Avid Shows New Thinking at Editors' Lounge 

The other MC videos we've already linked show the basic functions of MC.  This one gives a good look at what's new and different about MC3.

There were some "related stories" links at the upper left when I saw this page.  A couple were about RED and Avid (or Avid and RED).  Some of you may be interested in learning more about that. 

This is going to be my honest opinion and it will be good and bad.  This isn't so much a knock as it is an observation.

1.  I love how excited people were getting over features Liquid has had for many years now.

2.  Hey 5 streams of HD is pretty cool but what kind of system were they using?  I always love how NLE companies will bust out a top of the line 8 core (or 16 core in th case of Newtek at NAB two years ago) and say hey look at how fast this is.  No matter what system you use with a software based nle the mileage will vary.  The same is also true of Liquid or Vegas.  Give it a top 8 core system and you will pump out a lot of layers of HD in RT.  I am talking RT playback and not rendering.  Rendering is a whole other issue.

3.  Talk about a liquification of MC.  Borrowed a few interface concepts did they?  Nothing wrong with this of course.  For the first time I am really starting to think that maybe perhaps MC is the true upgrade path for pro Liquid users.  MC seems to be starting to bridge th gap between the old school Avid and the new modern interface style we enjoyed with Liquid.  I really did get the impression that many of the raw core elements of Liquid made their way into MC.  This may or may not be true but that was my take on the whole thing.  I really do feel MC3 may be the new Liquid that is a hybrid between MC and Liquid.

4.  The keyframe thing is awesome.  One question though does MC have 3D movement tools along with 2D tools?  This is one area I find to be so lame with other nle's out there.  It is so easy in Liquid to use the basic building blocks of motion design to create 2D and 3D motion.

5.  XML!!!  Ok I'm sold who do I write the check to?  Some of you may know that I was working on some tools that used the XML function in Liquid.  Well since Liquid Immersion that stuff sort of died out.  I would love to keep on doing it but every day I see more people drift away.  By the time I get the stuff done everybody will either be using MC or Next-gen which may or may not have XML support.  MC is clearly a more stable platform and I should be able to port over the research I have done.  I need to get more info on this XML support but if it works the way it does in Liquid or FCP then this is a huge huge deal.

6.  Media list.  Now this is a pretty awesome feature.  I think even George could like this feature since he works on projects with lots of raw material.  It is sometimes very useful to have a list of the stuff that is used.

7.  The hardware I/O still irks me.  I still think Avid is missing the boat here.  Sure maybe MC/Mojo DX is overall a better system then Premiere/Decklink but to a lot of people cost becomes more of a factor.  In my line of work being able to I/O uncompressed HD is exponentially more important then some editing work flow features.  With that said however I see no reason why some of the work flow tricks I have developed for Liquid wouldn't work with MC.  What I am talking about is putting in a decklink card and capturing with a 3rd party program.  Those files can then be used in MC.  You don't get live output from MC of course but it at least gives you a way to get HQ material into the system.  I used to do this with Liquid before Chrome XE came out.  I have to test this but I am pretty sure I can make a program that captures directly to DnxHD files.  This program should even be able to play out DnxHD files for your rendered master.  So capture with stand alone tool, import into MC and edit, export, and finally output to a deck of your choice.  Sure it is a lot more work but it is a heck of a lot cheaper to do it this way.

To be honest a lot of the stuff MC 3 has in it's core is stuff a lot of people were already doing years ago.  To hardcore avid users this stuff may seem new age but to people who have used a lot of other systems this is old news.  It is good that MC has been pushed to this point however.  It had to be at some point to match the same level as other systems.  For the first time in my life I am actually considering MC because it has finally grown up.  It still may not be perfect but for you hardcore Liquid people it looks like MC3 will be more Liquid like then any previous version of MC.  This makes the move even easier.  Must find more info of MC3!

Thomas,

Unless I'm very much mistaken, they said at the beginning of the video that the Mojo was being used.  However it was being done, those several layers of mismatched HD/HDV clips with effects were playing in RT.  Weren't the other clips set up with a 2D resize/reposition across the lower part of the frame?  I'm pretty sure it wasn't just HD/HDV playing RT but it was also those layers with effects.  I wasn't aware that Liquid or any other NLE could play all those mixed kinds of HD clips RT with any hardware, never mind the layered effects.

Being able to do all that RT is well worth the expense for those who need it and I can understand the cost involved to get that kind of performance.  I/O is another thing and I'd like to have analog SD I/O to use with MC.  For now, I'll capture analog with Liquid, fuse as uncompressed AVI, and import in MC.

