*New* Media Composer Pricing

AniMatte Key is amazing. I haven't been on XPro in a long time so I don't know if it has it or not but Media Composer's AniMatte Key (and Paint Tool) can do some cool things.

Seriously - I have no idea if it's in Xpress. It's been on MC since at least version 7.1 (1998).
 
it's not in Xpress.
Can be a very uselful lil tool though. I use it alot in combination with sapphire effects, putting them on just parts of the screen.
 
grinner said:
it's not in Xpress.
Can be a very uselful lil tool though. I use it alot in combination with sapphire effects, putting them on just parts of the screen.
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Interesting. How do you do that? I guess I've never used the Animatte effect, and don't really know where to start. Even a hint on how you'd use it to this end would be awesome. I'm thinkin you have to duplicate a video track? And apply the animatte on one and sapphire on the other? Thanks!

EDIT: okay, I think I figured out what you do. Animatte on the top video track. Your effect on the second/lower video track.

I have never used animatte before. Cool tool! Right in Avid! I'll have to play with it some more. I've always been a bit baffled by the effects that use masks in Avid. I always switch to After Effects for such work. But I'd like to do more (without switching to the even more baffling Boris interface...yuck).
 
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Avid could do a MUCH better marketing job to the new Avid users. Avid could win a lot more new users over if it marketed these effects like Animatte. Seems to me Animatte allows one to do a power mask, which is supposed to elude so many NLEs. You can basically do everything that Magic Bullet Looks can do without buying Magic Bullet looks!
 
Well, Animatte is something I'm absolutely looking forward to tinkering with once I upgrade to Media Composer. :thumbsup:

I don't do a whole lot of editing (I'm much more involved in cinematography) but it's always exciting to get into the finer aspects of the skillset. :)
 
I'm curious whether the benefits of color correcting in After Effects outweights the hassle. Especially since MC has the Animatte effect.

Yes, After Effects has 32 bit float. But MC has 16 bit color correction, right? And Animatte allows for power masks. I'm not sure what one does about secondary color correction in MC however.
 
there are plugins that can fillin here. I use genarts sapphire's film effect for color correction. i use it more than the color corrector itself.
these are things xpress owners can take advantage of.
 
About as quick and down & dirty as you can get but just an AniMatte over a 3D PIP.

v3 - 3D LOGO
v2 - SET PIECE w/ Animatte (opacity's probably 75%)
v1 - CLIP w/ 3D pip corner-pinned

This has been in Composer since {at least '98}. I'll sometimes use sections of this set for commercial bumps and teases. Before that, it was a hard matte cut by graphics department and a time-consuming DVE move in an online suite.

This is, probably, one area where Grinner and I are on the same page.... the weird old days.......


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sean90291 said:
Grinner, does Genarts Film Effect allow for secondary color correction?
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the short answer is no but you serioulsy will not miss it. It utilizes r, g and b lighting and I find I can literally dial in any flavor I want with it. I don't even use the color corrector anymore. Everything I need can be found with a color effect and/or the film effect.
 
Cool Good to know. Thanks Grinner! (Hope you forgive Avid soon. You seem to know a lot. And like Krestofre, who has answered many Avid questions, sounds like you've been swayed to FCP.)

And by using a "color effect," do you mean a specific Sapphire plug-in? Or color fx in general, from various companies.
 
MC upgrade

MC upgrade

The cheap MC upgrade is fine and dandy but what about hardware? People are jumping ship because they want to work in HD and Mojo just doesn't cut it. Short of spending a small fortune what is Avid's solution. When we can get an affordable box with real connectors that allows real time HD monitoring I'll get excited. I'm seeing people using Avid as the offline tool and FCP for finishing. The next job they go straight to FCP to avoid the hassles. The first release of Xpress I got had a hand written label so I've been with it since day 1. I've sold a lot of people on Avid over the years. Sadly even loyalists like myself are getting ready to go FCP. If Avid isn't doing a good job of keeping me happy they sure as hell are not going to win long term. I work with several doc makers here in Montreal who also teach film and com studies. Their students think FCP is the only system out there. Major problem for Avid.
 
I agree. And I think a big part of Avid's "New Thinking" is because of that. My prediction is that we will see the type of Avid hardware you mention.
 
I hope you are right. Avid had the only real game in town back in the nineties. When we were shopping back then we tried Speed Razor, Premier/Radius and some other half baked solutions. When Express first shipped ( there was an E back then) it was a miracle product at a price that we thought was amazing, a price which today seems exorbitant. If I had a customer walk in today who wanted me to finish a job in HD I'd be heading down to buy a Mac and FCP. That doesn't make sense.
 
You hit the nail on the head. Times are a changin'! So must Avid. And by all signs, they are . . .
 
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I hate to be less than optomistic again, but I am not sure how many people they even have in development anymore.
Their price game instead of new toys kind of makes me think this is a quick cash in before a merger.
 
Very interesting theory, Grinner.

In fact, even the slogan "New Thinking" seems especially...lame. Like they took an afternoon to think about it. I dunno.
 
"new thinkin"
lol
a company famous for having an aliased DVD since '95, no desktop scopes and is now stepping down as the industry standard in NLEs, a title they held from their birth, boasting about their new thinking.
"Better thinking" may have been more catchy this time around.
I bet there are not more than 7 people in the tewksbury building now. Nodody is in product development, the product manager is a sales manager and the new CEO specializes in mergers.
new thinking is right. It'll be new there every day for a while.
 
Snore. The angst is so played out it's not even irritating anymore. Just sad really. Sad and tired.....
 
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