The following post is provided by John Lynn of Genius DV. GeniusDV provides Avid Media Composer Training to many locations nationwide.
Bring film to life by creating a moving filmstrip with Avid's Picture-in-Picture effect.
This tutorial will teach you many of the basic compositing techniques available in Avid Media Composer. Once you've mastered this technique, you can use the same skills to build moving walls, spinning 3D worlds, story-books, and a variety of other effects.
Here is what the finished sequence should look like when you are finished with this tutorial.
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The first step to creating a moving filmstrip with Avid Media Composer is to find at least six clips and set a duration of three seconds for each of them.
To do this, you may want to use the source pull down menu and set the timecode display to I/O, or just use "Center Duration" to help you out with the IN/OUT durations. It is very important that each clip is exactly 3 seconds long.
Within the bin window (text view), you can verify that all of your clips are exactly three seconds long by accessing the Headings in the bin fast menu and choosing IN-OUT.
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The next step is to edit each of your clips to the timeline window. Select all the clips.
After all of the clips are selected, you can drag all of them together directly to the timeline.
You may want to pull down the timeline (fast menu) and select (clip-durations) to verify that all of your clip segments are exactly three seconds in duration.
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Next, you will want to delete all the audio tracks, if your timeline has any. (This is because they will get in the way when building your final composite.) To do this, deselect the video track, and highlight all of the audio tracks.
Then press the delete key on your keyboard. Click the OK button to delete all of the audio tracks within the timeline window.
The next step is to add two additional video tracks. To do this, navigate to the clip menu, and select New Video Track (or press Ctrl + Y). Repeat this process until you have a total of 3 video tracks.
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Now, drag the PIP effect (Effect Palette>Blend) to the first segment within the timeline as shown.
After you drop the PIP effect onto the first segment, you need to enter Effects mode. Park the blue timeline position indicator over your first segment and select the segment mode button.
The Effect Editor is where you can adjust the parameters for any particular effect. For now, leave all of the adjustments at their default positions.
You should see a wireframe edge around your picture-in-picture effect.
While in 'Effects Mode' click on the reduce image icon. It is a magnifying glass with a minus sign. Click on this icon twice. You will now be able to see the edge of the screen.
Click on the first keyframe within the Composer window. The keyframe will turn pink. Then, drag the wireframe image to the right of the visible screen area.
Next, click on the last keyframe within the Avid Xpress composer window. Then drag the wireframe image to the left of visible picture area. (When dragging your wireframe image, DO NOT grab the image from the white dot in the middle. This white dot represents the starting keyframe. You animation will then move backwards if you grab the image from the middle dot.)
If you press the play button while in 'effects mode' you wireframe image should move from the right side of the screen to the left side of the screen.
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Once you have built the first picture-in-picture effect, you need to copy the same effect to all the other segments. You do this by dragging the effect template from the Effect Editor window, and copying it to all the other segments. If you have six segments, you will have to repeat this process 5 times until each of your segments has the same picture-in-picture effect applied to it. After you are done, close the Effect Editor.
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Now, you need to move the blue position indicator forward exactly one second from the start of the sequence. Turn on the red segment arrow drag the next segment up onto V2 and snap it to the blue position indicator.
After you are done, move the position indicator forward one more second, and drag the third segment up onto V3 and snap to the position indicator.
When you are finished, your sequence should look like the example shown below. Make sure you monitor from the top most track so you can see all of the layers below it.
That's it! Now back up and play the sequence. You should have a moving filmstrip that moves across the screen.
Depending on how fast your system is, you may need to render your sequence to play the sequence.
