I love the clip colors feature in Avid Media Composer. It is so helpful. If you haven’t ever used it to its advantage, check it out.
From the hamburger menu in the bottom left corner of the timeline, select clip color. You have several options. The ones I use the most are HD/SD and offline.
I have this sample project open. It’s an SD project so I changed the settings to 1080 (HD) and then I turn on the HD/SD setting in the clip color. I can now see all of the titles stay one color and the clips become highlighted in yellow.
This shows the difference in the clips. Awesome, huh? It’s great when you are doing a digital cut and something wants to take up a bunch of your time because it says there is an HD clip in your SD output, the clip color shows you the problem. Check the example to the right.
I use them on a music video to color different performance setups different colors. Then it’s an easy look at the timeline to see what you’re using, what you’re not. FCP’s clip coloring sucks by comparison.
I agree with that wholeheartedly.
I’m a newby at MC – how do you change the settings of a project between HD and SD? When I’m in a 1080 project, I look under the format tab and the only options I get are other HD resolutions.
I will make a short tutorial on that tomorrow, but there should be another at the bottom for SD. Typically there is anyway.
Mark, could you send me some more details so I can add them to my post? E-mail me at bryce at postfifthpictures.com.
Thanks!