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Avid AMA Best Practices

Avid Media Composer traditionally required all media files to be converted to its DNxHD Op-Atom MXF format but recent versions have allowed you to skip this process and import tapeless media instantly. This feature is called Avid Media Access (AMA). Media Composer ships with very few AMA plugins so to support additional camera formats you may need to download and install extra AMA plugins.

Using AMA is not without its pitfalls so here are some ways of reducing problems.

  • The first thing to determine is if AMA is a viable workflow for your project. It's useful for short projects with a fast turnaround but Avid can get bogged down with longer and more complex sequences, especially where multicam is involved. AMA can be very useful at importing additional metadata so a common workflow is to mount the AMA volume or link to the AMA files and then transcode.

  • It is recommended that you copy the camera media to another drive before importing. When doing so, make sure to keep the same folder structure and filenames as the original card or Avid may be unable to locate the media files or associated metadata. Auto Transfer is a useful tool for achieving this.

  • Some AMA plugins may use the same file types, which can cause a conflict if Media Composer doesn't know which plugin to use for a particular file. For example, the ARRI Alexa MXF plugin can conflict with the Avid MXF plugin. When linking to AMA files it is therefore important to specify the exact plugin in the Enable dropdown of the Link to AMA File(s) dialog.

  • Remember to unmount AMA volumes in Media Composer before unmounting them in the operating system.

  • AMA uses the Source field to identify the files. Beware of third-party applications that use the Tape Name field instead as they will not be able to relink in Media Composer 5.5 and below. A common workaround is to export an EDL of your sequence and then reimport it and relink. If you are using MC 6, be sure to select Allow relinking between tape and file based media in the Relink dialog.

  • If you change the tape name or other metadata after transcoding / consolidating, you may be unable to reconnect to the AMA linked clips. Either don't modify the tape name or modify it before transcoding / consolidating.

  • Using AMA will limit your options when exporting. If you want to export an AAF you will need to transcode to DNxHD. To do this, right-click on your sequence and select Transcode / Consolidate, select the desired DNxHD flavor and tick Create New Sequence. You will now be able to AAF export the new sequence.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 28 2012 to Avid, Tutorials, Video Editing
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Weekend Reads - 8-24-12

In Search of the NLE or How I Love the Search Tool
Strypes reveals the reasons he misses FCP 7's search tool.

5 Reasons to Use Resolve
Clay Asbury gives his main reasons for using DaVinci Resolve instead of grading within your NLE.

WaveTap snags audio on your Mac with a keyboard shortcut
WavTap is a free open source application for recording audio with a keyboard shortcut.

Sony Sound Forge Pro coming soon to the Mac
Sony's great Windows audio software is now coming to the Mac.

Dongles vs software activation
Arguments for and against using dongles in Avid Media Composer.

Closing Multiple Gaps in a Premiere Pro Timeline
Lots of steps but a nifty trick if you've got many gaps to close.

Why it Pays to Submit to Hackers
Behavioral economists analyze why most people don't backup or choose strong passwords.

Camera shutter speed synchronized with helicopter blade frequency [video]
This is apparently what happens when you shoot a helicopter with a fast enough shutter speed.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 24 2012 to Weekend Reads, Video Editing, Software
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Bugs of the Week - 8-24-12

One again we've hunted out important, unusual or interesting bugs that you should be aware of.

Avid


MC 6.0.3.1 released to fix issue where Marquee wouldn't launch

Line at edge of video with Use Avid Codec selected

Incompatibilities with stereoscopic AAFs imported into Resolve

AVCHD 50 and 60 unsupported by AMA

Various workarounds for disabling a drive in Avid

Consolidation may not work with NTSC-formatted drives on the Mac

FCPX


Break Apart Clip Items corrupts XML files

Keyboard layout export broken in 10.0.5

OS X


OS X 10.8.1 released but some users still reporting reduced battery life compared to OS X 10.7.4


Greyed out .MOV

I wasn't sure what was causing this so I asked on Twitter and got a variety of replies including camera failure, a full card, ejecting the card too early or an interrupted Finder copy operation. No-one seemed to know for sure so if you've seen this before, please let us know by leaving a comment.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 24 2012 to Bugs of the Week, Video Editing, Software
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Adobe Dynamic Link troubleshooting

Dynamic Link is a key selling point of the Adobe suite that many people rely on for their workflows. Here's what to do if it doesn't work as expected. This article is mainly aimed to dynamic linking between After Effects and Premiere but many of the suggestions will apply to the other applications in the suite.

