Hi, i've been cutting for about 9 years with Avid and one of the things that has bugged me is the inability to set constant masking across footage, especially to the client monitor.

I'm cutting a film at the moment where i'll often screen dailies to the director literally an hour after the dailies are loaded in and having to quickly throw the subclips onto the timeline before viewing to apply masking (2.35 in my case) which gets fairly tiresome when the dop and director want to see the true shoot frame or if there's burnt in tc/keycode which is often the case on films. 

It would be great to have the ability to set a mask on the video output tool so as to at least get masking to the client monitor. Go one step further and even have it as an option to apply mask to clip and be able to toggle it on and off in the 3d warp tool when doing resizing and stabilizing. 

I know this sort of feature would be great for the film guys as no one wants the xfer house setting the aspect with black top and bottom for you only to have to remask if your applying effects or to hide code which can be another real time effect used up, especially if your working in DNxHD speed wise. I know also in the commercials/promo market directors will often shoot in non-standard framing formats as well so it would be a great feature across the board market wise. 

Anyway just thought i'd throw the idea forward,

Matt

 Couldn't you tape off or put something over the client monitor to make it 2.35:1 while they're viewing the dailies and then you have time to do it later? No doubt it would be a great feature, but a work around maybe?

Thats funny because thats the first thing focus puller said when he walked into my suite last week, which is what they do on set of course. But for me with a hire broadcast grade panasonic lcd monitor and also a massive consumer HD panel which is also not mine I didn't really want to deface it!

More so I think for me doing my first job in DNxHD i'm already noticing big speed differences and its yet another realtime effect used up but moreover I think it would be a really useful feature that i'm sure many people would use. 

Thanks for the suggestion,

Cheers!

Matt

If you can settle for a Composite monitor, Horita makes an inline box for that.

MG-50    $349

http://www.horita.com/video.htm

I'd like to second the request.I've suggested it in the past. It would be great to have soft matting on the source monitor.

A composite monitor is not good enough for me, BTW.

"A composite monitor is not good enough for me, BTW."

I agree.  However, in many of our film editing suites, the clents have a TV in addition to the broadcast monitor.  This is where they can use the Horita MG-50 if needed.