The first thing that’s important to keep in mind when getting yourself rolling with Titler+ (Titler+) is that it’s now more like titles in other applications.  Titles in Premiere and Resolve are just what you would call “Generators”, meaning that no actual physical media is being created, when adding titles to your timelines.  This is a different concept for Media Composer editors, who have been used to their titles always being actual media.  What this means for you is that if you remove a title from your timeline, it’s gone forever.  Can’t match frame it back, or go back to your bin to find it, so that’s something exceptionally important to keep in mind.  Second thing to keep in mind is that, since the titles are no longer clips to drop in your timeline, I highly recommend NOT adding titles to media/clips that currently live in your timeline.  If you want to add a title, you’re going to select the region you want to have the title appear in, add a couple of edits, and drop it in that way.  Now, with all of that said, there’s something else important that you’ll need to keep in mind when it comes to Titler+, and that is that since your title is not an actual piece of media anymore, you won’t be able to add effects to it like Continuum or Sapphire.  You get the title, and that’s it.  This, for me, is the real downside of Titler+ but, again, if you’re serious about your titling, you’re doing it all using Title Studio or After Effects anyways, so in the grand scheme of things, it’s more of an annoyance than anything.

Your “enjoyment” of Titler+ will vary based on which version of Media Composer you’re using.  With 2024.10 of the application, there has been a major enhancement and re-writing of the effect as it was very cumbersome to use in previous versions.  Now, I’m not going to list through all the updates in one shot.  Let’s start using the effect, and we’ll talk about updates as we go.

The easiest way to search for the effect is to simply head to the Effect Palette and in the search window, just hit “+”.  You’ll notice two effects appear.  The pre-2024.10 update version of the effect, as well as the updated version of the effect. 

So, apparently you can’t update any older instances of Titler+ (but apparently no one was using it anyways), so it’s only there for legacy projects that happen to use it.  Anyways, don’t choose the “Legacy” version, only use the current one.  Once you take the effect and drag it and drop it into the space you’ve made in your timeline, the Titler+ dashboard, as well as the Effect Editor will open up and you’ll be ready to use Titler+.

DASHBOARD VS EFFECT EDITOR

If you haven’t used Titler+ before, the dashboard that pops up when you apply the effect will be something a little different for most Media Composer editors.  We’re accustomed to only having these types of windows appearing when we tell Media Composer that we want them there.  Audio Tool, Audio Mixer, etc.  When it comes to your workflow inside of Titler+, most of us will probably want to stick with the Dashboard only (which we’ll talk more about a little later), but I want to point out that you can easily toggle the Dashboard on and off through the Effect Editor, by hitting the grid icon in the upper right corner.  I’ll say that you can do 90% of your work in either the Dashboard, or the Effect Editor, but at some point you will need to use both, if you plan on animating your titles.

Alright, let’s get back into it!  Once the windows open, nothing is really happening here.  You’re going to need a title to get yourself rolling.  So let’s create one.  With the Text Tool selected, simply click anywhere in the Sequence window to add your title.  Keep in mind that you’ll probably want to make sure that you’re viewing the top most layer in your timeline, so you see the text appear right away.

What is important to keep in mind in Titler+, as opposed to how you titled before is that you can add as many titles to the frame that you need, and the Effect Editor will only show you the parameters of the title you have selected, not all of the titles at the same time.  You titles, even though there may be many of them, can always be selected, and animated (if you want), as individual elements, an not as one all encompassing title, as it has been in the past.  Now, there is a way to manipulate all the titles at the same time to animate them on and off, but we’ll discuss that later in the article when we talk about the “Foreground” parameter of our Title.

NEW ANCHOR POINT TOOL

If you know me, or my tutorials, you know we’re going with Impact, as it’s a good, thick font to start out with.  I want to mention, before we move any farther forward, that there really are two thought processes when working with Titler+.  You can work in the interface entirely, until you’re ready to animate (if you’re going to animate at all), or you can do a combination of working in the interface, and in the Effect Editor, which we’ll be doing in this article.  Once you have your first set of text input into the interface, you can now switch over to the Selection Tool (M) to reposition it.  With that said, here’s where we can start to find some simple, yet effective differences between the old Title Tool (TT) and Titler+.  You’ll notice, first of all, that there is a little crosshair sitting at the lower right corner of your text.  This is the Anchor Point, and it’s quickly adjustable in one of two ways.  If you want precision, you can move to the Effect Editor, to SELECTED OBJECTS>TRANSFORM>ANCHOR POINT, and adjust it’s position with a selection in the dropdown menu.

