Preface

Whether you're just beginning your use of Avid Media Composer or you've been using
it for some time, I believe this book contains a great deal of useful, time-saving, and
frustration-reducing information for users at all experience levels. Further, I believe
this book fills a particular gap in the Avid Media Composer publications that are
currently available.

Because the features and abilities of Avid Media Composer are so broad, encompassing
editing, sound design, color correction, and visual effects, I decided to focus this book
primarily on the core story-telling needs we have every day; essentially, getting footage
into the system, editing, and audio mixing.

I first began learning Avid Media Composer in 1994 through trial and error. Nonlinear
editing and the Internet were still in their infancy, and there weren't any books on Avid
Media Composer. So, I did my best to learn by reading the manual. My frustrations came
when I'd read about a procedure or tool in the manual, but it didn't include a definition of
it or context for when it would be useful. So, in addition to providing the step-by-step
instructions, as cookbooks published by Packt Publishing promise, I've included many
definitions of industry and Media Composer-specific terms, explanations of why tools
and functions behave as they do, and situations when they would be helpful.
In many ways, this is one of the books I wish I had had all those years ago.

I'd also like to mention that some incredibly knowledgeable people have helped me by
reviewing this book's content while I was writing it: Michael Phillips, Oliver Peters, and Roger
Shufflebottom. These very generous gentlemen are talented professionals whom you may
find yourself meeting, consulting, or working with in the future. I encourage you to read their
biographies, which are included in this book, and you'll see how fortunate I was to have them
on the team.

Lastly, I truly hope you find this book to be helpful.

Preface

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Assets into Your Media Composer Project, gets you thinking about
organization, provides you with some common workflows, and gives you some tips to
hopefully make your work easier and/or more productive.

Chapter 2, Customizing Your Work Environment, has a goal to show you some great features
to help you work more comfortably, swiftly, and efficiently.

Chapter 3, Polishing Gems, explains that there are many useful features, gems if you will,
that go underutilized. This chapter shines and polishes a few of them up by revealing some
functions' hidden abilities, explaining their behavior, and/or giving you a few new ideas about
how you might use them.

Chapter 4, Creating Split Edits, examines several methods to create a Split Edit, which is also
known as an L Cut, Prelap, Postlap, or more simply, a Split.

Chapter 5, Maintaining and Regaining Sync, focuses on giving you a solid understanding of
why Avid Media Composer works the way it does regarding sync, how you can be in complete
control of staying in sync when using any of the editing modes (without Sync Locks enabled),
what Sync Locks do and how they work, and what to do if you find yourself out of sync.

Chapter 6, Managing Your Media Files, has a goal to take some of the mystery out of dealing
with media files, using the Media Tool, and helping you through some common media
management situations.

Chapter 7, Mono and Stereo Audio Mixing, centers on many of the common audio mixing and
effects tasks and challenges when working on a mono or stereo project.

Chapter 8, Editing with Group Clips and MultiCamera Mode, covers several methods to sync
all the footage from different cameras used in a multiple-camera production, and how to edit
with this footage in an efficient way using the features that Media Composer provides.

Chapter 9, Output Tips and Tricks, includes topics for creating bars and tone; adjusting your
sequence to accommodate bars, tone, and slate; an overview of exporting still images and
QuickTime movies; and familiarizing yourself with the Timecode Burn-In effect.

Chapter 10, Time Savers in the Title Tool is not present in the book but is available as a free
download from the following link: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/
downloads/Time_Savers_in_the_Title_Tool.pdf.

This chapter examines some of the commonly overlooked behaviors and features of
the Title Tool.

Appendix A, Additional Tips, Tricks, and Explanations, has additional helpful information about
various functions and features that did not fit into the step-by-step format of a cookbook
published by Packt Publishing.

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 Preface

Appendix B, Details on Trimming, Slipping, Sliding, and Segment Mode, provides helpful
background and supplemental information for users at all levels to help demystify, and get
more use from, Trim Mode and Segment Mode.

Appendix C, Helpful Details about MultiCamera Editing, provides supporting information

for Chapter 8, Editing with Group Clips and MultiCamera Mode, which is beneficial to users
at all levels.

What you need for this book

In addition to this book, you will need Avid Media Composer software, running on either a Mac
or a PC. You can download a 30-day free trial of Avid Media Composer at Avid.com. While
this book focuses on Avid Media Composer Version 6, because Avid has done a great job
of preserving the majority of functionalities as the software has evolved, a great deal of the
information will still be useful to those using other releases of the software.

Who this book is for

This book is intended as an additional resource for Avid Media Composer users ranging from
those just beginning through intermediate users looking for a deeper understanding of the
functionality of the software, tips, and tricks.

Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of
information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Project settings are located inside the Project
folder along with the bins and folders that you created."

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen,
in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "On the Record Track
Selector Panel, enable only the V1 Track Selector."

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Preface

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