Tag: Video Editing

Vignette in Avid Media Composer

How to create a vignette effect in Avid Media Composer

– Put video on V1
– On V2, make “add edits” on clip borders
– In effect palette, add the following effect:  Image> Paint Effect
– Open the Effect Editor
– Zoom out of image using the zoom tool on the right side of the Composer window

– Choose the Rectangle tool
– Set mode to “solid”
– Draw rectangle over image
– Choose color in Effect Editor (usually black)

– Now you can draw the vignette shape (usually with oval tool), so:
– Choose oval tool and set mode to “erase”
– Draw vignette shape
– Select “feathering” and “bias” to your taste

🙂  Charlie Kirby

Unlocking Avid bins on Unity

I’ve been working as an Assistant Editor/Junior Editor on an awesome TV documentary series.  Our storage workspaces are connected to an Avid Unity Connection Manager.  On Tuesday I worked in room A.  Then on Wednesday we moved to room B.  Since we are working on Avid Unity storage, this should be an easy transition.  However, the bins I created in room A were still locked to the user in room A, so I couldn’t use them in room B.  So here’s what I did to unlock those bins.  

I navigated in Windows to our project partition.  Then I opened our project folder and located the bin I wanted to unlock.  In this case, the locked bin was called “Accused”.  So I located the file named “Accused.lck”   Then I deleted the .lck files.  This is an Avid bin lock file.  (please see photo below).  After doing that, I went back into Avid Media Composer, and the bins were unlocked.  If they aren’t, then right click on each bin in the project and select “unlock bin”, and that should do it for you!  

Avid Bin Lock File

Please note:  DO NOT DELETE YOUR .avb files, as these are Avid bin files.  Just delete the .lck files.  

Still Specs for Scanning Images to use in Video Editing

Still Specs for Scanning Images to use in Video Editing
– Scan as close to 4000 pixels in either direction, without going over. For example, if you scan an 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper, it should be about 2909w x 4000h in total pixel count. This would be a dpi of about 363
– Avid and Final Cut Pro both have difficulty working with image sizes larger than 4000 pixels in any direction. 
– One dpi setting will not be useful for all scanned images. Please adjust your dpi so that is as close to 4000 pixels in either direction without going over. 
 – All images must be saved in RGB, not grayscale, CMYK or any color space other than RGB. Most systems will not be able to work with anything other than RGB color space. 
– File format should be either .tiff (TIFF) or .tga (Targa). 
– Tiff’s should be saved as 8bit, uncompressed, in Mac byte order. 
– Targas should be saved 32bit, uncompressed. 

This will produce and image file that can be used in SD or HD and be enlarged as much as 208% for HD and 555% for SD with out degradation. Also it will offer a format that is useful in, Final Cut Pro After Effects, Avid and a bunch of other software.