This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] Fantasy feature request

Monday, March 9, 2015

Re: [Avid-L2] Fantasy feature request

I use the Media Tool for the same thing, but it CAN'T see comments in the Timeline.

Steve

On Mar 9, 2015, at 11:29 AM, Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com wrote:

HI Steve,

The media tool really excels at this on long projects like documentaries. I edited a doc about a stadium vendor that generated over 50 tapes in five years. I created a bin for each tape. The vendor worked various venues; college sports, pro sports, horse and car races, etc. My partner wanted a montage of shots of the vendor opening bottles. I used the media tool to sift all master clips across all drives for the doc on "bottle open" in the comments field. If I remember correctly the media tool selected about 20-30 clips in seconds from more than 1,500 clips in over 50 bins. I dragged the results into a new bin. The cool thing about dragging clips from the media tool is that it creates clones in the new bin and leaves the original clips in their respective bins.

Best Wishes,

Paul

From: "Steve Hullfish Steve@veralith.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com>
To: "Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2015 11:34:35 AM
Subject: Re: [Avid-L2] Fantasy feature request

Avid will work like this too if you put the comments in the BIN instead of the sequence. I guess I just shouldn't add the comments in the sequence.

Subclip everything. Go to each clip and add comments in a COMMENTS column. Sort on Comment, opt-drag sorted subclips into sequence. Done. I guess I just need to switch methodologies.

Steve

On Mar 9, 2015, at 9:25 AM, Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com wrote:

Isn't this kind of what FCPX does with keyword collections? I haven't used FCPX but have some editor friends that do and they swear by this method of organization.

- Rich

On Mar 9, 2015, at 10:18 AM, Steve Hullfish Steve@veralith.com [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I don't know how many of you add comments to clips in the timeline, but I've been doing this for a long time.

At first, when I was doing corporate pieces, I used to add comments to the narration track, just putting the script page number on every clip. Most producers would give you directions by saying, "OK, on page six we want to cover this with the shot of …" And of course, editors really want timecode numbers to find locations, so by being able to jump directly to a "page number" in a script at a moments notice was something that clients recognized. It made me look faster than other editors at a critical point in the PRODUCER's vision of how fast and efficient I was.

Anyway, I also use comments in selects reels for documentaries that are unscripted. I'll break down the interviews into selects reels and use comments in the timeline to identify the location of critical soundbites.

With that done, I would LOVE if there was a way to organize the selects reels, grouping similar comments together in one spot. Right now, I have to go through and create a selects reel of all of the comments about one topic or another. Why not have a self-organizing timeline based on comments?

If the timeline comments appeared in the bin, I suppose you could consolidate the sequence, then sort by comments column and then simply drag that into a timeline, but they don't. The workaround is to subclip every shot in the selects reel, then add the comments in the bin itself, then sort by comment in the bin, then create your organized selects reel from the organized subclips.

Anyway, fantasy feature request: self organizing timelines based on comments.