Avid Media Composer Tutorial
Karri Weston
The whole thing has been created by editor Lawrence Jordan and assistant editor Richard Sanchez. Their credits include top feature films and TV shows and the pair have most recently worked together on Netflix original TV show, Naked.
The idea being that helping young editors, who presumably are put off by the monthly subscription price of the full Media Composer, get to grips with the software that is entrenched in Hollywood and the big media companies is a great way to shore up their position in the future of the industry, when the competition for the NLE market has never been more dynamic.
Make the Cut starts at square one in the journey to becoming an assistant film editor, whilst Jump Cut looks at the second half of the career development journey in making the leap from from Assistant to Editor.
In many ways Make the Cut is a lot like Master The Workflow in book form with regards to the content it covers and the level of detail it delivers. Although the video course itself is likely to be more up to date and the video explanations potentially easier to follow for some of the practical tasks.
It delivers a very detailed step-by-step guide to professional feature film and TV post production workflows, including all of the paper work, Avid skills, politics and interpersonal nuances required to thrive in the pressure cooker that is an edit suite.
The first assistant will be entering the footage data into a digital database created through FileMaker Pro. This database automates a variety of fields of information that are derived from the metadata coming from the camera.
The chapters in Part 2, on learning and navigating the egos, politics, hierarchies and culture of an edit suite are invaluable for avoiding potentially damaging complex situations or career killing pitfalls.
The books starts to thin out a little towards the end, and there is some information on career progression, and navigating the larger steps of moving from assistant to editor but this is remedied by having a second book entirely devoted to that, in Jump Cut.
What Jump Cut does so well is to pack in a tremendous amount of wisdom, tips, tricks and insights into what it takes to not only become a better editor, but to make the leap from working as an assistant into the editors chair.
The book is comprised of 11 chapters listed below, with a further 5 bonus chapters available on the companion website which cover topics like editing VFX heavy films or discussions with the editors about cutting specific scenes (including video links).
You will get more up to date information on digital workflows in the previous books in this section of this post, but if you can get this second hand somewhere, it might deliver some valuable extra insights.
Assistant editors Julian Smirke (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), and Kristen Young (Avatar, The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift) share their experiences.
The interview runs at over 10,000 words and contains a huge host of illustrative screen grabs including editing timelines and workspaces, keyboard shortcuts and marcos and the Razer multi-button mouse set up a lot of the team are using.
In this section of this post you can pick up some useful tutorials that might help you out as an Assistant Editor. In the first tutorial you can get a blended documentary/tutorial about Avid Script Sync, an essential tool for script-based edits for documentary and scripted content.
Each page is liberally illustrated with colour screen grabs, which actually essential over what might have been a cheaper print in black and white, to help you follow along, step-by-step with the specific instructions.
Avid Editing (6th Ed.) is probably the most up to date book on editing in Avid you can buy today, with new chapters on applying LUTS, utilising 4K workflows and more recent updates to Media Composer software.
Avid Uncut is an essential read for any assistant editor (or anyone whose just blagged themselves a gig as one and now needs to scramble to be ready!) looking to prepare themselves for work on film and TV productions.
In this tutorial, Richard Sanchez from Master The Workflow shares some powerful tips for film editors, assistant editors, and visual effects editors who use Avid Media Composer. By utilizing visual effects sub-clipping and relinking techniques, editors can save time, avoid complications, and streamline their workflow, which is especially useful for those who work under tight deadlines and deal with complex visual effects.
To start with, sub-clipping is the process of selecting specific parts of a larger video clip to work with. By doing this, editors can easily isolate important sections without wasting time on irrelevant content. In this tutorial, the focus is on sub-clipping VFX shots to help editors manage complex visual effects more efficiently.
On the other hand, relinking involves reattaching VFX and other media to their original source files. This is crucial when transferring projects between different devices and team members, or when dealing with corrupted or missing media files. By mastering this technique, editors can quickly resolve any issues and keep their workflow moving forward.
By incorporating these tips and tricks into their workflow, visual effects editors can optimize their workflow, boost productivity, and produce high-quality and accurate outputs. With these techniques in their toolkit, editors can take their work to the next level and deliver outstanding results every time.
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What is most interesting is that: Fusion is Fusion, regardless of the platform. That means most elements in a composite can freely move between Media Composer Fusion Connect, Fusion Studio, and DaVinci Resolve. For those of you that collaborate between Media Composer for offline editorial, and DaVinci Resolve for final color correction and online editorial, Fusion Connect is worth investigating.
You need a Fusion Studio license to run Fusion Connect. There is no additional charge to access the plug-in. As of version 17, all DaVinci Resolve Studio licenses get this with either a hardware dongle or software license registration. At this time of writing licenses of Fusion Studio and Resolve Studio are cross-compatible.
Starting a new Fusion composition is a drag and drop affair. Once installed, a Blackmagic Design category will be found in the effects palette, and the Fusion Connect AVX gets dragged as a layer effect. Either mark the duration for the desired composition or add edits to an empty track in the timeline to contain the Filler block.
Note that the asset management exists entirely outside of the Avid MediaFiles/MXF/ folder that traditionally lives at the root of any media volume, as well as the Source Browser linked assets. Fusion Connect-generated assets uses a separate file management system.
Fusion Studio will load and have two nodes in a default composition. One is input (from Media Composer) and the other is output (going back to Media Composer). It feels quite like the Fusion page in Resolve!
One last little trick I learned while modifying DaVinci Resolve Text+ presets. The presets are saved as macros, which are a group of nodes placed together in a single container. It is possible to convert macros into groups to regain access to the nodes in the composition.
The main drawback to working with motion graphics inside Media Composer using Fusion Connect is the rendered plates workflow. Media Composer has a sordid history when it comes to text tools and many are searching for more accessible alternatives, but Fusion may not be it. Since a rendered container is needed to open a Fusion composition, every time you trim an edit a new plate needs to be sent to Fusion and then rendered back for Avid.
Fusion Connect is an interesting workflow available to users of Media Composer. For many tasks, using Fusion is preferable to using Media Composer. Admittedly, this workflow is not terribly quicker than simply rendering a plate from Avid, opening the results in a Fusion Studio composition (or any other software package), rendering, and then importing back into Avid.
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