Some Avid Tools You Might Not Already Be Using

The Editblog on PVC by Scott Simmons

Here’s a few things in Media Composer that makes editing faster and easier

Most all of the tools we use in post-production are quite full featured. They’ve been updated over many years with features added along the way. Avid Media Composer is one of the most full featured of the non-linear editors out there. I’ve had several occasion where I’ve been working with other MC users and they ask “how’d you do that?” Or “what was that button?” On the flip side I’ve been working around other editors and I learn something entirely new myself. Here’s a few tools that Media Composer has which you might not know about.

Top and Tail editing

There’s two buttons you can find under the Edit tab of the Command Palette called Top and Tail:

These edit tools are very simple in that they edit either the top or the tail out of a clip: from the playhead to the front of a clip with Top, from the playhead to the back of a clip with Tail. Just hit either the Top or Tail button and the top or tail of the current clip will be extracted. It’s a single button that basically takes what could be 3 or 4 steps and condenses it down into one.

You have to be aware of the track selection as the selected tracks are what tells Media Composer exactly what to extract. For example, if you want to extract the tail of the long clip below on V1 you have to make sure only V1 is selected. read more...