GeniusDV

This week's student profile features a past Avid Media Composer student, who was recently excited to tell us about one of his latest success stories. Meet Marquis Wilson. Marquis is from Alvarado, Texas, and completed his training with GeniusDV back in 2008. Marquis has a passion for video production in terms of helping individuals and companies market their products and services. He wanted to share one of the greatest tools he learned from taking certified training at GeniusDV. As a producer of...

The term ' interlaced video' may cause chills to the seasoned video editor. There are a variety of ways to 'deinterlace' video, but depending how you go about the process may lead to inferior results. Today, you'll mostly likely encounter an 'interlacing' problem when viewing 'standard defination' mini-dv video on the web, or viewing a QuickTime file playing SD media on a computer screen. I stumbled upon a free program called 'Deinterlacer' by JES Schotsman. So, I ran through a quick test using it...

Manipulating Keyframes in Marquee can sometimes turn into a complex process. Here is a quick tutorial to help simplify the process. If you are new to Marquee, I recommend that you read my Basic Marquee animation tutorial and then come back to this article. I’ve found it’s best to use Marquee’s animation mode to create a basic path, and then manually manipulate individual keyframes later. Just about everything in Marquee is keyframeable. This makes Marquee extremely powerful when it comes to manipulating...

It's time to revisit the popular Carbon Copy Cloner program that allows you to create an exact copy of your source machine onto an external hard drive. I recently tested this by backing up my Mac Book Pro running Snow Leopard. It took about 1 1/2 hours to back up 80 Gigs to my portable pocket drive running at 5400 RPM. The latest version also allows you to create incremental backups that can be scheduled. You can even back everything up to a remote Mac on a Network. To create a backup of your entire...

The newest versions of Photoshop now support image editing on video files. The only catch is you must have the ‘Extended Version’, meaning Photoshop CS3 Extended, or CS4 Extended . All of the creative suite bundles ship with the extended version. Photoshop is a must have application for any video editor. Don't get me wrong, you'll still need your favorite non linear editing system such as Final Cut Pro or Avid to the majority of your video editing. You can use Photoshop's extensive array of tools...

One of our newest 2 day training classes, Google Sketchup, will be offered at our Orlando training facility November 5th & 6th, 2009. We are offering a special price for the November class ! Google's Sketchup is an amazing 3D modeling program that has users from all walks of life from professionals to first timers. Whether you're an architect, civil engineer, or filmmaker, you will be astounded at what Sketchup can do for you. And the best part? It's one of the easiest programs out there to learn...

I ran into a situation the other day where a client needed a Windows Media file for playback in a PowerPoint presentation on a Windows machine. I edit on a Mac and I am the OS X does not come native with any type of Windows Media codec. You will need to download a plug-in for your Quicktime player that will allow you to export to this codec. The answer is Flip4Mac. Flip4Mac is a great, free, plug-in provides Windows Media video and audio playback in the QuickTime Player for your Mac OS X . It not...

In case you've taken notice. Avid's new Spectra Matte keyer allows for incredibly accurate keys with minimal adjustments. If you are a seasoned Avid Media Composer or Avid Xpress user, you probably remember the old legacy ‘Chroma Key’ effect. If you’re like me, you remember that it was a tortuous process of trying to obtain a good key. Most of us ultimately gave up and used a third party keyer like ‘Ultimate’ or ‘After Effects’. Finally, those days are over with Avid’s new Spectra Matte keyer . If...

The 'Marquee' title tool within Avid Media Composer is a fantastic titling program. In addition to creating stunning 3D titles, you can also use Marquee for other types of effects. Since Marquee is resolution independent, you can import high resolution pictures directly into Marquee without losing any resolution. Now, you may be asking yourself, why not just use the ‘Avid Pan and Zoom’ effect that’s available within the standard Media Composer effects. Well, Marquee offers the additional benefits...

When it comes to DVD authoring we are in a very unique time. It is relatively inexpensive to purchase a High Definition camera and many editors are facing the dilemma of what is the best work flow for getting their HD media converted to SD but also possibly output a Blue Ray disc . The first thing that needs to be done is an export from your editing application. Once you have edited your high-def sequence, it is important that you export it in the appropriate codec for the best quality and for use...

Adding video inside a title or graphic is a very simple task if you are using Boris FX. For those of you who are Media Composer Users , "When I talk about Avid FX, think Boris FX red .' Same exact thing. For Final Cut Studio user's you'll have to purchase Boris Red software seperately. Even though this Giant Crawling Title effect can be created outside of Boris FX, you may find it easier to use because it's resolution independent. This means you can create titles that exceed the resolution of your...

Which microphone should I be using? Excellent question. There are so many microphones in the market today for so many different uses. Without boring you to tears on the aspects of each kind, let me just cut to the chase on which is best for you in the studio. Every sound engineer would agree that you MUST have a large diaphragm mic to record with if you want to get every little sound. The difference? Night and Day. Large diaphragm mics are built to pick up the lightest sound and still be able to...

I have been working on a project recently the involved several Green Screen shots. In the past I have always used Adobe After Effects for all my keying needs. The Keylight plug-in in After Effects is very powerful keyer with great results but it does require skill and knowledge to get desired results. It also requires that you export your footage out of the editing program and import into After Effects and then when you are done you need to export out of After Effects and back into your editor. This...

When exporting a QuickTime movie from Avid Media Composer, you may want to take a quick look at your color levels. Chances are you may be exporting with ‘safe broadcast’ levels. The RGB equivalent of broadcast levels are 16 (black) – 235 (white). Save Broadcast levels are only necessary if you plan on ‘broadcasting’ your program. For example, if you’re producing a ½ show for Sportsman Channel . If you are producing a project that is going directly to DVD, or a multimedia movie, you may want to consider...

All retail versions of Avid Media Composer ship with a program called Avid FX. When you see Avid FX think Boris FX , that’s because it’s the same exact program. I’ll warn you, if you plan on regularly using the Avid FX plugin, you’ll want to make sure that you have a beefy machine with plenty of RAM. Avid FX is much more than a software plugin, it’s an entire compositing program. When it comes to building complex effects Avid FX is extremely useful. However, one issue you may run into is the amount...