Avid / Pinnacle discussions from 2004

[Richard Troost]

Check your graphic card, Pinnacle and Nvidia is not a happy marriage. Pinnacle did not use the windows GUI for Edition, so you have to learn it al over again.

But, you can arrange all the tools in the way you like, you can put all the icons you need above the timeline. Liquid Edition has an amazing pair of color correction tools -I don't believe that there is a program that can get close- and it's also very well explained, so you will be knowing why, how en when in no time. They have a very smooth "timewarp"a slow/fast over which you have very detailed control. They use the GPU for a lot a effect/transitions so you can try things out and watch the effect immidiatly. you get a lot of transisions and effect with the program on top of that you get Hollywoodfx 5.1 with even more effects and transisions. and, without all the pull down, pop-ups and click them aways it's also easy on the eyes! The complete reference manual is on-line, so you do not have to buy it unless -like me- you prefer to read from paper.

And, not for you but a lot of people like this, you can almost for sure get a copy in your own language. Even if your English is good, it's always nice to do some tasks, and read a manual!, in your own language.

There is a lot more, you can look at some instruction video's at Pinnacle's site, they are also a very good start for editting

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PBN/defau...=6&loc=lMen541

(It's a dutch language link, don't know the number for English, but you can read the important stuff, that's in English.)

And when you scroll down, you will find even more stuff, some from before Liquid, just Edition, but you can learn from them too!

And here is an excellent site in -Brittish- English about Edition e.o.

http://www.mikeshaw.co.uk/studio_use...face%20overvie

When you would ask me wat to buy, I would know the answer :)

[Glenn Chan]

Each NLE has its own strengths and weaknesses. Figure out what kind of material you want to edit and then see which NLE seems to be the best match. A lot of them have demos (Premiere Pro, Vegas, Avid free DV which is a very crippled version of Avid, etc.).

I like Vegas because it's really powerful video-wise (good color correction and compositing tools), the best NLE for audio editing hands down (Vegas started out as a multitrack editor), and very stable. A downside to Vegas is that it renders slow, and probably won't touch Edition in that area. I suggest you try the demo and download the shortcut keys thing stickied in the Vegas forum on dvinfo.net.

[Denis Murphy]

I apologise for this basic question, the answer to which I have just spent several hours seeking throughout the net, to no avail.

Here's my predicament.

Helping to edit a short film, shot on 16mm 25fps, transferred to PAL video. Sound recorded at 25fps to DAT.

We have captured the telecined video, as well as the DAT audio, to media composer. Now we have to sync sound and video so we can edit!

Can anyone point me in the direction of a good workflow for this? Intuitively it seems to me we must create a sequence for every video take and drop in the corresponding synced audio take, then use these sequences as "clips" for our edit.

Is this correct? And what is this autosync in Avid and how can it help me??

ANy help appreciated. And feel free to trash my "intuitive" workflow!

[Emmet Lucey]

I second Richard's post, & would add that you should be very very careful to check your hardware / software compatability b4 going with edition.

Suggestion: go to the LE 5 web board general area, & post a detailed spec of your hardware, drivers, & all installed software that you need to keep on your machine. Let folks comment.

I say this because while i have been very happy with LE 5.5 (despite a very steep learning curve) i have witnessed unbelievable horror sagas of people putting alot of money, time, & frustration trying to get it to function smoothly on non dedicated systems. ( Can you say "os re-install" ?)

I would also add that all the real time effects are very dependent on a fast, well defragged 3 + g machine with a solid 1 g ram.

Do not count on tech support from pinnacle. there is none.

That much said, if you get it running smoothly & learn it, she's a beauty :-)

[Jacques Mersereau]

I am a little confused too ;)

What kind of show are you working on? Long form?
(That would be my first guess.)

Is this a documentary with lots of source footage?
A DAT tape of audio (now in the computer) for every film reel?

It appears like you want to meld your video and audio together (same clip)
in long hunks, so when you want to take a second or two out of
a long hunk, the right audio comes along with the video?

Is this correct?