MC isn't Liquid-like, in my opinion.  From what I know of the history of Liquid, Liquid is MC-like.  Liquid was developed to compete with MC and it has done a great job of that.  Many functions and features are very similar but many are dissimilar. 

There are 2D and 3D effects.  MC has 3D Warp and if I recall correctly, Boris CC has other 3D effects.

I'm glad you're getting the idea of MC and see some of the benefits.  You'll like it more, I think, the more you know about it. 

Scott Myers:

Thomas,

Unless I'm very much mistaken, they said at the beginning of the video that the Mojo was being used.  However it was being done, those several layers of mismatched HD/HDV clips with effects were playing in RT.  Weren't the other clips set up with a 2D resize/reposition across the lower part of the frame?  I'm pretty sure it wasn't just HD/HDV playing RT but it was also those layers with effects.  I wasn't aware that Liquid or any other NLE could play all those mixed kinds of HD clips RT with any hardware, never mind the layered effects.

Being able to do all that RT is well worth the expense for those who need it and I can understand the cost involved to get that kind of performance.  I/O is another thing and I'd like to have analog SD I/O to use with MC.  For now, I'll capture analog with Liquid, fuse as uncompressed AVI, and import in MC.

MC isn't Liquid-like, in my opinion.  From what I know of the history of Liquid, Liquid is MC-like.  Liquid was developed to compete with MC and it has done a great job of that.  Many functions and features are very similar but many are dissimilar. 

There are 2D and 3D effects.  MC has 3D Warp and if I recall correctly, Boris CC has other 3D effects.

I'm glad you're getting the idea of MC and see some of the benefits.  You'll like it more, I think, the more you know about it. 

I have seen Liquid do a lot of layers and streams on a 8 core system.  Just like with any software based system you need a lot of horse power.  It also depends on the type of effect used.  gpu effects can get pretty high but they are also a lot more limited.  If we are talking classic or cpu effects well then yes 5 streams might be a little hard.

I meant Liquid like in the fact that MC3 is finally starting to get a timeline where things can be dragged around like they can in Liquid.  I meant this more as a point of how Liquid users should feel a little bit more comfortable with MC3 then they would with MC2.8.

What I am looking for is features such as the 3D gpu and cpu filter in Liquid that give me the basic animation controls right in the timeline.

Thomas,

I posted a pinned thread recently with links to the MC documentation.  I think you'll find what you want to know about the effects there.  There are 2D effects and 3D effects.  There are RT effects and non-RT effects.  RT effects have a green dot next to them.  Non-RT effects have a blue dot and must be rendered.

As soon as I have it ready, I'll post a video showing the list of effects in the Effects Palette. 

I've deleted several posts which were clearly off-topic.  Please stick to the topic which is MC3 and its new features, not that you don't like MC or that you do or don't like any other NLE.

Glad to see some more details about Avid's MC3 software... specially since I have limited knowledge about this particular NLE product.

But.... can some one correct me... but... did I notice oooh's, aaaah's and applause for the fact that they could move groups of clips with the mouse around the timeline and across different tracks?

I would have assumed most if not all NLE's would have had this ability some time ago. 

I am beginning to think the statement by Douglas (noted in his Liquid to Avid transition tutorials on his sight) is more than accurate was allude by others when I posted this comment a few days ago:   ...it seems AVID was (or is)"... not a drag and drop friendly" ...NLE.

Joe

Yes, MC 3.0 is more attuned to drag and drop than earlier versions apparently but I had no problems in 2.8 dragging and dropping just as I've done with Liquid.  There may be some processes which are only accessible through the keyboard but that doesn't mean you can't drag and drop to accomplish many or possibly even most tasks.  It's always faster and more efficient to use the keyboard but that applies to any program, not just MC and not just NLEs.

I hope MC 3.0 will support more file formats. I played with MC 2.8 and found that formats I was used to dropping into Liquid would trigger and 'unsupported media' response from MC.

Which formats, Steve?

I figured you'd ask me that, Scott - I can't remember - I just generally got the feeling that MC was more restrictive - maybe I am mistaken. Is there anywhere that MC lists the formats it supports for import (both VIDEO and IMAGE)? It may have been images that I was importing.

Thanks

How about m2v for one.  I know for a fact that m2v files do not work in 2.8.  This is a big bummer since I use m2v a lot in Liquid.  Liquid really was the ultimate m2v editing platform.  I know mpeg2 in a MXF wrapper is supported but I see no reason why Avid couldn't support video only mpeg2.

