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 AVID Introduction

We own an AVID Xpress Deluxe system, which has two 18gb hard drives striped together to form a 36gb RAID drive. This is then split up into user drives, evl public drives, and a large "Online Drive" used for output of high resolution footage. The drive space is allocated at the beginning of each semester. The speakers and monitor on the table with the AVID are hooked directly to it's output, so you can use the machine in a standalone fasion. The machine running the AVID is a PowerMac 9600/300 with 256mb of RAM. It has both an internal Zip drive, and an external Jaz drive. The AVID can input and output Component, Y/C, Composite, SDI, and Firewire signals, as well as balanced audio, and SPDIF digital audio.

We also have a DLT backup drive for backing up your files. This drive uses special cartriges which can hold ~20gb.

To sign up for the AVID, please use the signup sheet on the wall behind the edit suite.

The online help is pretty good, though it can be confusing. We also bought a small paperback book "The AVID Handbook" which provides a deeper explaination of some functions, as well as methods of working on large projects. One thing to remember about that book is it is written for all levels of AVID, and sometimes a function may only be available on a Media Composer series system(MC) and not on the Xpress that we have.

Example Project Workflow

On the AVID, a typical project would go like this:

First Run the AVID software. The icon looks like this: and is in the upper left corner of the desktop.

Create a user and project for yourself. The user stores your window positions and personal settings.The project stores your files. This is a project window. It contains your bins, and settings.

First digitize the shots you think you want at low resolution (AVR3s). These "clips" get saved in a "bin". The clips are actually references to the real "Media Files" stored on the hard drive. Once you have your footage digitized, you should open up each clip, and set an IN and OUT point for each clip. By option-dragging a clip from the composer window to a bin, you make a sub-clip. This sub-clip is yet another refernce to the Media File, but it has been cut down to the right length. Now drop your sub-clips and clips into the "Timeline" in the order you would like to see them.

When you are finished with your edit, you can use the "Trim Mode" to modify your edit, or move clips around untill you are satisfied.

The next step is to re-digitize your sequence at high res, and finally output to tape using the Digital Cut tool.

Definition of Terms

Bin: Contains clips, subclips, sequences and titles. you can make multiple bins per project, and even make folders containing bins withing a project. Click here to see an example bin.

Clip: Created when you digitize footage, import footage, or create a title. Click here to see an example clip window.

Sequence: 1 or more clips, which can contain single or multiple audio and video tracks. You can see a sequence in the timeline, to get it there, drop the sequence onto the composition window. Click here to see a sequence.

Subclip: A small part of a clip, allowing you to take multiple versions of a clip for later use.

Trim Mode: Allows you to trim clips interactivly within a sequence. Click here to learn more.

Compression: Our system can use variable compression rates. The most compression is AVR3s (the "s" means it uses a single field rather than multiple fields), it saves a lot of space, but sacrifices muchos image quality. The least amount of compression is AVR77. It looks the best, but takes up a plethora of space.

Re-digitize: A feature to automatically re-digitize footage, allowing the user to increase resolution after editing.

Digitize: The process of recording from tape (or camera, or SGI) into the AVID. Check Configuring edit suite to digitize to set up the physical connections to the AVID. To learn how to digitize, click here.

Digital Cut: The function used to output from the AVID to tape. Click here to learn more.