Avid Media Composer Update Notes v3.5

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1 Avid Media Composer Update Notes v3.5 Avid Media Access (AMA) The big news in this release is AMA. This is, at its root, a feature which allows you to connect an XDCAM / P2 / XDCAM EX device to your Avid, and screen and edit directly off that device without first transferring any media to your Avid storage. It is editing without capturing! Granted, performance is slower, and the number of media devices that can be connected at once will limit your available media. Still, AMA could work for: Quick turnaround news and sports editing Screening of discs without using other software or copying media to Avid storage Edit a sequence and consolidate this material to Avid Storage for further editing Archive multiple media (discs/cards) to hard drives, and be able to access the media off these hard drives AMA has some other bonuses as well. An AMA connected drive will fill a bin with clips which contain more metadata, including XDCAM disc titles. What is AMA? AMA is a feature which uses plugins to support various media formats directly. Currently P2, XDCAM and XDCAM EX are supported, but other formats will undoubtedly be added over time. To see what formats are supported by AMA go to the console and type in AMA_ListPlugins. A report like the one below will be presented, listing the installed plugins: PLUGIN NAME VENDOR NAME VERSION MSP_PanasonicP2MXF Avid Technology, Inc. Version 1.0 MSP_SonyXDCAM Avid Technology, Inc. Version 1.0 MSP_SonyXDCAMEXMP4 Sony Corporation Version MVP_PanasonicP2 Avid Technology, Inc. Version 1.0 MVP_SonyXDCAM Avid Technology, Inc. Version 1.0 MVP_SonyXDCAMEX Sony Corporation Version P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

2 Turning AMA ON and OFF AMA is ON by default in version 3.5. When AMA is ON, the normal XDCAM / P2 menus are not available. With AMA ON for example, the import dialogue does not have an XDCAM options tab, and all references to P2 and XDCAM in the FILE menu are removed. To revert to previous behavior, turn AMA OFF. To do this, open the AMA SETTINGS, shown below. In the first tab, you get to choose options for the Bin AMA will place the clips in. On the second tab, remove the top checkmark. Restart the Avid application to have the change take effect! Using Media off the Original Disc or Card If you have a media device connected to your Avid, for example a Sony PDW U1 XDCAM player, and place a disc in the machine, a new bin will appear in your Avid and over the space of a minute or so (depends on the amount of media) your bin will populate with all the clips for the media on your discwithout you doing anything. The media is not transferred; the bin simply creates clips for the media on the disc. The clips appear YELLOW in the bin to indicate they are AMA clips. They also contain extra metadata relevant to the format, as shown above. 2 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

3 These clips can be loaded into the player, edited into a sequence or used to create subclips. They link to the high resolution video and audio on the disc. If you Consolidate from the disc, the media is transferred in its native format into Avid storage. You could edit, consolidate, screen and do other productive work without copying it into Avid storage. If you eject the disc, or power down the drive the media will, of course, go offline. Using Media off of Hard Drives For quite a while many of us have wanted to be able to copy XDCAM (or XDCAM EX or P2) media to hard drives and be able to access the media from those drives. This is now possible. For all this to work properly, copy the entire contents of your original recording into a newly created folder on your hard drive. You may name this folder anything you want. If you have these full copies of XDCAM / P2 / XDCAM EX recordings on a hard drive or on a network, AMA can make the material on that disc appear in a bin, ready for your use. Choose the Menu item FILE > LINK TO AMA VOLUMES Navigate to the folder which contains the copy of the XDCAM disc you want to mount in a bin Click OK and a new bin will appear containing clips to access this XDCAM media. Using FILE > LINK TO AMA VOLUMES you can navigate to one folder containing one disc, or to a parent folder containing sub folders for multiple discs. In the latter case, new bins will appear for all disc images in all the sub folders. The folder references above may sound confusing but it is really quite simple. The folder you navigate to is the starting point for the AMA search. When you point to a folder (or the root of a drive) AMA searches every sub folder in that directory to see if it contains the contents of an original XDCAM / P2 / XDCAM EX recording. All such recordings open in the editing application, ready for your use. Software activation Avid has relied on a hardware key called a dongle to protect the integrity of its software for some time now. With this release, they have also made software activation available. There has been considerable discussion within the Avid community about which is better. Dongles are easier to move around, while software activation is less susceptible to theft. While in this release you may use either a dongle or software activation, Avid has said all future releases will be software activated only. 3 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

4 More LONG GOP Support By LONG GOP we mean better support for XD CAM and P2 formats. Previously we could work with these formats, but any time we did rendering, consolidating or mix downs they had to be performed using one of Avid's DNxHD codecs. Now we can perform all of these functions using Sony and Panasonic codecs. It is worth noting that a simple consolidate now copies this media and its native format. This feature is significant when we start using the new feature called Avid Media Access (AMA). We can select clips directly off of directly connected XDCAM / P2 / XDCAM EX media and copy them into Avid storage in their native format. One reason to do this is that it can be very economical in use of drive space. Sony XDCAM HD at 50 Mb consumes only one third the drive space compared to using Avid s DNxHD 145 codec. Raster Size Selection On most AVID systems you can select the frame size used for playback and effects processing. If the frame size matches the pixel size of your edited media, you will achieve the best performance. In the New Project dialogue you can set the initial Raster size. In the Format tab you can check (and change) the Raster size. Since many people will not know what raster (frame) size is needed for a particular format, Avid provides convenient text notes below the Raster Dimension selector, as shown here. This setting is not available on Adrenaline or MOJO based systems. 4 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

