In response to a question in the MC PC Forum I made a "quick" video tutorial.
The thread in the forum continued to get responses from other users and now contains quite a lot of good tips about different ways of adding "Black" or "Fillers".

The thread is at:

http://community.avid.com/forums/t/63278.aspx

My "quickie" is below.

NB. there is a maximize button on the control panel..

Regards,

Douglas

 Douglas,

When you put an in point in the time line (or source monitor) that marker is placed at the start of the frame (solid blue position indicator line). When you put an out point on the timeline that marker is placed at the end of the frame (dotted blue position indicator line). That way you always select one frame. In and out point are never at the same spot. If that was possible you would never select something in that case.

When you put an in point in the timeline, do a +30 the position indicator first (solid) blue line is put behind those 30 frames. I.e. at the left side of the 31st frame.  When you mark an out point that will be put at the dotted blue line, that is at the right side of the 31st frame. That is why your clip length is 31 frames. So do a +29 frame instead. Put your out point there, and you will end up with a clip of 30 frames.

 Thank you, Hans.

Actually in the Media Composer PC forum thread where I showed this tutorial, someone already mentioned that.

I had never considered it before. Now I will never forget it!

Regards,

Douglas

Hi Douglas,

Fellow Scot here! Looks like your a bit further away from home however!

Just a quick unrelated filler question, It would be great to know what steps you took to export your video, it looks like a .flv file which is hosted on Avids forums, however if you don't mind me asking, what was the original file type, etc... as the video is very clear and I can never seem to export good quality and small video files, quickly.

Thanks,
Al.

 Yes, Al, it is an FLV file.

In fact I am waiting for a chance to produce a video showing the workflow I am using.

"Waiting for a chance"?  I am waiting for a suitable question of the MC-PC forum that will stimulate me into producing a "quickie" tutorial reply. While I am doing that I will create the above-mentioned tutorial as I follow the workflow.

Does that make sense?  I thought it did, but after re-reading it I am not so sure>

The answer to your question is, "Be patient a little longer and you will find a tutorial in answer to your question in the near future" 

Regards,

Douglas

A general rule of thumb on creating videos for upload to Avid Community:

- Frame Size: 640x480 or 640x360

- Data Rate: 1MB/s maximum

- File Type: Flash Video (flv)

- Codec: H.264 or On2 VP6

how do you ad Black at the end of the sequence?

22lillies22,
I am not sure why you would want to add a filler at the end.

If you are going to indert a clip on a track and the clip is longer than the existing timeline - then the timeline will be automatically extended to make room for the new clip.

If you want to move a segment on the timeline to the right and move it further than the existing timeline limit, just take the red segment mode (lift/overwrite) arrow. Click on the clip and hold the left mouse button down as you drag the clip as far as you want to the right, and the timeline will automatically extend.

If you want to fade out the last clip into blackness. Place the cursor at the right hand end of the clip and add e.g. a dissolve at that point. It will fade to black and automatically extend the timeline to include the black of the fade.

I hope that some of the above can help you.

Regards,
Douglas

I often need to add filler at the end of a sequence because I like to add 2 sec. of black at head and tail before I export an uncompressed quick time for future encoding.  (I use Episode Pro on a Mac to make wmvs and it will not work with a reference file.)  An easy way to add black at the end is to add an audio file in the length that you need and just bring the volume level down to zero. 

Nancy

Use the 'add edit' button to add an edit to an empty track (create a new track if you don't have one) and trim the edit point out for as much black as you want although often 1 frame will do. 

Its useful when running off a DVD and you don't want the last shot to freeze on screen.

redsnapper:

Use the 'add edit' button to add an edit to an empty track (create a new track if you don't have one) and trim the edit point out for as much black as you want although often 1 frame will do. 

Its useful when running off a DVD and you don't want the last shot to freeze on screen.

...this may not work on older versions of MC.  If so, I have found a simple workaround in using the 16x9 or 1:1.85 mattes (found in the "Film" section of the effects palette):

Add a new video track temporarily and add an edit creating a small "chunk" at the end of the blank track.  Drag the Film matte onto that chunk.  You now have a little piece of matte.  Now red-segment drag it down to the end of your video track.  You can repeatedly move it by using red-segment mode again, adding more and more black behind it as you go.

Conveniently, the matte's "black" matches "Avid-black," so the matte-on-filler appears to be just black frames.

I find this faster than placing dummy audio and mixing it to zero dB (if I forget, I end up with junk audio in my output).

Hope that helps!

When i'm outputting something where i care about fidelity/playback integrity etc...especially to dvd..i use the digital cut tool...which also lets you add black at the end of the sequence...without having to alter your sequence / add an event to it's edl.

More an issue with film cuts, where adding an effect shows up as an optical.not a big deal really, except film lists are complicated enough on their own without adding unnecessary stuff.

you just need to set the deck control to "local" so that it doesn't look for a deck to control.

I find that this is a much more reliable way of outputting anything...especially with dv/consumer non-genlocked source material where the audio doesn't  always properly lock up on long playbacks ( as in HDV downconverts with dropouts....)

This devotes more system resources to playback as i understand it than simply pressing  a play button...and this seems to bear true in the results.It also stops annoying things from habing an effect of the playback: like interruptions from anti-virus software,operating system messages,chat requests when you forget to log out of something etc.. etc...

Now this is also with a mojo..honestly i don't know if it makes a difference without one...

As for filler, i find i use it so much that i have it assigned to a hotkey ( via add menu item on the command palette).

The new "select right" and "select left" buttons also achieve the task of adding  black gaps in a more direct way...(not unlike the old school Media 100 "select from here" for those who remember that particular flavor of editing hell) and not unlike the way you can operate on the final cut timeline.Just add edit,select right,drag the desired length and you're done...without changing what's loaded in the source window.Those went onto my toolbars and keyboard the very second i realized they existed!

Still, if you want black at the end of your sequence, Avid is stubborn (or, at worst, extremely unintelligent)...

I recently added 2 frames of filler to the end of a bunch of sequences (using the split/trim/extend filler method to give me extra filler at the end). 

We exported the sequences as QT reference media with filler supposed to be replaced as black.  When playing the reference files, all is well... HOWEVER, once you go to encode those files (in this case to hd mpeg files), the encodes don't play with the black nice... You see black shifts in the dips to color or where there is filler in the program... and at the end, the end filler is completley ignored and fades to black end on the last frame of picture (i.e. the last frame where it is fading out... but never full black)

These are things that SHOULD NOT require work-arounds.  Black is black... filler is black... Everything should play nice... by now.