Avid - Finishing and Output

Once i had finished the editied I wanted to add a title and my credit to the end of the video  for this i used avids title tool. I could have done this in marquee which allows you to create 3d text, rotate and add effects to it but this was not necessary for this video 

I created a basic title and used the alignment to put it in the center, when i was finished i saved it to the misc bin and used quick dissolve to make it fade in and out. 

I then wanted to put bars/ tone and a clock at the start. To do this i had to make a blank space at the begning so i right clicked on the time line and added a filler. 

I then imported the bars and clock. 

To get a tone i used the audio tool to generate a tone and spliced it in. 

If i had a more complex sequence i could have used a video mix down to flatten all the layer before exporting. 

i then changed the start time code to 10:00:00:00 in the sequence bin how ever this is the time the film should start so becuase i have 60 seconds of clocks and bars at the start i need to make it 60 seconds less . So the start time should be 09:59:00:00

I then export the video, the first time i did it i set the project and the out come to 1080p  and it came out all pixilated and dark, i dont know if you can see that well in the image bellow. 

I then checked the raster dimensions of the video and it said they were 720x576i , rather than re import the files and change the raster to 1080p i decided to just change the project format to pal which is 720x576 which made the video look a little more like it was filmed in the 90s rather than 2014 but becuase this isnt been screen any where inportant other than to just our class i thought that was fine. 

I then exported it as 1080p as that it what it would be screened on and put it in the avid codec 

Avid - Effects and colour correction

Avid has loads of useful effects that i could go into talking about and how to use them like nesting and the effects editor and all that jazz, how ever i didnt really end up using any of them. The only thing i use for this video was the  colour correction. 

to colour correct the images i used the colour correction window which opens up 3 viewers and the correction tools. 

The viewers show the clip you are editing +  the 1 before/ after 

I started by using the auto contrast and balance which most of the time gave me what i was looking  for but some time it didnt match the clip before so i have to make slight tweeks using  the colour curve to correct it. 

for most of the clips i was focusing on making the interior of the car roof the same colour as this was easier to make them all the same colour as they would be constantly the same shade of grey.   Some times after the auto balance and contrast it left the roof with a green tint so i used the colour cast remover to remove this.

Alot of the clips had the same kind of lighting and colour so i used the colour buckets ( i think thats what they are called )  to save the colour correction and apply it to another clip, which made the who process so much faster.

Avid - Refining diolouge / radio edit and mixing audio

To start i turned on the wave forms and the clip gain and turned the audio up or down to the correct levels. Making it nor more than -10 withe conversation around -14 

i then soloed the dialogue and  trimmed it to give it the correct pace and timings  . I then  used the quick transitions to add a dissolve  between cuts to make sure they cut nicely into each other and didnt create a popping noise. 

I then made the tracks wider so i could see the wave form better and  used key frames to turn down individual noises that were to loud for the clip. Doing this ment i didnt have to make the whole track lower making the dialogue to quiet. 

I then played around with some of the audio effects like the eq but didnt think they were necessary for this video so deleted them. 

Once i was happy with the audio i went back over the video and changed the pacing of the images. i tried to make it so the audio and video didnt cut at the same time to try and make cuts less noticeable.  

Avid - Basic editing and rough cut

I started out by making a new sequence and and adding new tracks , i use v2 for the main bulk of the video and v1 for cut away ( i should have done that the other way round i dont know why i did it that way )  i then use a1/2 for dialogue, a 3/4 for music and a5/6 for wild track  

in then marked in and out points on the video and used them to splice in the video one after the other, using the patching to to make sure they were going onto the correct track. 

At some point i either wanted to change a clip or remove it, to do this i marked the clip ( or the in out point of the area i wanted to remove and ) and use the lift or exctract to remove it depending on if i needed to leave of close a gap.

At some points i wanted to replace one clip with another, i did this by using the 3 point editing technique. By marking in and out points around the clip i wanted to replace in the time line and in points  on the footage in wanted to add in. This way it wouldnt move other footage out of time it would just replace the old one. I could also then use the trimming tools to make the footage longer or shorter if needed. 

To find clips i wanted to use, i used the find tool 

Once i twice i used the match frame in the fast menu 

I did 2 different edits of this, the first edit i put the master shoot on the time line and then cut close up of daran then close ups of kat on top of it and tried to match then with the master audio. Doing it this way ment it was rather messay and all over the place so i decided to start again and went through it line by line and picked the best shots to go with it. 

I used the sync locks to make sure the video and audio stayed in sync 

I used the markers as i went along to remind my self of bits i wants to change or  where to add music ETC 

**I forgot to take screen shoots and write down what i was doing as i went along  so im having to go back through which is why these posts are all messy and badly writen sorry. 

* i also dont know how to write these post with out giving step by step instructions because the book can do that  :) Like there so much stuff i could say about how to play back the videos , saving, making copies ,what the smart tool is but all the stuff seems kind of obvious and un nessasay to re write on my blog

Avid - Import and Organising files.

When i first opened avid i was greeted by a splash screen tells me so information about the software i am using like what version it is. 

I then had to make a new project and save it in a location that would be easy to find. As it would be just me viewing the project i created in the private location as this saves it just to my os user. I then named it and set a format for it, i chose 1080p as i thought this was appropriate for the project, how ever i can change this any time in the format section in the project window of avid. 

When avid first opens it sets the windows to source/record mode this puts the project window, bins , timline and source and record monitor all on the same screen. As i was working on a laptop with an additional monitor  i gave myself more room by chaning the work space to have bins and project window on one screen and source/record and time line on another. I saved this as a new workspace so i could go back and forth between them if i needed to. 

I then changed some of the settings, this wasn't really important to the edit i just liked it better a darker colour and instant tips. 

I then had to import media there are a veiw ways i could have done this like, import, drag and drop , ama link ( this stands for avid media access and uses plugins to allow avid to read the original file format of the media you are importing. It is better to use this as it is easier to update pluggins rather than update avid ) 

As the files i had were already in a bin from another project i could just open that bin and get the files from there. To do that though the files had to be saved on my laptop  in the same folder structure as there were on the original bin otherwise it would say the media is offline. 

As i did it this way i forgot to format the fottage so it matched the raster of my project settings to stop the output becoming all pixilated and weird, but i fix that later on. 

i then went through the footage change the names if needed, added descriptions, new coloums with information that would help me organise / find files and marked in and out point for if i wanted to group them or make sub clips.  I did this in script view and the source monitor as this was the easiest was to do both things, i could have watched the clips in frame view but i wouldn't have been able to add comments 

I then made several new bins to organise the files into, the main shots there were was 

- 2 shots of darpan and kat 

- cu of things in the car 

- cu of darpan 

- external shots of bethnal green 

- mid shots of kat 

- other shots and titles 

- sounds 

so i orginesed my bins into those categories 

To help find files  easier to put in these new bins  because i went through and added discriptions before i could sift for the things i wanted and drag and drop them into the bins . 

i could also add new column or remove columns  to make the organisation easier, also to make room on the screen i added all of the bins into one window and went between them as i needed to. 

Then using the in and out points i made earlier i could group shots together so i could easily flick between them when editing. 

I also once i had made the sequence labeled the tracks  making it easier to know what was on what and keep it organised. 

Then in the project window i saved it as this saves all of the windows in one go.