Make sure your compositions have unique names

If you have multiple After Effects projects dynamically-linked in your timeline, Premiere can get confused if the same comp names exist in multiple projects. It's important to name your comps something unique rather than choosing the default "Comp 1" name.

Don't add trailing numbers

Adding trailing numbers to a filename such as "01" or "v02" can interfere with After Effects' Increment and Save function. This can result in the wrong project appearing in your Premiere timeline.

Check your firewall

Your firewall may be preventing the dynamic link process from communicating with the other applications. Make sure your firewall is set to allow all Adobe applications and also the dynamiclinkmanager application located at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/dynamiclink/[CS suite version]/dynamiclinkmanager.

Disable simultaneous frame rendering

Dynamically linked projects do not support the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously option. If you run into problems with it switched on, switch it off in the Memory and Multiprocessing tab of the preferences window in After Effects (it is off by default).

Clear caches and render files

If you find that the wrong project or composition is showing in your timeline, you may need to trash render files or your media cache in order to get it to display correctly. You can trash the render files by going to Sequence > Delete Render Files and the media cache by going to the Media tab in preferences or by using Pro Maintenance Tools.

Render as a movie file

If you still have problems after trying the steps above, render out the comp to a movie, import into Premiere Pro and replace the linked composition. This will of course remove the dynamic link and the advantages it offers, however you can right-click and choose Edit Original to relaunch the After Effects project if you need to re-render any changes.
Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 20 2012 to Adobe, Video Editing, Tutorials
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Bugs of the Week - 8-17-12

Once again we've trawled the NLE manufacturer forums to find the serious or just plain weird bugs of the week. Know about them in advance so they don't slow down your workflow.

Premiere

Features and Sequence Presets are missing from Premiere Pro CS6

Bins have to be named twice after dragging clips onto the New Bin button

Cross-dissolves on multicam footage sometimes show the wrong angle

Interesting discussion about clip marker behavior in CS 6

Avid

Marquee is not functional on OS X 10.8 and prevents Avid from shutting down properly

After upgrading to OS X 10.8, Media Composer gives Interplay errors at startup

Reports of lag with new Blackmagic drivers

Interesting discussion about changes to cross-fade behavior

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 17 2012 to Bugs of the Week, Video Editing, Software
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Preference Manager best practices

Preference Manager is a useful tool for trashing preferences for a range of video editing applications including Avid, Premiere and all versions of Final Cut Pro. This wipes the user settings for your editing application and can fix a wide range of problems.

However, having to set everything up again can be a chore. With a little bit of preparation in advance, you can ensure you never have to trash them again.

1. Start with a stable foundation. We recommend trashing preferences in Preference Manager and then setting them up again from scratch in your NLE, but you can skip this step if you are confident that your settings are stable.

2. Backup the settings. You can choose to backup additional items such as keyboard layouts if you desire.

3. Optionally, lock your preference files to prevent them from becoming corrupt. Some apps don't work correctly with locked preference files, so for these apps the lock option will be greyed out.

4. When a problem occurs, instead of trashing preferences, restore the backup. This will restore the settings you backed up previously to enable you to get back to work quickly.

Additional tips:

  • You can right-click on a backup in the Restore pane and set it as the default backup. This means that it will be automatically restored when running a Quick Fix and you can set it up to fix problems simply by pressing a button on your keyboard.
  • If you make changes to your editing software preferences later on, right-click on the backup in the Restore pane and select Update All Files to replace the preferences in the backup with the current versions on disk.
  • By default Preference Manager will autosave your preferences every 7 days. This allows you to go back to previously working settings if you did not make a backup beforehand

Preference Manager is a free and useful tool for editors and post production professionals. See the user manual for more workflow tips.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 13 2012 to Tutorials, Video Editing, Utilities
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Weekend Reads - 8-10-12

50i-to-50p (or 60i-to-60p) double deinterlacing
Interesting workflow for deinterlacing in FCP 7. Instead of FCP's default method of choosing the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc fields, it allows you to force the 2nd, 4th, 6th.