Or, if you click on the actual Anchor Point located in the lower left corner of the text, you’ll notice the Selection Tool turn red, and now you’re adjusting the Anchor Point dynamically, and you can now position it anywhere you want it to go.

Now, with that said, there are a couple of issues with the way Anchor Point behaves.  For example,  First, when the text is first input in the interface, the Anchor Point is locked to the lower left corner of the text, not the bounding box, which makes perfect sense.

However, if you head to the Effect Editor, and adjust the Anchor point to the “Bottom Left”, it puts at the corner of the bounding box, and not at the corner of the text that was input, which is inconsistent to the point where I find myself never using this way of setting it up.  The Anchor Point should always be relative to the text it’s affecting, not the bounding box the text sits in.  

Speaking of the bounding box, I found it odd that there was so much space at the top and bottom of it, as opposed to on the left and right sides.  I’m of the feeling that the it really should have been set up like After Effects’ bounding box, which is tight to the text, for more precise functionality.

The last thing that I think is important to talk about, when it comes to Anchor Point, is that when it’s adjusted via the Effects Editor, your text position will adjust with it.   By default, the Anchor Point is in the lower left corner, so the last thing you want to do is get everything setup and ready to go, only to realize that you now want to adjust your Anchor Point, as it will throw everything off.  It would be super helpful to have a User Setting that would let you pick the default Anchor Point behavior, but hey, this little engine has come pretty far from its humble beginnings, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed for an update that will add this feature in there, and as I said before, you can always adjust it dynamically, which won’t impact the text’s position.

MUCH BETTER TEXT SIZING AND SCALING

With the new, dynamic Anchor Point comes another mind bending feature for Media Composer editors, and that’s scaling.  Now, I know that sounds very odd, but what I mean by that is that what Media Composer editors are accustomed to, when it comes to issues like text size, is that once you have set the size of your text inside of the legacy TT, if you increase the scale of the text through the titles 3D Warp capabilities the larger you make it, the crappier it looks, due to the fact that the text is not vector based.  Well, those days are now gone.  Titler+ has the capability to not only set your text size pretty large (100 Avid point size – whatever that means), but you can then go in and adjust the scaling of the text up to a factor of 1000, keeping the text nice and crisp, along the way.

CONSISTENT COORDINATE SYSTEM

One thing that you’ll notice across applications like Media Composer, and even DaVinci Resolve is the way the Coordinate system is set up.  Unlike in After Effects, where the coordinates start in the upper left corner at 0,0 and the dead center of an HD 1080p frame is 960×540, Media Composer, across all its effects, has always treated the dead center of the frame as 0,0, and with the update to Titler+, this has now become the same for this effect, to match all the other standard effects, inside of the application.

WORKING WITH THE FOREGROUND

I talked about this concept earlier in the article, and I want to swing back and talk about the Foreground now.  I had mentioned that each title is its own element that can be selected and animated as an individual element in Titler+.  But, what do I do in a situation where I’d like to have all the titles fade on, or wipe on at the same time.  That would be a bit of a logistical nightmare trying to match up all the animations across the different titles.  Well, that’s where the Foreground parameter comes into play.  This is an interesting concept in Titler+ that I really like, and am hoping that will get a slight update to it in the future.  Here’s how the “Foreground” parameter works inside of Titler+.  All of the objects that sit in your frame populate the “Foreground” of the title, no matter what the stacking order is.  Let’s say that we want to have all of the elements fade on at the same time.  With either a title selected, or even no title selected at all, you can navigate to the “Foreground” section of the Effect Editor, twirl it down, and you’ll notice three parameters in there.  Fill Overlay, which controls the opacity of the “fill” portion of your title, the Opacity of your title(s) and a Crop parameter to have titles wipe on from the top, bottom, left or right.  I LOVE this feature except for one major omission, and that is that they didn’t include feather for the Crop parameter.  Foreground is a great, simple feature that is available when a title is selected and also available when nothing is selected, as it’s impacting the frame the titles sit in, more so than the titles themselves.  Fingers crossed for an update with crop feather in a future update.