I would also love to see Liquid's level of up to 300 mbit m2v support.  I know Avid has DnxHD but there are a lot of products coming out that will be using some form of high bitrate mpeg2 and it would be nice if Avid could directly support those formats.  The Flash XDR unit is one of them.  This is a small device to use with SDI cameras to capture up to 160 mbit I frame only 4:2:2 mpeg2 in a MXF wrapper.  This device while expensive is going to be huge and is going to allow people with cheaper SDI camera to record to a format that would blow away even the HDCAM tape format.

You must be telepathetic (... or, something like that...   ).....

I was thinking the same thing... How about m2v?

Joe

No M2V.  The thing you'd want to do is capture directly from the camera or deck via Firewire into the native MXF format.

If you must import, the fastest and easiest thing I've found is to convert to uncompressed AVI (whether you're talking about SD or HDV), then import to MC.  I tried to export MXF (for HDV) or OMF (for SD) with Liquid and never found the right settings in Liquid.  OMF worked but Liquid's best OMF is 2:1 and I noticed a drop in quality.  That was using MC 2.8.  Now that MC 3.0 is out, I'll see if I can do anything with Liquid's MXF and OMF exports.

Attached is a screenshot of MC 3's import file format box. 

"...to convert to uncompressed AVI..."

OK... so, I will also have to invest in a few Tera-byte sized external HD's for this conversion...

It would have been nice to see MC3 use m2v as native like Liquid.

BTW, have you ever thought about simply changing the m2v file extension to an importable HD file fomat (...such as mpg or similar) and see if it will import into MC?

Joe Moya

 

 

You don't necessarily need huge drives.  On my laptop I have a single 120GB drive and I'm doing the uncompressed thing routinely, especially when I do screen captures.  I always export my screen captures as uncompressed and then import to whichever editor I want to use (Liquid or MC).  Then, there's the fact, already mentioned, that you can export from Liquid into the DNxHD codec using QuickTime.  That codec gives you mastering quality HD/HDV files with reasonable compression (60 field/s video is compressed at between 145 and 220Mbps generally from what I've seen).  The thing I find doing that is not only does it take longer to export that way, it also takes longer to import that way.  I'd rather use more drive space for just a while, then delete the uncompressed file than wait so long to get it done.

Basically, unless you're trying to get analog footage into MC without a Mojo, you simply use MC to capture over Firewire.  I am using Liquid  to capture analog and I might edit it in Liquid or I might edit it in MC.  If I want it in MC, I export as uncompressed and then import to MC.  The original uncompressed file is no longer needed once captured into MC.  MC converts into its own format (with various user options) upon import.  You can choose whether the imported file becomes OMF or MXF  (if SD - HD/HDV is MXF only) and what compression is used.  Unless you intend to use the uncompressed file again, delete it and move to the next uncompressed export.  There's no need to keep the file once it's imported into MC.  That's the thing you'll have to get past having experience with other NLEs.  Think of this as if you're importing into Liquid using the "Copy" option.  The original file isn't needed.

Don't get the horse before the cart, Joe.  There's a lot we both don't know about MC although I know that import is not anywhere near as bad as a few people seem to think it is.  MC will handle Firewire input just fine.  So, why would you need to import m2v if you can capture straight from the camera via Firewire?  I don't understand why there's such a need for MC to import m2v.  I can imagine you might want to import some footage you've already captured with Liquid but beyond that I don't see the need.  For that little bit, export and import.    Maybe you or someone else can explain if there's some reason beyond that.

Yes, I've thought about renaming an m2v to m2t and that isn't an option.  M2V uses separate audio and video.  MC imports transport streams which are muxed audio and video.  And, yes, I tried it anyway.  No go.  Not a big deal as far as I'm concerned.

You don't necessarily need huge drives.

Well... I guess that depends upon how long the capture is... ever tried to capture 5 hrs. of video in AVI?   You probably have... basically, the point I am making is that the m2v file compared to an AVI file is significantly smaller.

Did I read your post right?  ... to make this conversion from m2v to mxf... you would need to capture (via firewire) the video footage then convert this to AVI... then import into MC as and mxf?

This would require two conversions... m2v to AVI then mxf.  At this point you would have the original m2v file on your drive and AVI plus the MXF file... and (unless you delete the original m2v file) you would have both an AVI file and MXF file on your drive.  Then, ... to clean up further, you would need to delete the AVI files.   Is this 3 stage file conversion the m2v work flow process to import into MC3?