5 Other XDCAM Improvements Avid supports embedded timecode when you export to XDCAM or to Quicktime. (I have not tested this yet) Support for 50Mb XDCAM export via FAM (I have not tested this yet, but it has been reported to be functional) Avid supports exporting 8 tracks of audio to MPEG IMX and XDCAM HD 50 Mbits. (I have not tested this yet) New RELINK Options The relink dialog box has been reorganized. There is also one major change here. Previously, if you were in an HD project and chose RELINK you would only relink to HD media (and vice versa in an SD project). In the above example you would have to have changed the format tab to SD if your intention had been to actually relink to SD the media. Now the relink dialogue itself will let you choose whether you want to relink to SD or HD media no further need to change the format tab to relink to the media of your choice. 5 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

6 Modify Audio Level at Import It has always been the case that when importing audio from a CD into the avid the audio levels are very high, and an immediate attenuation of the audio level is needed after import. There is a new option in the Audio Import settings which will allow you to apply amplification or attenuation to audio files as you import them. There's also a checkmark to indicate that this setting should only apply to audio imported from an audio CD. New Tracking Engine for Image Stabilization The motion tracker has had two different methods of calculating its tracking data the Correlation Tracker and the FluidTracker. A new third method has been added FluidStabilizer. This tracking engine is specifically designed to track camera motion, and stabilize the image. It does not rely on the standard rectangular target tracking boxes, but does its own analysis of the frame at multiple points (indicated by green dots) to find and remove motion of the frame. Keyframeable Color Correction If you open up the Effect Editor with the Color Correction tool active, you will be able to access keyframing of most of the Color Correctors adjustments. Version 3.5 color correction is incompatible with earlier versions, which is one reason why PROMOTE and DEMOTE have been provided (see next section) 6 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

7 Promoting and Demoting Effects Promote Motion Effects to TimeWarp Effects Classic Motion Effects created in the player can be promoted to Timewarp Effects for more capability and flexibility. To Promote a single effect: Edit the effect into the timeline Open the motion effect using the Effect Editor Click the PROMOTE button in the upper right To promote all Motion Effects in the timeline: Select the sequence in the bin Right click on the Sequence Choose PROMOTE EFFECTS from the context menu to see the dialogue shown below After promoting a Motion Effect Avid alludes to a backward compatibility issue, but does not specify in what version the effects would be at risk. Promote AVX Plugins If you have a timeline with AVX 1.x plugin effects in it, and have AVX 2.0 plugins installed, you may be able to Promote your AVX plugins to the later version. To Promote a single AVX effect: Edit the effect into the timeline Open the motion effect using the Effect Editor Click the PROMOTE TO ADVANCED KEYFRAMES button in the lower right To promote all AVX Effects in the timeline: Select the sequence in the bin Right click on the Sequence Choose PROMOTE EFFECTS from the context menu to see the Promote dialogue. 7 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

8 Demote and Promote Color Correction Effects DEMOTE Color Correction: Color Effects in 3.5 can be keyframed. They will not be compatible with older Avid versions. You may DEMOTE a Color Correction in 3.5 to an older version of Avid. To Demote, right click on the sequence in the bin and choose Demote Effects from the context menu. A new sequence with the older style Color Correction will be created. PROMOTE Color Correction: You must PROMOTE Color Correction in a sequence from an older Avid so that you can keyframe within the effect. In fact, when you open a sequence with an older color correction in it a message will appear informing you the Color Correction must be updated. Changes with Nested Effects Any Advanced Keyframe effects in the nest will now be visible in the Effect editor at the same time for quick and easy editing of complex effect combinations. 8 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

9 GENERATOR EFFECTS The Timecode and Sub Cap effects now have two new adjustments to fine tune the look of the font. Line Weight chooses the thickness or boldness of the displayed letters and numbers Text Outline adds a black border to the display Line Weight 1 Line Weight 300 Stereoscopic Editing The Avid is capable of editing with stereo material. This is of course a huge topic which we of course will not cover here. You will notice new settings in your FULL SCREEN DISPLAY and COMPOSER settings which relate to different display methods for Stereo material. 9 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009

10 AudioSuite Plugins There are some new AudioSuite plugins. These are all more fully described in the Avid Advanced Editing Guide (February 2009 edition) available at BF Essential Clip Remover Repairs clipped audio recordings. Bomb Factory BF76 Provides compression modeled after the 1176 studio compressor. Compressor/Limiter III Applies either compression or limiting to audio material, depending on the ratio of compression used. Expander/Gate III Applies expansion or gating to audio material, depending on the ratio setting. De Esser III Reduces sibilants and other high frequency noises that can occur in vocals, voiceovers, and wind instruments such as flutes. Funk Logic Mastererizer Provides low fidelity sound design capabilities for the creative degredation of audio. Duplicate Creates a new master clip from a selected audio clip. The plug in uses the IN and OUT points on the selected clip to define the boundaries of the new clip. Bombfactory BF76 Compressor/Limiter Dyn 3 10 P age Media Composer v3.5 notes Paul Sampson 2009