A FEW OTHER FEATURES

I want to make sure that I mention a few other features that are included in the update to Titler+ which include better Font support meaning that you’ll have a better overall experience with your TrueType, OpenType and FreeType fonts in Titler+ as well as better cross platform compatibility.  To be honest, I’ve always found that the legacy Title Tool was pretty solid on it’s font support, so I would expect the same here in Titler+.  Tracking is included in Titler+ but, I’ll be 100% transparent.  I hate the tracker in Media Composer and would never use it, so if you like using it, you have access to it in Titler+, and last, but certainly not least, there is much more simplified workflow when it comes to Rolls and Crawls in Titler+.  You now have access to not only a linear time graph in the Effect Editor, but you can also scrub through your timeline in Edit mode to make sure that all of your crawl/roll layouts look exactly the way you need them to look.  Again, 100% tranparancy, I don’t do rolls and/or crawls in Media Composer, as there is no support for including logos, which is a deal breaker for me, so I do all my credits in After Effects, which gives me everything I need and much, much more. 

LET’S BUILD ONE!

Alright, so for kicks, let’s build a quick, good looking title inside of Titler+.

1. Let’s select a seven second range of our timeline for our title to appear in.  One second fade up and out, five seconds for the content to be on screen.
2. Head to the Effect Editor, punch in “+” in the search window and drag and drop Titler+ to the seven second hole that’s in our timeline
3. Once the effect has been applied and the Titler+ Dashboard has appeared, if the Type Tool isn’t selected, select it, double click in your timeline and let’s add our first title.  Our Boxer needs a name, so we’ll enter the name “IVAN GRAGO”.  What’s always important to keep in mind is that Titler+ will always default to creating you a title that matches the look of the previous title you created.  If it was simple white with a black drop shadow, that’s what you get.  If it looked like the thumbnail of this article, that’s what it’s going to look like.
   
   
4. Now, “IVAN GRAGO” is a little bit big.  We can use the Size parameter in the Dashboard to adjust it, or we can do something that I haven’t mentioned yet, and we can adjust it dynamically by holding SHFT and grabbing on of the corner bounding box points, and dragging the bounding box smaller.  This will keep the aspect of the title’s sizing the same, and just adjust it’s over scale.  If you wanted to adjust the X/Y scale independently of each other, you could hold OPT/ALT and drag to achieve that look.  
5. Once I have the size correct, I’m going to move “IVAN GRAGO” towards the lower left corner of the frame, and much like in the legacy Title Tool, I’m going to use the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle around “IVAN GRAGO”, I’m going to add a blue outline to it, and then turn off the fill, so I only have a blue rectangular border around it. 
   
   What’s important to keep in mind is that stacking order is still important, much like in the legacy Title Tool. I now have a transparent rectangle on top of my text, so I can just quickly hit the “send to back” button on the dashboard to move the rectangle behind my text, so if I need to make an adjustment, I’m good to go.
6. Now, a quick selection of both title elements and a Copy/Paste will give us a duplicate of what we have, and I’m going to update the text to say “Professional Boxer”, and use the technique we talked about in #4 to adjust the size of the text dynamically, give the outline a quick adjustment and we can now move that title below “IVAN GRAGO” to give us a very cool title look.
   
   
7. Now, with that said, we have a bit of a problem.  The entire title is too big.  Well, again, much like in the legacy Title Tool, we can quickly group elements together and make them smaller, so they fit exactly where we need them to fit.  One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that the engineers at Avid have kept all the icons for things like Stacking, Grouping, Select Next Object, etc the same, so that your transition to Titler+ is as smooth as possible.
   
   
   
8. Now that we have the Title placed where we want it to go, we can simply ungroup, head up to the Foreground parameter, and animate the titles fading in and out for 30 frames, and this title will be ready to go!

I’d say that was quick and simple, and it took me WAY longer to write that out, then it did for me to actually create it.

