A brief (11 min) introduction to the ins and outs of the the new Smart Tool in MC5, along with other timeline features and some important keyboard shortcuts that have changed in the new release.

For more tips like this, check out my blog Splice Here -- at splicehere.wordpress.com

Thanks, that was a very helpful tutorial!

ColtonVideography:

Thanks, that was a very helpful tutorial!

ditto

Also, see this excellent tutorial series on Media Composer 5. Total course time, 2 hours.

Whilst watching both sets of  these very informative tutorials I found myself having to hold back a nagging erge to yell at the screen "You can do that in a tenth of the time with the KB" on numerous occassions.

The frustration turned to great ammusment briefly after the 3 minute explanation of how to create a cross fade using the new tools (Segment mode ...move clip to new track... trim mode...extend the media.... keyframe mode ......add two keyframes.... adjust one of them..... ) immediately followed by a 10 second throw away comment along the lines of "Or you could use the Quick Transittion key."

My question of the day is  why are we encouraging people new to the Avid into slow mouse intensive workflows??? Avids have always been much better than that.

Andrew,

No question, you can do almost everything faster via the keyboard -- but if you're new to the system, you can't learn the machine that way. What I was trying to do here was introduce the tools. Once you know them, you assign what you like to the keyboard and kick your approach into high gear. But you gotta start somewhere.

(I'm not sure what tutorial you're referring to with the cross fade reference, though.)

Steve

AndrewAction:

why are we encouraging people new to the Avid into slow mouse intensive workflows???

excellent question.  and the only thing I can assume is that so many newcomers to Avid are in fact mostly just software users having gained experience on other more mouse-driven programs they are completely lost when it comes to working on an Avid and as such complain loudly enough that Avid "listens".  In an attempt to make it more "user-friendly" it feels like they overlook the impact on their current users.

Kenton.VanNatten:

...so many newcomers to Avid are in fact mostly just software users having gained experience on other more mouse-driven programs they are completely lost when it comes to working on an Avid and as such complain loudly enough that Avid "listens".  In an attempt to make it more "user-friendly" it feels like they overlook the impact on their current users.

I agree with that assessment, but so long as the keyboard functions and shortcuts are still there, I think the impact on keyboard preferred users will be minimal. And once those mousers start to seriously explore the keyboard, I believe they'll eventually be using it more and mousing around less. It really is faster.

stevecohen:

(I'm not sure what tutorial you're referring to with the cross fade reference, though.)

stevecohen:

What I was trying to do here was introduce the tools. Once you know them, you assign what you like to the keyboard and kick your approach into high gear.

Having ski instructed for years I dont actually agree with the learn with pretty icons and then you will progress to the keyboard theory. (look at the French Ski Evolutive) I am much more of the opinion that if you know what you want to do (and what editor doesnt) you will quickly find the tool or workflow that is required. Once a working method is learned and used regularly only a small percentage (IMO) will search out diferent methodoligies.

Saddly this senior citizen with nearly 2 decades of using Avid keyboard short cuts needs to study these tutorials to find out why the sparking new pretty looking MC5 interface is not doing what he expects when hitting his standard KB and modifier keys.  Embarrasing with a client over the sholder.

An intersting thought for the managers and programmers who decided to change these keys to ponder.  How long do you think it would take all the touch typists in the world to adapt to having10% of the letters and numbers on a QWERTY keyboard changed?

AndrewAction:

An intersting thought for the managers and programmers who decided to change these keys to ponder.  How long do you think it would take all the touch typists in the world to adapt to having10% of the letters and numbers on a QWERTY keyboard changed?

A big amen to that. No offense intended, but it seems sometimes that software engineers just love to frustrate the (blank) out of editors by making arbitrary changes to familiar, long standing shortcuts. Enough already.

I think the smart tool is a very helpful feature, allowing the selection of any tool by simply shifting the tool's position slightly. No keys needed. As a recent adopter of Media Composer, the tools in MC5 are much easier to use than in MC4.

Andrew --

Ah, now I understand what you're getting at -- what I'd call muscle memory. Yup, there's a lot of muscle memory that has to change with v5, no question about it, particularly in trim mode. It's very subtle stuff, but it has a powerful effect, as you point out.

Steve

ColtonVideography:

As a recent adopter of Media Composer, the tools in MC5 are much easier to use than in MC4.

When you have 10 video tracks and 24 audio tracks active in your timeline even using a large monitor dedicated to the timeline, all tracks are so small your smart tools "slight change of position" is not possible IMO. To use the smart tool in this case  I would spend all day setting up different timeline views and switching between them.   This makes it a very UNSmart tool FOR ME

Andrew,

Not to take anything away from your concerns, but one thing you might want to try is to put the Smart Tool Toggle on a key. Then set it up so that only the tools you really need are turned on (probably red segment mode, yellow trim and the keyframe tool). Then turn it off from the keyboard and leave it off till you need it. I used to have segment mode on the keyboard. Now I have the Smart Tool on the keyboard instead and it's roughly equivalent, but more flexible.

Also, given that you're switching timeline views all the time, there's another little addition in v5 that you might have missed -- you can now invoke timeline views from the keyboard. It's in the Command Palette -- the More tab. The buttons activate your timeline views in the order in which they appear in the Project window.

Steve

Thanks Steve.

I posted in another thread that I had mapped (on day one) appropriate parts of the smart tool to the my keyboard.. I had also found the timeline views but not sure how i may impliment that yet. Shift 3 to 0 are V3 to V10 switches and shift Q to P are A5 to A14.

I guess the ability to map the shift numeric keypad would have been more usefull to me.