What kind of VTR are you working with?

[Denis Murphy]

Thanks for the reply Jacques,

Just realized I posted this in the PC rather than mac version of this forum. I am using mac but probably doesn't make too much difference philosophically, right?


It's just a short film - 5 mins. We have footage and DAT audio for approx 90 camera setups with multiple takes. Footage was shot on 25fps 16mm film and transferred to PAL beta for offline. The final cut will be re-telecined from the orginal film negative.

We have digitized all takes of film and audio. Audio was captured in long clips then subclipped into individual takes. It now has to be married to the audio as the budget did not stretch to having audio synced to the telecined film!

It seems I have found the solution, but correct me if I am wrong:

1. Double click video clip to open in source monitor. Set inpoint on clapperboard clap.

2. Double click corresponding audio subclip to open in source monitor. Again, set inpoint on clapperboard clap.

3. Select both clips in the bin, the select bin>autosync. In ensuing dialog box, check "sync to inpoint"

This creates a copy of the clip with synced audio, which we then use to edit.

Related question: the audio was recorded at 48kHz on DAT, but captured (via analog outs from DAT deck looped through betacam deck) at 44.1 kHz as this was the default setting in the system. Will this cause any problems?

Also, audio levels seem to be increasing on capture and are too hot. What might be causing this? Is it a case of adjusting output from beta deck?

Again, sorry for the basic questions. More accustomed to cutting miniDV material with pre-synced audio in FCP!!

Thanks for any help you might have.

[Jacques Mersereau]

<<<-- Originally posted by Denis Murphy :

It seems I have found the solution, but correct me if I am wrong:

1. Double click video clip to open in source monitor. Set inpoint on clapperboard clap. . . .<SNIP>


Sounds right to me, especially if it works :)


<<<Related question: the audio was recorded at 48kHz on DAT, but captured (via analog outs from DAT deck looped through betacam deck) at 44.1 kHz as this was the default setting in the system. Will this cause any problems?>>>

That depends on how you plan to deliver the final product. You could
start over and reset the Avid to 48kHz and then
take the digital outs of the DAT deck and get (almost) lossless digital
transfer, but it sounds like you may be "down the road" aways and
that will take a lot of time to go back. There shouldn't be
a problem other than some fidelity loss due analog transfer/digitize.


<<<Audio levels seem to be increasing on capture and are too hot. What might be causing this? Is it a case of adjusting output from beta deck?>>>

I am not sure which MC you are working on, nor am I sure about your
beta output as to whether both machines are working at +4dB or -10dB.

Avid's with the Audio Media III card are set at -12dB, so if you send
it a -10dB signal you'd be increasing the volume a bit which would give
you overs on your peak levels.

Of course if you are sending +4dB audio out from the deck to a -12dB
Avid, then you'd be KILLING the avid . . . distortion city!
Again, I don't know what gear you're working with exactly.

[Robert Martens]

Honestly, I have a fairly modest system that runs Edition just fine. Athlon XP 2600, 512 RAM, single (gasp!) 80GB hard drive, 64MB Quadro DCC. I've had my fair share of quirks and complications, but nothing that required a total reformat.

And get this: I have other stuff installed, too! Games, compositing software, all sorts of crap. Never been a problem. Though I did take the precaution of wiping and reorganizing my whole computer the other day--separate partitions for the OS, programs, and data, you know the drill, in the interest of maintaining my sanity. Gets to be quite a pain, trying to keep everything ordered properly.

In short, system clutter and a lack of dedication (that could be read two different ways, and they're both correct) have not hindered my Edition installation. Judging by the various Edition boards around the net, though, I'm one of the lucky guys. The fact that I'm a computer nerd doesn't hurt either; what may be an enormous problem for a normal person doesn't get me all that upset. System configuration problems, that sorta thing--no big deal. Being a dork has surely tainted my perspective on these issues.

