased that option and have indexed the audio files. Find works with more than Phrase Find, though. It can search for clips across all bins, but it also allows you to search for any text in locators (markers). If you’ve placed locators in your sequence and labelled these with text info, simply type the text into the Find menu search field, click the Find button and your play head will jump to that locator in the timeline.
Master bus
With Media Composer 7, Avid has added a master bus to the audio mixer panel. Aside from controlling overall levels, this bus will also accept real-time audio plug-ins from Media Composer’s standard set (RTAS) or from compatible third-party audio filters. I often will add a basic compressor/limiter to my mixes and with the new master bus, Avid has given me an ideal place for it.
Some additional Media Composer tips here and here.
If you are serious about your Media Composer chops, here are three great books that will help you up your game.
Avid Uncut: Workflows, Tips, and Techniques from Hollywood Pros (Steve Hullfish)
Avid Agility: Working Faster and More Intuitively with Avid Media Composer, Third Edition (Steven Cohen)
Avid Media Composer 6.x Cookbook (Ben Hershleder)
©2014 Oliver Peters
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