My plans to take a step up from Liquid 7.2 to Avid Media Composer (Windows Software version) are now well underway.
I am expecting to install the software in early Januay 2008.

My hardware setup is unlikely to change at the present time....but I am looking for any advice or tips from other new users or hardened "old-boys" ( better add "old-girls" too so I am not accused of discrimination ) about any pitfalls etc. I am likely to encounter in the beginning.

I have already begun to read through some manuals I have downloaded, and I can see quite a lot of similarities with Liquid (well, they are both NLEs so that is not surprising)

However the main meat of the programmes is very different. I am planning to gradually increase my knowledge of MC by playing around with it parallel to continuing to use Liquid. Hopefully I will be able to change horses by the end of February or so.

So I am interested to hear any advice on using MC from any of you out there.....

One aspect of Liquid which I have been gratefull for on a few occassions is called "Instant save". This function logs your work about 30 times a minute  (second?) so in the unlikely event of a computer crash you can start from where you left off.
Is there any similar function in MC? Or will I just have to get used to remembering to save from time to time as I edit?

Hoping that some of you have time to help me with invaluable tips for new users.

Regards,

Douglas

drbgaijin:

One aspect of Liquid which I have been gratefull for on a few occassions is called "Instant save". This function logs your work about 30 times a minute  (second?) so in the unlikely event of a computer crash you can start from where you left off.  Is there any similar function in MC? Or will I just have to get used to remembering to save from time to time as I edit?

Hi Douglas,

Welcome to Media Composer!  There's a feature similar to Instant Save.  In Media Composer, you keep all your material and edited sequences in bins, and you can set up autosave times in your Bin settings.  I believe the default is something like a save every 15 minutes, but I'm not in front of a machine at the moment, so I can't check that.  At any rate, you can change it to whatever you like; I personally use 10 minutes.

Copies of your bins are saved in a folder called the Attic, and if you have a crash or a bin becomes corrupt, you can restore a backup copy from there.

My advice for getting up to speed with Media Composer is to take a look at these tutorials.  They were written for FreeDV, a free product that Avid no longer offers, but the interface and workflow is pretty much the same, so they'll give you a basic overview of how to get started, move material around the timeline, add effects and export to a file or back to tape.  And they're free.

good luck,
Carl

Thanks Carl,

That was just the sort of advice I am looking for.
I am downloading the whole tutorial series right now.

Douglas

I'm also about to install avid media composer 3 and i know this is an old post but still hoping for help and would like to know if that would help me too I really need to know what will be involved with installing and setting up the software for instace any system settings thank you

Hi,

My advice is to take a look at the sticky posts at the top of the Media Composer forum, and make sure you follow the advice there, and also take a close look at the documentation that comes with Media Composer (the ReadMe and any other pieces of paper or ReadMe files that came with the download).  If you follow all the instructions, you should be fine.

good luck,
Carl