E

Contents

Editing
Effects

• Some creative tips using effects

Error Codes in DS
Microsoft Excel formula for working with timecode
Using the Explorer in DS

• How to print a list of files in a DS directory

EDITING

ADDING CLIPS, SEQUENCES AND EFFECTS TO TIMELINE

Drag/drop to track.-Respects Ripple button
With ripple ON—new clip splits underlying track and ripples it.

Control Drag and Drop for storyboard editing: In the Explorer, hold Control while
clicking in order a selection of clips, then drag and drop into the timeline. The clips will
assemble in the same order.

CTL-Drag an effect preset from explorer to timeline clip, and the effect will respect the
in-out markers.

R-drag clip—gives you track router.
To work with multiple clips, CTL-R-drag, lets you select track routing one at a time on
multiple clips. Use reverse button to reverse audio/video track selection.

R-Drag to marking ribbon—puts clip on a new video track.

Drag clip—HOLD V—makes an insert edit—ripples even without ripple on.
Drag clip—HOLD B—overwrite with activeness.

CTL-drag, drop—Selects clips in desired order from explorer, drag to timeline. Preedits
your sequence in order.

Drag clip to the Source Monitor, release, and then drag from the Source Monitor to the Timeline
to retain video only/audio only active track selections which are set on the left side of the Timeline.

UPDATE CLIP button… remembers in/out points in clip, and updates thumbnails in
explorer. Allows pre-editing, CTL-drag clips into timeline

Replace Edit will ignore the timeline in and out points and replaces a selected clip in
the time line with the source clip. (Dual viewer)

Control-R will razor or adds an edit to a clip.

Control-E while making multiple selections will convert the selections to edit points.

Drag clip—HOLD V—makes an insert edit—ripples even without ripple on.
Drag clip—HOLD B—overwrite with activeness.

OVERWRITE/INSERT BUTTONS (B, V) override the ripple mode.

CTL-Tab….Move down the timeline a track
CTL-SHIFT-Tab… Move up the timeline a track

REPLACE BUTTON—uses timeline clip selection duration.
With RIPPLE ON, uses play clip selection duration.
With RIPPLE OFF, uses timeline clip duration.
Track routing MUST MATCH selected timeline clip.

MATCH FRAME MATCH BIN (Browser) CTL-
Adding a fade out or other clip effect at the end of a clip—Select clip, -10 puts the
effect at last 10 frames. 10- removes 10 frames from the duration of the clip.

VIDEO/AUDIO SYNC--After making an audio container, hit S (Sync Lock) to maintain
container’s sync with video. CTL-Click video and audio clips before re-syncing.

CTL-E to SELECT MULTIPLE EDIT POINTS
Select several edit points, to add several transitions simultaneously.

NUDGE AUDIO CLIPS FORWARD AND BACKWARD IN THE TIMELINE
during playback… you can (to get better sync or whatever). Select the clip, press play,
use the square brackets to move the clip forward or back. Remember that holding the
control key or shift key will increase or decrease the speed at which it will react.

MOVING A CLIP VERTICALLY IN THE TIMELINE
To move a clip to a higher or lower track, without changing its position, hold the “U”
key, while dragging the clip to the different track.

PUTTING A CLIP FROM THE TIMELINE INTO THE SOURCE MONITOR
Move the position over the clip in the timeline. Hit the backslash key. (\) The clip will load into the source monitor.
Even if the clip is video only, the source audio will become available to you in the source monitor.
Also matches the frame in the source viewer.

Snapping to the next edit

The "," and "." keys also known as the "<" and ">" keys (just without the need to press shift) will take you to the next edit point of any highlighted track.

EFFECTS

Use ‘ (apostrophe) key to add an effect, to a clip, track, timeline or tree.

CTL-Drag an effect preset from explorer to timeline clip and the effect will respect the
in-out markers.

ADJUSTING PROPERTY SLIDERS
• [ moves a slider value by –1
• ] moves a slider value by +1
• Shift [ moves a slider by –0.1
• Shift ] moves a slider by +0.1
• Control [ moves a slider by –10
• Control ] moves a slider by +10

Rolling the wheel on the mouse increases/decreases the value by “1”,
• CTRL+wheel does it by 10,
• SHIFT+Wheel moves it by tenths (.1)

You can do math in numeric input fields.