Let’s be honest.  Avid completely fumbled the ball on Titler+ when it was first released, and have had to play catchup getting it back up to where it needs to be.  Have they done it?  I’d say they have.  My biggest gripe is the fact that now I can’t use any third party effects on my titles, but that’s a very minor gripe that just means that for those specific titles, I’ll have to create them in After Effects, otherwise, good-bye legacy Title Tool and Marquee Title Tool.  It was fun while it lasted, but I’ll stick with Titler+ moving forward.

INTELLIGENT….IT CERTAINLY IS

Now, I’ll start this article out by saying that I’m not getting a dime from Boris FX for this article.  I’ve been a Continuum since before it was offered free to all Media Composer editors who upgraded to Symphony (I know Media Composer editors all remember that), and have used it in After Effects for as long as I can remember.  Most of my “WOW” benchmarks for advancing my workflows haven’t come from the NLE or Compositing applications.  It’s been from Continuum.   

I mean, let’s be honest, Boris FX have pulled out some pretty surprising acquisitions over the last few years.  GenArts, Imagineer Systems, WonderTouch, Syntheyes, and even the licensing of Primatte technology has really made Boris FX the one stop shop for just about anything an editor or compositor could need.  For me, the biggest leap forward in, easily, the last 15 years has been the integration of Mocha technology not only across almost all of the effects inside of both Continuum and Sapphire, but its licensing in After Effects, which easily makes it the standard for tracking in AE today.  So, you’re probably thinking, what does this have to do with AE and machine learning.  Well, Boris FX just released the 2024.5 update for Continuum, and in it, is a tucked away look at the future of the effects package.  Believe it or not, it’s the Witness Protection effect that will lead the way to the next generation of effects in Continuum, and in the process, save editors and graphic designers countless hours of tedious work, even with the best tools available now.

Now, since everything these days is called “SOMETHING AI”, Boris FX decided to go down a bit of a different path by calling theirs ML or “MACHINE LEARNING”, and you can find the four “ML” effects in Continuum, simply by searching for them.

So, looking at the Media Composer version pictured above (the ML effects are available across the other host applications of Continuum as well), you’ll notice that there are actually four different ML effects including DeNoise, ReTimer, UpRez and Witness Protection which, for Media Composer, is a real-time effect.  So, what is the Witness Protection effect exactly?  Well, you’ve seen it a million times before.  Need to blur someone’s face out who’s walking down the street, as you don’t have permission to use their likeness in your production?  That’s where you would use an effect like this.  However, it’s worked very differently in the past and, to be honest, the effect went from wonky to very cool to awesome.  It started out wonky as it used the Continuum tracker to do all the motion tracking.  We all know how terrible point tracking can be, and having Mocha integrated with almost all the effects in Continuum really stepped this effect up a notch, as it made the tracking process much easier and much more precise.  It was, however, not without its issues.  If the talent walked behind a tree, or lamppost, or other object, it would require more work to be done inside of Mocha and, really, any time this type of effect was required, it always came with a bit of cringe from the editor, as we know how much time it really took to do this type of work, and it could be painfully slow.  Well, not anymore.  How does it work?  Drag and drop.  Yep.  That’s it.  Drag the effect (or apply it, depending on the application you’re using), and that’s it.  Talent walks behind something?  No problem.  The ML (Machine Learning) effect will be dropped back on as they come back out from behind it.  Does your character walk on or off screen?  Again, no problem, as ML will add the effect back on when they reappear.  Take a look at what I mean below:

The effect still contains everything else that you had available to you before, like the ability to switch to a mosaic pattern instead of a blur if you want to, and you can even turn ML off all together if you wanted to apply the effect to something different like a logo on someone’s shirt.

With that said, this is where I really see the potential in this effect.  Right now, the ML component is designed to detect faces, and basically add an ellipse to it as a mask, to then have Continuum either blur or add a mosaic to someone’s face.

