This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] Re: Dnx- io

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Re: [Avid-L2] Re: Dnx- io

As always we live in interesting times.

I am forced to continually edit in 'other systems' than Avid and while
each of them has an aspect they excel in, better keyframe editor, better
resolution independence (including mixed bit depth), better handling of
alpha channels, wider no-professional codec support, better text too;
and so on and on, in reality every time I want to edit something I reach
for Avid.

At this point in my career I've been on Flame longer than I was on
Quantel gear, I've been a Flame guy longer than I was a CMX editor, but
when I want to cut stuff together tightly I use Avid and conform the EDL
later.

One or two guys preferring system A or system B doesn't mean the Avid
sky is falling, and neither does a new box with a bunch of connections
we'll never use - my Kona 4 has a lot of empty connectors on its
breakout box too... The spec on that box will have come to Avid from a
broadcast standing feature list created by guys who are close to
retirement age with little idea that most of us haven't switched on a
VTR in over a decade. (Actually I did the other day just to see if my
DVR1000 D1s still played tape. They did despite having last been
switched for a similar test over 10 years ago. So they don't go to the
dump this time... its only a matter of time before the capacitors start
leaking though.)

I have a wish list of fresh ideas I'd like to see in edit systems mostly
relating to tagging in the timeline, such as tag all the blue screen
shots in the timeline then be able to access a virtual timeline of just
those shots. Same with 'find a better shot' tags or 'resize' - just ways
to prep for online in a much faster way. I'd also like to be able to
subscribe a shot to a vfx folder such that it will always grab the
latest version without having to re-import. But these things will happen
very slowly.

I long wished for more timeline effects that translate to online. The
death of DS did kill some of the ideas of total conform which would be
nice to ressurect to Resolve and Flame. OFX seemed like the answer for a
while but none of the settings translate to Flame which makes it a
pointless purchase. So all I actually want from Avid is less
transcoding. Let me grab any file in existence regardless of frame rate,
aspect ratio, bit depth, alpha channels, CMYK, EPS or whatever I get
handed and let me put it on any timeline I want. Oh and to just keep on
making Media Composer so I don't have to use a crappier system to edit.

Mike