I have only recently started working in HD... and, it is very time consuming in terms of render times compared to SD... and, all the file size stuff aside...

...Can MC work/edit with HD as a lower def. proxy size file format to reduce render times.... then, export in full HD  (...similar to how After Effects in Adobe handles HD file size and render issues)?

Joe Moya

Why are DnxHD files taking a long time to import into MC3?  One of the main methods for working with SONY EX1 footage in MC2.8 is to process the mp4 containers through FFMPEG into DnxHD quicktime files.  This is done so they can be imported quickly.  I'm really shocked to hear the import is so slow for you.  I also thought MC was supposed to have better native quicktime support.  How about AVI support?  Are the codec very limited like they are in Liquid?  Capturing through firewire is only good for those who do capture.  We are starting to move away from a world where we capture footage.  There are also many other reasons to import footage other then moving old footage into MC.  How about processing footage in ways Avid just cannot.  There is also rendered graphics and animation.  Maybe not everybody does a lot of that but some people do.

The other main reason is that many times people collaborate on projects outside of the company.  I have worked on a lot of projects that were shot in one country and sent to me as a drive full of files.  In MC that would be a huge pain to get all that stuff in.  Avid just doesn't seem to take the hint that they need to be more open in order for people to want to work with it.  Sure it is nice if you live in a 100% Avid world but not everybody does.  Most of the Liquid users live in a FCP, Vegas, Premiere, Edius world and if they work with a 3rd party team they have to be ready for that.

m2v is a very solid format and it should be easy for Avid to support.  Once you have the mpeg2 decoder built in it is actually easier to work with m2v files compared to m2t files.

 Have to tried Tsmuxer to mux the files into a m2t file?  This should work but then what levels of mpeg2 will MC support?  Is it HDV bitrates only or are they unlimited like Liquid?

You capture your 5 hours of HDV via Firewire using MC into the native MXF.  Liquid uses m2v for HDV.  MC uses MXF for HDV.  It's just that simple.

The file size of a 5-hr. 25Mbps DV AVI is the same as a 5-hr. 25Mbps HDV m2v file.  You can capture proxies to edit with and then batch capture to your final resolution.

MC can capture and edit in the same ways as Liquid plus a few others.

So, again let me ask you to tell me why you would want to import m2v files into MC when all you should do is capture with MC to start with.

Smetvid:

Why are DnxHD files taking a long time to import into MC3? 

Because MC uses native formats which are OMF (for SD) and MXF (for SD or HD/HDV).  I'm not sure where you got the idea that DNxHD encoded files could be imported quickly if they're not MXF.  All files must be in one of those two file formats (OMF or MXF).  Once they are, you can just copy them into the media folder and MC can use them instantly.  If they're not in one of those two formats, you have to convert them either externally and copy them into the folder or import them and let MC convert them.  If you capture with MC, you don't need to do any conversions.

If any of you want MC to support m2v, then put in a feature request on the Avid forum   At the present, it will not import them and I can't see a huge reason for it to do so.

If you get a drive full of MXF files, as soon as you tell MC where that media is, you can use it instantly.  I'm shocked that you think MC isn't completely ready for collaboration.  

Regarding muxing files: Nope, I'm done with spending time transcoding externally and I let MC convert during import.

There are too many questions requiring detailed answers.  I'll have to direct you to the documentation (which is linked here already or can be found in the Avid Knowledgebase) or the Avid forum for some of the answers you want.  After less than a month with MC (and only a few days with MC 3), I am not a complete expert on MC.     The basic answer is to just start with a supported format (or formats) and run with it.  It's not as difficult as some are making it out to be.

So Scott, if you already have a library of .M2V files (HDV) that you want to use with MC 3, what utility do you use to mux them?

Thanks

"You can capture proxies to edit with and then batch capture to your final resolution."

Is this true with any HD camera?

With Liquid you can do this with some camera's and others cause problems... can't remember exactly why but I believe it has something to do with the time code.  Plus, based on what I can tell.... it is a real nuisance to use a proxy HD format with Liquid.  I am curious if this would be the same problem with MC or would it work as simply as After Effects seems to use proxies (buy that I mean, you create a proxy of what ever clip you are working with and use it to edit/compose and then render out as usual - no proxy capturing needed)?  Based on your statement, MC may be as problematic as Liquid is to use HD proxie formats.

Joe Moya