I've just been collecting this list for a few weeks.  Most of these things are just simple little changes.  Nothing major, but I feel it would really help my workflow and speed up my editing.  If any of these things are already features and I'm just using the software wrong I would love to know.

Thank you,

Sam

More Mappable Keys

There are a lot of commands in the menus that I wish I could map to a key.  Clip Color for instance, or everything in the dropdown menus in the Audio Mixer and Audio EQ tools.  I would also love to have the Audio Mixer Mode mappable.  Also, it would be really cool to assign and map favorite fx the way you can with Color Correction.  It also might not be a bad idea to add in a shift+alt level to the keyboard.  The old skool people won't use it, but the younger kids love those keyboard shortcuts.

Segment Mode

It would be great to hold down a modifier and select everything to the right on all enabled tracks.  It would make it super simple to open up a whole or close a gap.  Also, (and this may be the case in MC3.0) being able to select 2 non-sequential clips and move them (i.e. up to a track above).  While were at it a keystroke to move the selected clip up or down one track would also help speed things up.  I would also love the ability to scrub the timecode track without dropping out of Segment mode.  This could be an issue for some users, but I think if you made it a user setting that would be sweet.

Media Drives

I would love, love, love it if the Avid would warn me not only when my renders won't fit on the target drive, but before I go and fill up my last 10%.  It would also be nice if the Audio Suite drive would be controlled by the Media Creation Tool.

FX

Could we be allowed to change the size of the Effect Editor.  My Boris effects have long parameter names and I can't always read them.  I would also like to be able to Match Frame PreComputes.  Sometimes I have to cut in revised graphics and especially if they are in a submaster it's kind of a pain to figure out what I used as the first frame in the old version.  I love the Paint effect, could we get it with Advanced Keyframing?  I also love the way that you can rearrange the order of nested effects in Advanced Keyframing mode, it would be sweet even if the effects didn't have advanced keyframing.  How come you can't just drop the BCC Safe Color effect on top of a clip that has color correction?  Maybe I just don't understand something about the way the Avid is thinking, but it seems some effects don't like to be nested with others it some orders but not others.

Audio Mixer

Could we gang only certain tracks to each other.  I often have work with multiple stereo pairs, but the gangs are universal.  It would be really helpful to gang the the tracks where I am working with stereo pairs together.  I also with that if I was in Auto mode, and the enabled track did not have a keyframe and I moved the fader that the Avid would add a keyframe for me.  Just a little thing but it would make things quicker.

Interface

I would like to have the bin windows not resize when switching from Brief to Text view.  I know some people would hate this, but maybe you could make it a behavior option in the settings that people could turn on or off.  I just think it would all me to keep my bin monitor a little tidier.

Color Correct Mode

I really hope the MC DX can Color Correct DNxHD clips on the fly.  Otherwise I would love to see some better keyboard navigation of the Color Correct mode.  I would love to be able to tab (or something) through all the controls and reach for the mouse less.  Maybe this is already there, but last I tried it really wasn't working for me.

Sam Z:

There are a lot of commands in the menus that I wish I could map to a key.

Using the menu to key setting in command pallate will allow you to map anything from the menus to the keyboard. I have audio suite set for F11 and autosync set to shift+F5 for example.

What would be nice is more combinations than just keys and shift keys. I find the Avid keyboard much easier and faster to modify than the final cut keyboard, but the final cut keyboard does allow using command, control, option, shift, or any combination of these which allows much more to go on the keyboard.

Sam Z:

It would be great to hold down a modifier and select everything to the right on all enabled tracks.

I can see the use for this, but single roller trim mode does this a lot easier and faster. Just make sure all the tracks which you're using downstream have an edit point in them. If not, you can easily add one using "add edit" even if there is no audio or video track at that point.

The non-sequtial segment stuff would be nice. You can select them with shift but as far as I can tell cannot move them now.

Overal some good suggestions in here, hope to see them implemented.

Thanks for the friendly response.  In my experience the 'Menu to Button' Reassignment in the Command Palette should allow you to map anything, but it doesn't.  Example: in the Audio Mixer pulldown menu there is a Set Level on Track - In/Out that can not be mapped, also setting is the Timeline's view menu are not mappable.  

I know in the ad material Avid always touts there custom user interface and it really is nice in a lot of ways, I just thought this was a little change that could really speed up people's workflows.  We all know the less you have to mouse around the faster you can edit.  I also know Avid is worried about offending there long standing client base (i.e.  the new MS Word & Photoshop CS3 confused a lot of people), but I feel some of these little changes or options that the user can choose to use or not to use.

They say the New Thinking starts with listening to people and there workflows, so I hope I have been detailed enough about how these changes can affect day to day workflow.

Thanks,

Sam

Sam,

First off, us 'old skool' folk can and do cut circles around the young whippersnappers on a daily basis, and yes, we do it using keyboard shortcuts.  My guess is its the 'kids' who dont have a decade of experience with the software under their belts so they're not utilizing the full benefit of the software with the gobs of shortcuts us old timers have come to rely on to make our edits quicker.

- yes it irks me that the edit menu clip colors cannot be mapped to the keyboard

- Partition your drives so you have an unused invisible partition that is 10% the capacity of the drive, if that bothers you

- You can drag out the advenced keyframe editor to, at most 1024 in width, is that wide enough?

- Theres an Avid Safe Color Limiter effect that you can Option+drag to clips with CC effects on them, the BCC Safe Colors effect works the same but not realtime.

 It would be great to hold down a modifier and select everything to the right on all enabled tracks.  It would make it super simple to open up a whole or close a gap.

Coming in v.3.0.5 in a few weeks.

Michael

MichaelP:

Coming in v.3.0.5 in a few weeks.

Now its time to stop playing with the lasso and take a few weeks holiday.

 What Sam said is so true.  All of it.

I use a macro program for the Mac called Keyboard Maestro to map some functions to keys that otherwise aren't mappable.  For example, pressing F6 will color a selected clip or clips in a bin red on my system.  It does this by clicking on the Edit menu, then sending the keystrokes to select the Red menu item (something like "Up Right Down Down Down Down Down Down Enter").  It seems cumbersome, but it does it so fast that it doesn't slow me down.  Along the same lines, I bound the asterisk key on the keypad to open the "Adjust Pan/Vols On Track" by assigning a key to activate the mixer (which I always keep open anyway) and using some window-relative mouse clicks to select the appropriate menu (that way, no matter where the mixer is on screen, it will still do the right thing).  Again, a hassle to set up, but pretty effective in practice.  There's no reason why you couldn't set up a button to switch between Audio Mixer modes, or do pretty much anything else you like.  You can even assign your macros to key combos like "Alt+Shift+Whatever", but you have to be careful because holding down those keys can affect how Avid works for some commands.

I'm sure there are similar programs for Windows, but I don't know what they are offhand.  Just posting this in case it helps anybody (and no, I'm not affiliated with the author, just an extremely satisfied customer).

This is my new favorite toy.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=393402

When an Avid keyboard IS THE BOX you need to think outside of...

 I take it you can set that up like a chording keyboard? So map just about everything (even a full alphanumeric keybaord) to it?

I can certainly see how that would be very cool. I doubt I can convince work to shell out for them though - and the other editors probably wouldn't be as interested as me, and then I'd have to adjust to normal keyboards again...