The Editblog

I just posted a piece over at the Editblog on PVC about one of my upcoming classes that I will be leading at this year’s NAB convention: Avid Media Composer for Final Cut Pro Editors. If you’re an FCP editor curious about the competition then this class is for you. It’s on Tuesday, 4/13/2010 from 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM. Get registered for the Post|Production World conference if you want to attend.

Steve was recently looking at the Avid vs. Final Cut Pro article archive and commented with some questions about deleting in Avid. It is a different behavior that in Final Cut Pro being that you have segment mode to deal with. All the things he is wanting to do are easy if you just forget about how FCP works and learn how Avid works. I’ll attempt to answer his questions:

* What ways can one rapidly select a clip and ripple-delete it?

Select clips with the YELLOW segment arrow and hit delete on the keyboard (backspace, delete):

Or mark a clip with MARK IN to OUT (T key) and hit the X key, for cut:

The second method is dependent on which tracks you have selected. You can see in the image above that V1 and A1 are selected so that’s what will get “ripple deleted” when I hit select with T and then hit X. It will throw the sync off since A2 will stay and all of the media in V1 and A1 will move earlier.

* What ways Non-segment can one rapidly select a clip and non-ripple-delete it?

In the above image example, all you have to do is MARK IN to OUT on a clip (T key) and hit the Z key, for lift. To me it’s very fast in the above example, actually faster than in FCP as I don’t have to touch the mouse (though you can do the exact same thing without the mouse in FCP). Two keystrokes and the V1 and A1 clip are gone.

* What ways can one rapidly select a GAP and ripple-delete it?

You do this the same way you “ripple delete” a clip as in the first question. Since a gap (really called Filler in Avid speak) can be selected just like any clip in the timeline you can move the piece of Filler with segment modes or you can delete or cut it just like any clip. If you life a piece of Filler out it doesn’t do anything since there is nothing there.

* What ways can one rapidly select a GAP and non-ripple-delete it?

Just like selecting any clip in the timeline, position the playhead in the gap and hit the T for MARK IN to OUT. Depending on how your tracks are selected will select the gap:

or when more than one track is selected and the gaps aren’t exactly the same duration you will select both of the tracks from edit to edit:

If you only want to select both bits of filler on V1 and A1 for exactly the same duration as in the above picture you would hit OPTION + T for MARK IN to OUT:

Of course you can’t “non-ripple delete” a gap as it’s either there as a gap or filled with something and not a gap at all. If you do a lift (Z key) on a gap nothing happens. You can select a gap MARK IN to OUT (T key) and then edit in material from the source monitor.

* How can one delete something in a BIN rapidly. (Why isn’t the Trash always visible? Why no right-click delete?)

Just single click the item in the bin and hit DELETE. You then get the delete pop-up which is a great thing in that it gives you a lot of options for the deleting of a clip:

This is a good thing. You want this as an option. It goes to one of the fundamental differences between Avid and FCP, Avid has better media management options and allows the editor a number of choices in how that media is managed. For me a click and delete key combo is preferable to a right click > select sub-menu.

There’s a couple of vital things to learn in Avid that makes life easier. First is to forget the mouse-based FCP stuff you do in the timeline. You can’t automatically have Avid always have segment mode turned on though that is a nice feature request. Best to just map the segment modes to your keyboard so you can easily get to them with a keystroke.

Second it to learn how to turn your track selectors on and off with the keyboard shortcuts:

If you select the proper tracks and then hit MARK IN to OUT (T key) you can easily and quickly select things for lifting, deleting or overwrite editing. Finally, read in the manual about sync locks and their behavior in the track patch bay:

When sync locks are turned on you can’t accidentally throw things out of sync and IMHO it makes Avid editing faster. Here’s an article about sync locks. Avid’s not better or worse than FCP, just different and you can do exactly the same things in one you can do in the other … just in a little different way!