Customizing Your Avid Media Composer Timeline

Screenlight by Josh Short

Are you willing to spend ten minutes adjusting settings in order to save precious time? I have a feeling you are and customizing your Avid Media Composer timeline settings is simple to do and will cut seconds off your day. Over time these seconds will add up and ultimately make you a faster editor. Once we go over how to customize your timeline, I’ll show you the four basic setups I use that keep my fingers on the keyboard and the edits flowing.
Part One – How to setup a timeline

If you’ve never saved your timeline settings before, you’ll see Untitled with a dropdown arrow on the bottom of your timeline. Go ahead and click it and select Save As…

If you have a timeline setup you want to save you would then type in the name of the timeline and hit Okay. The name you typed would then appear at where Untitled was. Note: When this name is in italics, it means there has been a change from the original settings you set for that setup.

When setting up a timeline, first add every possible video and audio track. You will have to expand the size of your timeline window for the time being. To add tracks quickly, use Ctrl/Cmd + y to add video tracks and Ctrl/Cmd + u for audio tracks. Adjust the heights of the tracks by using Ctrl/Cmd + l to make them larger (think “l” for larger) and Ctrl/Cmd + k to make them smaller. read more...