First a tour of the WUSA station was given to attendees by one of the news directors. He showed the newsroom area, assignment desk, master control room, media composer editing rooms for the promotion department and newscutters bays for the producer/reporters. Attendees also had the opportunity to see two studios, one where they are constructing a new kitchen set for their morning show and were ablt to peep in during a live newscast in their main studio.
Pizza and sodas were available and raffle tickets were sold for $1.00 each. The group uses the raffle money to help defray the cost of the food and beverages.
Rob Forman, Avid regional sales manager, and Jason Quast of Digital Video Group gave a presentation highlighting all of the new changes at Avid. Rob covered the new product announcements from NAB, Trends in the market including file-based capabilities in cameras, new pricing on products, All-new real-time HD hardware AVID Nitris DX and Avid Mojo DX, and much more.
Bob Russo then gave a demo on importing P2 media files on Avid Media Composer version 3.0 Beta. He explained that the “Import P2” workflow is a two-step process. First you import the clips, and then optionally, you import the media (which copies it to the Avid Mediafiles folder). One of the reps from DVG commented that that second step is one of the most asked questions from his Avid customers. It seems that it is common for people to import the clips and begin working right away. This works fine until you remove the P2 card or relaunch Media Composer. If you haven’t imported the “Media”, the media will go off-line when you restart or remove the P2 card. When you import the clips, Media Composer creates temporary links to the media. These temporary links are broken as soon as you unmount the P2 card or re-launch Media Composer. So it is important to do the second step and import the media for any clips that you want to continue to work with.
Bob showed the new icons for “Cut” and “Lift”. There was an audible reaction from the group. This seems to have touched an emotional button for many long-time Avid users. Bob showed how Media Composer 3.0 can mix 720p and 1080 footage on the same timeline with no transcoding! He also commented on the irony that the new software is now fully supporting “thin raster” formats at a time when the camera manufacturers are moving toward “full raster” codes which Avid has always supported. The AVCHD from Panasonic was mentioned as a very efficient and fantastic looking codec for HD video. Bob warned of the many shooting formats available from cameras like the Panasonic HVX200. It has 17 different combinations of frame size and frame rate. The “PAL” version has additional combinations.
A question was asked about importing media from a DVD-Video disc. Bob suggested Software to rip video from DVDs:
- MPEG Streamclip (free) Windows and Mac
- Super conversion (free) Windows only
- Mac the Ripper (free) Mac only
- Cinematize ($60)
- Visual Hub ($32.23)
The next meeting will be next week, May 22nd at 6:30PM.
John Neri from Panasonic will tell us a bit about the P2HD product line and then explain in detail, the workflow and Metadata of P2, which is the power behind a file based workflow. He will demonstrate the making of a metadata file, uploading it to a camera, recording it into the footage and then addressing it afterward. Field workflow strategies will also be discussed, as well as archive ideas. If time allows, there will also be a demonstration showing P2 footage going into the Avid Xpress Pro software used at Mobile Video.
Mobile Video Services, Ltd
1620 I (eye) Street, NW
10th floor
(202) 331-8882
Coming up in DC on June 4th is the Avid New Thinking Tour.