MOUSE SPIN—click-hold in an input field, move mouse out of input field and orbit the
field to increment or decrement values. CTL- spin increases or decreases by a factor of
10.

Use the BIG Color picker for better control and more choices. Hit the EDIT button on
the little color picker.

Lock Effects property page, to keep the property page open while working in other
windows. Click the icon that looks like a fat ! in the upper right corner.

LEGALIZE— use clip effect COLOR SPACE ADJUSTMENT—reveals out of gamut
levels. Adjust slider chooses between fixing with luminance or chroma. Doesn’t work
on blacks. Any rendered effect will automatically legalize by clipping.

PREMULTIPLIED-custom effect to change the premult value of an imported clip if
necessary.

Right click on the Key Frame icon to edit an animation curve.

REPLACE AN EFFECT by dragging an effect into the icon next to the “L” and “S”
buttons in the upper right of the effect property editor

PREVIEWING UNPROCESSED EFFECTS
Real Time, Degrade Play Press shift and apostrophe for degraded playback when in an
unprocessed effect. This makes the DS play back (processing on the fly) at the correct
speed; it drops frames to keep the duration correct.

Play All Frames. Hold down CTRL and press the play button. This plays every frame
rendered in the resolution set with the checkerboard filled button over the viewer.
Intensity of effects determine playback speed.

SOURCE GENERATORS
You can place additional images in the Test Patterns folder and use them for a slate or
background or anything else. Then you just use Source Generator>Test Pattern and select
your background from the pulldown menu.

The path for test patterns is:
ProgramFiles\Avid\DS_v6.0x\DSSystem\VideoBitmaps\TestPatterns\NTSC (or PAL as the case may be)

EFFECTS-CREATIVE TIPS

BLEACH BYPASS EFFECT
Add a CC mode, set saturation to 75%, gamma to 0.9. Add a composite node, route source to both input 1 and input 2, add a blur node to the top route, set blur to 3 pixels. Set transfer mode to hardlight. Add a little noise at the end. Violá!

FILM LOOK
Deinterlacing
The Deinterlacing process creates frames from the original fields, ending up with 60 frames for 1 second of original material. Since the original material has only half the lines per field, the missing lines needs to be interpolated.

Start with the "Linear" Deinterlace mode. If you find that the result becomes too blurry, switch to the "Adaptive" mode which will deinterlace only the moving parts of the frames keeping the static parts sharp.

Timewarp
The Timewarp step is required to emulate the 24FPS. Since the Deinterlace process outputs 60 frames per second of material, speeding up by 250% (60/24) will output 24 frames per second of material, corresponding to the desired emulated 24FPS.

*IMPORTANT* Select "FRAME" as "Source Material" since the output of the Deinterlace process are frames.

*IMPORTANT* Process in FRAMES since the input of the next step (3:2 Expand) expects frames.

3:2 Expand
This last step is the common way to display 24FPS material in video. This step duplicates (pulls down) the fields in a standard pattern to restore 30FPS required by your sequence for playback.

OTHER THINGS TO TRY

1. DS's own Film Style effect.
2. Anvil's A_Look
3. Tinder's T_OldFilm (every bit as good as the classic 5D effect, with more control and faster processing)
4. 5D or Sapphire plugs such as c) Optical Glow, d) Dodge & Burn (or just play with Gamma - crush the image slightly) e) Noise to simulate grain
5. Color Correction-crush blacks

DS Error Codes

While editing, you will sometimes experience errors, either due to a bad configuration or a momentary problem. As this happens, DS will indicate what is wrong with a cryptic error code. Here are the translations of the more common ones into English:

Error code Translated error message
0xd62e3401 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_NOT_INIT
0xd62e3402 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_NO_RESOURCE
0xd62e3403 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_TIMEOUT
0xd62e3404 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_POINTER
0xd62e3405 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_NO_BUFFER
0xd62e3406 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_STOPPED
0xd62e3407 DS_E_VIDEO_UNK_CMP_TYPE
0xd62e3408 DS_E_VIDEO_UNK_FILE_HEADER
0xd62e3409 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_NOT_RESPONDING
0xd62e3410 DS_E_VIDEO_HAL_BREAKOUT_BOX_DEFECT
0xd62e5001 kLCerr_ConsistencyCkFailureError
0xd62e5002 kLCerr_ClientCompilationAlignmentError
0xd62e5003 kLCerr_MemoryScribblerDetectedError
0xd62e5004 kLCerr_UnexcepectedExceptionError
0xd62e5005 kLCerr_OutOfMemoryError
0xd62e5006 kLCerr_OS_Error
0xd62e5007 kLCerr_UnexpectedNULLpointerError
0xd62e5008 kLCerr_BadPathError
0xd62e5009 kLCerr_BadProcAddressError
0xd62e5010 kLCerr_DLLnotLoadedError
0xd62e501a kLCerr_InvalidUsageError
0xd62e501b kLCerr_ResourceNotAvailableError
0xd62e501c Unknown
0xd62e501d kLCerr_TimeOutError