Tools Spotlight Interview: Digital Rebellion
I gave an interview with Splice Vine about Digital Rebellion and our new cross-platform strategy.

Adobe promotional pricing about to end
The $29.99/month introductory offer for Adobe Creative Cloud expires at the end of this month.

Making Lion and Mountain Lion more like Snow Leopard
This article details many of the options in OS X 10.7 and 10.8 for restoring 10.6 functionality.

Put colorful Finder icons back in Mountain Lion
Here's how to get rid of the grayscale icons in Lion and Mountain Lion.

Random tweets from Edit Fest LA 2012
Scott Simmons summarizes some of the more interesting aspects of Edit Fest LA.

What's the best way to count clips in my bin?
Lots of different ways of counting clips in an Avid bin.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 11 2012 to Video Editing, Software, Weekend Reads
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Bugs of the Week - 8-10-12

Here are some of the more interesting bugs we came across in the past week.

Premiere


Audio repeats until the end of the clip if conforming is interrupted

Hover scrub previews appear inverted and upside down

Cannot scroll unless thumbnails have been generated

Orange lines on rendered video (Windows)

Avid


Avid has released Media Composer and Symphony 6.0.3. There are lots of changes including an I/O hardware toggle switch, performance improvements and bin names can now be up to 64 characters in length.

It also supports OS X 10.7.4 and 10.8. It is still not Gatekeeper-compatible so Avid recommends switching off Gatekeeper, installing Media Composer and then switching it back on again. It's also worth noting that ISIS and MediaNetwork don't support OS X 10.8 at all yet.

EuCon boards seem to work better with a router in between than a direct connection

Workflow for relinking AMA files that lose their links

Slow database access can be caused by too many files in a folder

Final Cut Pro X


Various issues with Mountain Lion

"Cannot allocate memory" error can be caused by NTFS drives

Over a billion plugins installed

OS X


Mountain Lion users reporting poor battery life

Some users reporting improved NLE performance and stability in 10.8 (most likely due to OpenCL improvements)

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 11 2012 to Software, Video Editing, Bugs of the Week
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Weekend Reads - 8-5-12

Here are some interesting articles we discovered over the past week.

Final Cut Pro X and Mountain Lion – now that’s interesting!
Philip Hodgetts tests out Mountain Lion's new dictation feature with FCPX.

Avid Mountain Lion test thread
Avid have provided an official thread for people to discuss issues with OS X 10.8.

Make your sound editor love you
Best practices for recording sound.

Six, (er) Seven New Features in Resolve 9
Alexis van Hurkman summarizes his favorite new features of Resolve 9.

Animate Chapman
Adobe is holding a competition to animate old Monty Python sketches for a new film about Graham Chapman.

Switching to Premiere Pro: Days 2-5: A Few Problems in Premiere
More on Michael Murie's switch to Premiere.

Free legal documents for freelancers
Docracy is a resource for boilerplate legal documents.

Installing QuickTime Player 7
How to install QuickTime Player 7 on Mountain Lion.

Mountain Lion bugs: Chopped battery life and nonsensical 'Save As' behavior
I really don't understand why providing a proper Save As function is so difficult for Apple.

Stability - At Last
Andy Jenkins details how he managed to get Premiere Pro CS 6 running smoothly.

Hacked iCloud password leads to nightmare
A horror story about what can happen if someone gains access to your iCloud account. It later turned out that the hacker had convinced Apple Support to allow him to reset the password.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 5 2012 to Video Editing, Software, Weekend Reads
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Bugs of the Week - 8-3-12

Here are some of the more interesting bugs we came across this week.

Adobe Premiere

Final Cut Pro X

Avid Media Composer

Posted by Jon Chappell on Aug 3 2012 to Video Editing, Software, Bugs of the Week
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