I was floored by how quick and accurate it was.  The only adjustment I actually had to make was to add a bit of a feather to the mask, and make it slightly bigger, but otherwise, it did all the work for me.  It’s the first time that I’ve done anything with AI and thought “HOLY ****, I CAN ACTUALLY SEE MYSELF USING THIS ON A REGULAR BASIS”.  Now, let’s take a look at this effect moving forward.  What about logos on shirts or on products?  What about the ability to blur out nudity?  What about the ability to look at a transcript and blur over someone’s mouth who swears.  Now these applications are something that editors, especially ones who work on reality TV can really use in their day to day workflow that will save them an absolute ton of time in the compositing chair.  We can even look across other effects in Continuum to see where applications like this can speed up our workflows.  For example, in any lens flare effect.  Simply type in what you want your lens flare “attached” to, and you’ve already saved me a ton of time.  Sun, headlight, flashlight.  Something so simple, can save use minutes and even hours of time tracking.    For me, this one effect has gotten me excited about Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning in my NLE/Compositing application, as it’s something that I can easily see a wide range of editors using, in all different types of productions.  For more information about Continuum 2024.5, you can check it out at borisfx.com .

HOW DOES NOBE OMNISCOPE WORK

If you’re a user of Nobe Omniscope, a new version has just been released as of October 2023 that includes.

• Enhanced OCIO Color Management
• Advanced HDR Quality Control and New QC Timeline
• New Multi-Input Support
• New Virtual Production Workflows for Unreal Engine & Unity
• Performance Boosts, macOS Optimization and much more.

You can get more in-depth details at this link!

Now, the first thing you’ll need to figure out with Nobe Omniscope, is how you’ll access it in your application of choice.  When you install Nobe Omniscope, you’ll have a choice of which applications to install, based on your workflow(s).

Once installed, you’ll now have the Nobe Omniscope application, but you’ll need a bridge to get from Premiere, After Effects, Resolve, etc to Nobe Omniscope.  Plug-Ins have been installed for all applications, except for Media Composer (but we’ll talk about that in a second), and using Resolve as an example, you can simply switch your Node window over to Timeline as opposed to Clip, add the Omniscope Connect effect, and that’s all it takes in Resolve!

Now, all you have to do is connect inside of Nobe Omniscope, and you’re all set to go!

To be honest, the process takes about 2 minutes, and once you’re set to go, all you need to do is put Nobe Omniscope on a secondary monitor, and you now have your software scopes set to go!  

The process works almost exactly the same for Premiere/After Effects, except instead of it being added as an effect, you can simply use the Mercury Transmit feature to output to Nobe Omniscope.  The setup in Nobe Omniscope is the same as Resolve, just check the Premiere/AE option, as opposed to Resolve.

Now, Media Composer works a little differently, and you’ll need to make sure you add an important “option”, when installing Media Composer.  When installing, make sure you have the Newtek NDI Plug-In option selected, as we can use that to send our signal from Media Composer to Omniscope.

Once installed, make sure that in Media Composer the HW/SW output is set for NewTek NDI (much like how you would export to external physical hardware).  

Once you do that, you’ll now see a new option to connect called NDI, and the name of your computer.

That’s it!  Real-time playback out of Media Composer to Nobe Omniscope, with a ton of scope options, that we’ll discuss in the next section!

WHAT YOU GET

Well, first, let’s get this out of the way right now.  Nobe Omniscope is supported on both Mac and Windows, including the M1/M2 processors, so both platforms are good to go!  

The first thing you’ll notice when working with Ominscope is that it’s well, fast.  The same as your NLE.  Hit play there, and they playback on Nobe Omniscope is instantaneous.  To be honest, it doesn’t look like much when you launch it, but with 18 scopes, you’re never going to say “I wish I had this scope”….. 

What I normally do is set up a “Default” layout that has my Source Signal (from my NLE), a Waveform, Vectorscope and Audio meters.  The basics of my color/finishing workflows.

From here, this is where things get really interesting.  Nobe Omniscope has it’s settings, but so do all the scopes contained within it.  

Using the Waveform as an example, you can first, choose between the different modes.  Luminosity, RGB, RGB Parade, YRGB Parade and YCbCr Parade.  Then add Colorize, Enhanced Render, Smooth Trace a Scale Override and even a Low Pass Filter, and all of that is just in the Display tab.  You can adjust the further Appearance of the scope, and even add 3D LUT’s to your footage, right there within the scope itself, and this isn’t unique to just the Waveform.  All the scopes have this type of in-depth options for you to choose, depending on what you want things to look like.

One thing that is important to mention is that Nobe Omniscope supports both SDR and HDR (Pro Version) as well as Dolby Vision and, depending on the version you’re using, it will function as a QC playback application as well.  With the Pro Version of Nobe Omniscope, you have access to QC features including Gamma Check, Blanking Detection, HDR Stats, Single Line (view the signal on a specific line) and HDR Gammut Check and even a timeline that you can see QC details in real-time.