Gotta love the big P. :)

[George Ellis]

Same boat as Robert. I have a P4 1.6a with 384MB of memory running Liquid Edition. Some stuff is slow because of memory, but totally workable. The DVD authoring is good, but there are still some features that I would like. The render and effects are great. Audio, at a base is OK. Pinnacle bought the company that makes Wavelab. If you buy the full package right now, you get Wavelab for free.

As far as Nvidia goes, there are some driver sets that are problematic. I use an ATI Radeon 7500 All-In-Wonder effectively. But, I am lusting for a dual Nacona Xeon with the next gen ATI card.

[Robert Martens]

Indeed--an otherwise unincredible system will do quite nicely, so long as you're not dependent on realtime effects.

Funny thing about the realtime stuff; ever wonder WHY Pinnacle left the "Classic" versions of the things in there? Well, according to most people, myself included, the RT stuff doesn't look as good as the old stuff. Close, yes, but not quite. Furthermore, there are a few options/settings here and there that exist in the Classic effects but not in the GPU versions.

And while the GPU effects let you play back footage from the timeline in real time (with a fast enough system, of course), at the end of the day, you STILL have to render everything to export a file.

I never use the GPU editors (as they're called in Edition), personally.

I feel I should also point out that even Edition 4.5 had the ability to write DVDs. No menu design, no, but for straight ahead disc burning, you never had to leave the application.

The new color correction tools, well, THOSE are some impressive doohickies, lemme tell ya.

[Clint Comer]

cool, thanks.

[Frederic Lumiere]

Craig,

You are on the right track.

One of your questions is which NLE you should use. My answer to this would be to not choose your NLE based on its ability to edit HDV. Ultimately, they all will handle this format natively. But rather, choose your NLE based on its features and your comfort level with the software.

You mentioned editing HDV in an offline approach. Editing your footage in SD and onlining it in HDV. Yes, I think this is the most feasible in FCP to date. Heuris, unfortunately requires you to render your timeline, and most editors find this unacceptable for their productivity. They want to keep all the benefits they enjoy in SD today (Realtime effects, monitoring on NTSC, realtime playing, etc.)

The only rectification to the description of the approach is that you wouldn't up-convert but online your project. The difference being that you replace your SD clips with source HDV (QuickTime compatible) clips using the media manager in FCP.

The great advantage with this approach is that you get to edit your HDV footage using the equipment you've invested in for SD. And this does not require you to buy a G5. You can accomplish this task very well with a dual G4.

[Alon Levi]

Hello There,

I'm using my XM-2 (GL-2 pal version) for quite some time now. up until now i've edited using avid xpress version 3.5, but recently I upgraded to dv pro v4.0;

I'm almost always using the XM-2 frame mode (which imitate progressive scan, at 25 frames/sec) - which worked just fine with the 3.5; but when exporting single image from the pro, I found out that interlacing lines are visible; i've also noticed them when exporting uncompressed AVI; I've compered then to the clean and non-interlaced frame-grabbed i've exported from the v3.5 - and we are talking the same OMF files... and the diffrence was heart-breaking.

now, my version 4 dv pro has an option to start an 23.9p NTSC project but not 25p PAL (it is mention as possible in the guide, but unavaialbe in the readme).

is that only a problem with the single-image exporting? when I d/l back to the camera will it be ok? anyone knows how to fix this problem ?

TIA,
Alon.

[Christian Stormbom]

Alon,
yes this is a well known bug in all of the Xpress Pro 4 versions
that is 4.0,4.1, 4.1.1, and 1104.1.1. The 1104.1.1 has 25p as
standard and it works great. So what to do - you should wait
a day or two and then the 4.3 will be aviable at Avids web-
site free for registred users of Xpress Pro. This will give you
both the 25p option and corrected frame and QT and QT ref export.(By the way there is no problem when you export back
to camera with your present version).
Christian

[Dwight Flynn]

Help, I have an amd athlon64 with dual monitors and one gig ram. I have noticed when I use Avid xpress pro (v 4.1 and 4.3) with the dual monitors the system freeze on startup at the point that it says "initializing openGL effects". Does anyone know how I can fix this problem.

Thanks