Note HAL stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer, which usually relates to your breakout box (Nitris or AJA).

Usually a workstation restart will clear the code but frequent errors point to a bigger problem, such as hardware going bad or corrupted application components. If you are having frequent errors, you should contact Avid Support with the error code(s).

EXCEL TIMECODE FORMULA

To customize the text setting for Microsoft Excel so that it works with timecode, type:
00\:00\:00\:00
Then, any 8-digit number you type will show up as
hh:mm:ss:ff

(Credit to Lucas Wilson)

Belle Nuit Montage has Excel macros for working with Timecode. Note, this page is in French. Belle Nuit Montage in English

(credit to Dan Tatut)

EXPLORER

Shift-Double-click a window to open multiple windows simultaneously.

Customizing the folders that appear in all newly created projects:
To create a standard folder structure for new projects
1. Open a text file using a text editor.
2. On the first line of the file, type the following in uppercase letters:
[FOLDERS].
3. Type in the names of the folders you want to appear in the Avid Explorer.
For example:

• Graphics
• Master Clips
• Sequences
• Trash

4. Save the file as folder.ini and save it in the following location:
C:\Program Files\Avid\DS_v6.0\Preferences\username
The order of the folders is not important, as they will be sorted in
alphabetical order or according to the sorting method used in the
Avid Explorer.

Tip: Make a shortcut for your own library of DS presets, and for the default DS
presets

PRINT A LIST OF FILES IN AN AVID DS DIRECTORY

To add the print directory feature to Windows Explorer and AVID|DS, follow these steps:

Create the Printdir.bat file

1. Open Notepad, and then copy and paste the following text into Notepad:
   @echo off dir %1 /-p /o:gn > "%temp%\Listing" start /w notepad /p "%temp%\Listing" del "%temp%\Listing" exit
2. Pull down File menu, click Exit and then click Yes to save your changes.
3. In the Save As… dialog box, type %windir%\Printdir.bat and click Save.

Create a new action for file folders

1. Click Start, click Control Panel (or, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel), and then click Folder Options.
2. On the File Types tab, click File Folder.
3. Click Advanced, and then click New.
4. In the Action box, type: Print Directory Listing
5. In the Application used to perform action box, type: printdir.bat
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK, click OK, and then click Close.

Note that after you follow the steps in the previous section, Search Companion may start when you double-click a folder instead of the folder being opened. To prevent this, you should follow the next step "Edit the Registry"

Edit the Registry

1. Start Registry Editor.
2. Locate the Default value under the following key in the registry: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell
3. Click Modify on the Edit menu.
4. In the Value data box, type: none
5. Click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor.

Open Windows Explorer, right-click the folder that you would like to print a directory listing of, and then click Print Directory Listing.

Since the AVID|DS uses a modified version of Windows Explorer as its file manager, right clicking the file folder at its root level (i.e. in the project tree) will also bring up the Print Directory Listing option.

Note Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk. It's recommended that you have a complete backup of your boot drive or that you have activated System Restore on your DS before you do anything to the Registry.

There is another way:
(added 01.19.2008 MH Credit to Jeff Krebs)
TechSmith's SnagIt Screen Capture and Image Editor will capture any Window that is open and allow you to print it.

1. You tell SnagIt that you want to print a scrolling web page click on the bin window and it scrolls and is grabbed in the snagit application. This is because of DS integration into windows
2. Then you choose your output method, print of course is a choice.
3. The DS bin printed in it's entirety.

Also you can modify the' image right in SnagIt so that the grey bg becomes white, with the replace color option.
Jeff says this will work in 32-bit XP This has not yet been tried in 64-bit.




















Revised: May 29, 2009 5:27 am