For those of you who do a lot of heavy effects work, you know how tedious it can get when you need to adjust an effect that is deep inside a multi-effect nest. In Media Composer 3.5, Avid has added a new twist, allowing you to adjust every effect within a nest - without stepping in - using the Effect Editor.
Let's say I've got a shot with a 3d Warp on it, and later on I color correct it, nesting the 3d Warp inside. Pre MC 3.5, I'd have to step into the nest if I wanted to make any adjustments to the 3d Warp. Now, though, in MC 3.5, all I have to do is bring up the Effect Editor.
Take a look at the image below.
The Color Correction effect, which is at the top of the nest, is listed first in the list of effects on the left side of the Effect Editor. Just below it is the 3d Warp, and if I want to adjust the parameters of the 3d Warp, all I have to do is twirl down the arrow next to it. Stepping in not required. (The only gotcha is if the 3d Warp hasn't been promoted to advanced keyframes, you'll have to promote it, but this can be easily done from within the Effect Editor.)
To recap: Old way - step into each effect of a nest to get to the layer underneath. New way - One window to access every effect in a nest.
Now go forth and step in no more.
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who only consider the price are this man's lawful prey." - John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Carl Amoscato | Freelance Film & Video Editor | London, UK
Carl,
That looks pretty nice.
Is there a way to disable individual effects? It looks like the boxes next to the parameters allow you to disable/enable parameter changes. Is that the case?
"When I spent 60k on a discreet edit digisuite system 10 years ago someone came up to me to offer fcp 2, I said it was a scam too." -Ric
Thank you for that... I only hope I can unlearn the 'step-in' muscle memory...
Camoscato,
The link to your screenshot seems to be broken.
I like this new Effect Editor, too. I was wondering if there is a new way of efficient rendering or ordering of nested effects. I am running into situations where I can scrub or step frame by frame and see the correct composite, but after rendering, the most "stacked" section doesn't play back. It usually has dissolves between two sets of nested effects on V1 and V2. In the most recent case, V2 included a Luma Key. When I step in and render track by track, the red underscore appears on the timeline indicating system resource issues. Also, the rendering track by track doesn't change the icon to "rendered."
There's a ByPass on the BCC AVX that I use a lot. Will check the MC FX parameters today.
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