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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.
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.
One again we've hunted out important, unusual or interesting bugs that you should be aware of.
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
Keyboard layout export broken in 10.0.5
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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:
Preference Manager is a free and useful tool for editors and post production professionals. See the user manual for more workflow tips.
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.
Here are some of the more interesting bugs we came across in the past week.
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 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
Various issues with Mountain Lion
"Cannot allocate memory" error can be caused by NTFS drives
Over a billion plugins installed
Mountain Lion users reporting poor battery life
Some users reporting improved NLE performance and stability in 10.8 (most likely due to OpenCL improvements)
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.
Here are some of the more interesting bugs we came across this week.