AVID Express for Windows NT

Transcription

1 AVID Express for Windows NT Prices: Express Deluxe including 21" monitor, keyboard, computer, all boards, no external hard drives, and software costs $36,750. Express Elite costs $52,499 including the realtime 3D FX board and software. Avid recently introduced their Express video editing system for Windows NT - providing an attractive alternative for corporate users who may prefer NT to the Macintosh. Asked to position Express within the range, UK sales manager, Peter Thomson, explained: "Express-NT sits midway between our entry-level MC Express software-only product for Windows NT and our high-end Symphony and DS systems. Express products are all sold with hardware, software and storage as complete systems with maintenance contracts and are aimed squarely at the corporate video market. Symphony and DS work with uncompressed video - DS running on Intergraph computers while Symphony runs on the IBM Intellistation. Symphony is similar to Media Composer on the Mac and works with long-form programme material while DS came from the Soft-Image stable and offers nonlinear editing but with a more effects-centric bias aimed at short-form work such as commercials." Express-NT is supplied pre-installed on an IBM Intellistation M-Pro computer and includes a breakout box with professional video and audio connections, a highresolution computer monitor, two speakers, and external drives for storage. Two striped 9 Gb drives hold approximately 35 minutes of footage at the highest resolution and up to 9 hours at the lowest. Xpress-NT uses the new Avid Meridien video, audio and effects boards - featuring up to 2:1 fixed-rate video compression with a 720 x 576 framesize for PAL. You can buy the system with two different software 'bundles' - the Deluxe standard package or the Elite which offers many more realtime effects - and you can add the 16:9 Editing Option to allow widescreen operation - a feature not yet available on the Mac version. The software consists of three main parts: the Bins for storing video, audio and graphics files, the Timeline graphical representation of your sequence of edits, and the Composer monitor which displays the video. The Timeline has 4 video tracks and 8 audio tracks with audio mixdown and monitoring through 2 output channels. You digitize your video into the Bins using the Digitize tool which has built-in waveform and vectorscope monitors to let you adjust the incoming signal - with a range of compression ratios provided (see screenshot).

2 AVID Express Main Screen One of the system's strengths is the integration of all the tools you need to create a finished video from raw source material. For example, you can create multilayered effects then composite these onto a single track - making the system far more flexible than the 4 tracks of video would suggest. And there are more than 80 segment and transition effects, including keys, wipes and 2D and 3D picture-inpicture effects. All effects can be customized and animated in time using keyframes - and over 75% of these are realtime. So you have less reasons to want to use thirdparty tools like After Effects. Uncompressed titles and graphics can be displayed in realtime using the Down Stream Keyer and 2D keyframed titles and graphics can be played over other realtime effects. The Title Tool has all you need to create basic text and graphics elements - so less reason to use Photoshop. You can even create rolling titles - great for end credits! You can also use the Title Tool to create basic mattes which can be used to key a video clip over other tracks - rather than having to create a mask in Illustrator or whatever and import this, although you will still need to do this for more complex shapes. All of these features make the system ideal for the corporate video-maker who needs to quickly edit existing video footage together with new footage, charts, tables and other graphics or imported animation, add straightforward voiceovers, SFX and music beds, and finish off by adding straightforward titles and credits before outputting back onto videotape.

3 AVID Express Tools The Video Output Tool lets you control the three video outputs independently - so, for instance, you can layback to tape using the S-Video output while still viewing the image on a composite monitor. You can also generate test patterns to set up your deck and even edit these into your sequence if you like. And while the Mac version offers component, composite and a serial digital interface for Sony DigiBeta, Panasonic DVC Pro 50 or JVC D9 video I/O, along with analogue and SPDIF digital audio I/O, Express-NT adds S-Video and AES/EBU digital audio I/O. Talking about audio, the Audio Tool provides you with a pair of VU meters, sliders for input and output levels and routing switches, while the EQ Tool offers three bands of EQ with a graph showing the effect of the settings. The Audio Mixer window lets you set static levels and pans for each audio segment - snapshot style - while the Automation Gain window lets you record fader movements onscreen to automate overall levels for each track. For me, the audio features are somewhat clumsily designed - not quite as well-implemented as those in Media 100, for instance - and I did not like the way that Express would stop playback whenever I tried to adjust the audio levels in the Audio Tool or Mixer.

4 AVID Express Audio Windows So how suitable is Express-NT for multimedia or Internet work? Well, you can import video as QuickTime files but you cannot export as anything other than AVI. This is quite a disadvantage if you want to transfer video to Premiere or After Effects to prepare for CD-ROM or the Internet, for example. I tried exporting a 5 minute video sequence with a music bed which I recorded in from CD at 44.1 khz samplerate. The AVI export options would only allow me to export video containing audio at 48 khz. And about 4 minutes into the process an error message came up to warn me that the file I was attempting to save was longer than the limit allowed for AVI files. I cut it to about two minutes and it saved OK. A call to AVID's tech support revealed that there is a limit of 2Gb for AVI files. Four minutes of 2:1 compressed video plus associated 44.1 khz stereo audio would have produced an AVI file of just over 2 Gb, while my 2 minutes produced a filesize of 1.02 Gb - comfortably within the limit. The Bottom Line: There is no significant price difference between the Mac and NT versions, but the Mac does provide a more attractive upgrade route - right up to the top-of-therange Media Composer in stages if you like. In contrast, there are just three systems on NT - the Express Deluxe offering all functionality bar 3D effects, the Express Elite with 3D effects, and the high-end Symphony system offering

5 uncompressed video editing aimed at online edit suites. Express is designed to let you do everything within the system without the need to go elsewhere - and the editing and effects tools provided are ideal for the needs of most corporate video users. The realtime and 3D effects are more comprehensive than those in a comparable Media 100 system, for example, and the Avid Visual Extension (AVX) plug-in support allows access to most popular third-party plug-ins including TransJammer, HollywoodFX, ICEfx, BorisFX, Berserk and Ultimatte. The audio features leave something to be desired, however, and, in my opinion, Media 100 is a much better choice for multimedia and Internet work - letting you open Media 100 files directly into QuickTime applications and allowing you to playback video from within QuickTime applications using the Media 100 hardware. Now if Express-NT could do this... Mike Collins 1999