So the Avid Screencast will be on summer hiatus until September 9th, while I will enjoy a nice vacation with my girlfriend and the the two kids in Greece.

Until then, check out some old episodes. If you’re anything like me, you have forgotten pretty much everything by now, anyway!

And if that’s not enough, read through Freddy’s List of Relevant Avid Links, memorize every one of them, because there’ll be a pop quiz when I get back.

One more homework: Send me suggestions for new episodes, it’s really hard to think of new topics myself. And someone in the bus told me about crowd-sourcing and how it’s a good thing. Thanks!

Have a great summer! (If you’re in the northern hemisphere, otherwise: put on a coat, for God’s sake, you’ll freeze your nuts off! If you have nuts to begin with.)

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After last week’s look into Avid’s Pan & Zoom effect, this week we check out the Pan & Zoom effect that is included in Boris Continuum Complete 5 and later.

It’s a great effect that is incredibly easy to use, and we’ll create a simple zoom in auto-mode (it will literally take you 30 seconds to do) and get into the nitty-gritty for more complex animations.

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If you haven’t watched it yet, check out last week’s episode on Avid Pan & Zoom.

The Photo that I used is by Tiagø Ribeiro

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I’ve had several requests for tutorials on Pan and Zoom, so this week and next, this will be out topic.

This week, we’ll look into Avid’s own Pan & Zoom effect. It is used to, well, pan and zoom into images that are larger than your sequence dimensions without quality loss (as would occur if you imported the image into a bin and then used, say, a 3D Warp for panning and zooming).

We’ll create simple and a bit more complex animations, learn about the different temporal and spatial interpolation parameters, and of course I’ll hint at some best practices and some quirks of the effect.

Next week, we’ll check out the Pan & Zoom effect that is included in Boris Continuum Complete 5 or later.

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The Photo that I used is by Tiagø Ribeiro

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With Media Composer 5, you can access Quicktime and R3D files natively using AMA (provided you have the horsepower).

In this episode, I’ll show you how to link to AMA volumes, change the R3D source settings (such as ISO, color temperature etc.) within Media Composer, adjust the formatting and then transcode to DNxHD.

Editorial note: I apologize for the bad audio quality in this and last week’s podcast. Snow Leopard seems to reset my audio input gain now and again, but this way you finally know what quantization noise sounds like! Seriously, it’ll get better next week.

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Avid System Recommendations for AMA (System Recommendations for Media Composer Feature Performance [365919])

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I’m finally on Media Composer 5, so in this week’s episode, I’ll introduce you to the most obvious new features such as the Smart Tools, Realtime Audio Effects, the new Interface and some new Keyboard Shortcuts.

There are a lot of different tutorials covering similar subjects, so check out the show notes for more.

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Steve Cohen’s Introduction to the MC5 Timeline. If you haven’t watched it yet, shame on you!

Scott Simmons’ Editblog: A tour around Avid Media Composer 5.0’s interface changes

Dylan Reeve’s MC 5 Review

Avid Media Composer 5 Getting Started Training – A complete Lynda.com class availabe for free from Avid. Aimed at novice users.

Media Composer videos from Avid’s Youtube channel

Youtube: Real-Time AudioSuite (RTAS) Plug-Ins and Stereo Audio

Youtube: Smart Tool

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I was asked if it was possible to get the Glow Effect without Boris Continuum Complete. Had I been a smart-ass, I would have replied: “Sure, buy Sapphire!”

But I’m trying not to be, so I came up with something that looks kinda similar, and I called it Film Flash, because “Glow Part 2″ seemed lame.

In this tutorial, I’ll use a Blur and the Color Effect to create that Film Flash.

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Nothing fancy, but a solid workhorse: Want to make sure that your sequence is complying with technical broadcast standards? The Safe Color Limiter Effect is your friend.

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In this episode, we’ll transition into a title by starting with a blur and then slowly letting it focus.

To do this we’ll have to look into how titles actually work, redoing it as a simple Matte Key and then manipulating Key and Fill to achieve out goal. You see, it’s fun for the whole family!

And if you were hoping for Media Composer 5 content: As soon as I get my hands on the new version, there’ll be some. Might take a bit, though, sorry.

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Check out Avid’s Marquee video tutorial. It’s free and you look like you don’t know how to spend the next hour.

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This week’s episode features a request from Youtube user Instantslugger, who wanted to know how to do a curtain transition within Media Composer.

Turns out it’s not that hard. We’ll do it using Avid’s Paint effect and a Matte Key, plus I’ll show you how to make the transition reusable and real-time.

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Props to Instantslugger for making this cool request.

The transition was oroginally used by skee.tv

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Everybody knows the Timewarp only applies to video. But what if you want to change the speed of your audio as well?

In this episode, we’ll do just that with the help of a couple of different AudioSuite plugins that come with Media Composer.

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Update: I had an interesting question come up at Youtube and thought it’s worth sharing:

HHJung1976

Hi Christian,

ich have a short Audio Clip and use the Timeshift at 25% works great. But I found no way to trim the clip longer after that. So I only have 25% of the Audio Clip.

Thanks Tim

The answer:

Hi Tim,

you cannot trim the clip beyond its original edges, but here’s a workaround: Say your original clip is 1 second long, you wanna play it at 25% therefore make it 4s long.

Here’s what you do:

1. Mark the original clip + 3 seconds in the timeline.
2. Make an audio mixdown of the 4s.
3. Do the Time Shift on the mixdown.

Should work fine and get you the result you’re looking for.

Bye,
Christian