Once I have my basic setup good to go, I then start creating alternate layouts (with Histogram, CIE Plot, etc) to use, as I need them.

ISSUES

If I had to pick one issue that I don’t like Nobe Omniscope, and it’s something that I haven’t been able to easily figure out, and that is how to hear audio out of the application itself.  This is not an issue when I’m playing back Media Composer, Premiere or Resolve, as I can hear the audio coming out those applications themselves, but when I playback a video that I want to QC in Omniscope, I see the VU meters moving, but can’t hear any sound coming from the application.  I’m sure it’s something I’ve overlooked, and will update the article, if and when I figure it out.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hardware scopes are expensive, especially if you’re working in a hybrid location (home/office), or even if you’re working in a smaller studio.  Nobe Omniscope has taken the need for expensive I/O hardware that would be required for hardware scopes, and made them unnecessary, by giving you the ability to go from your NLE to Nobe Omniscope in realtime.  If you’re delivering for broadcast on television or for the theatre, Nobe Omniscope is an absolute no-brainer of a purchase that every editor, colorist and motion graphic designer should have in their post production toolkit.  For more information, or to download a free demo of Nobe Omniscope, you can check it out at this link!

Let’s Edit with Media Composer – Lesson 1 – Before You Edit

In our first lesson, we’re going to discuss things that you need to consider, and understand, before you start editing.  Media Composer is not like other NLE’s.   For example, we start out talking about Plug-Ins, but not in the way you might think.   Media Composer can edit all kinds of different footage from RED to BRAW to ProRes.  The only issue is that you’ll need to install a plug-in to get rolling.  I know that sounds a bit odd, but it’s similar to how you have to download and install BlackMagic RAW before you start working with BRAW footage.  The same concept applies with other types of footage as well.

The next thing that’s important to consider, when creating your new project in Media Composer is, where will it live in your system’s hierarchy?  Do you want it to only be accessible by you?  By all the users on your system?  Or, do you want it in a location that you can just “Grab and Go”, and take it with you on the road?

Finally, we discuss Media Composer’s best, and sometimes confusing feature for new editors, and that is the media hierarchy that Media Composer uses when transcoding or consolidating media.  Even though you can just link to footage and edit with it, it’s not recommended, and has never been an ideal workflow.  Converting your media to “Avid Friendly” media is always the best way to go, and we’ll discuss how Media Composer manages media, and where you should store it!

Don’t forget to like, subscribe and share the tutorial, if you found it helpful!  As always, if you have questions or comment about the tutorial, you can send them to me at kevinpmcauliffe@gmail.com !  Enjoy!

LWKS has announced that Lightworks, the original video editing software platform, has amplified and enhanced its pro editing features. This new release ensures Lightworks is the optimum tool for importing, editing, finishing, and delivering perfect projects every time.  With version 2022.2,  now available, the NLE maintains, according to the company, “its position as a competitive force in the world of film, TV, and professional video editing by radically improving its end-to-end pro user experience.”

Enhancements in the new version include official Apple ProRes certification, quick conversion import LUTs, new and improved scope functionality, redesigned 10-bit editing from import to export, and in another world-first, automated quality control functionality built directly into a timeline. These tools cover the entire pro editing experience from first import to final delivery and allow production professionals to natively create high-quality content regardless of their OS, saving time during the creative storytelling process.

Peter Lambert, LWKS CEO, commented: “This new release is a step forward for Lightworks and helps to democratize the content creation workflow by removing the barriers to a truly professional editing workflow experience. This expanded toolset is yet another way Lightworks deals with advancements in technology so editors can stay focused on editing and creative storytelling.”

Lightworks has built-in QC functionality

The new Apple ProRes integration will work across all major operating systems and allow content creators and post-production professionals to natively create high-quality ProRes content regardless of their OS and save time during the creative storytelling process.

The new integration with its sister software, QScan, is a world-first ‘in-edit video QC’ workflow. Running QScan inside your timeline allows video professionals to automatically detect issues such as video levels, missing audio, photosensitive epilepsy triggers, loudness levels, digital dropouts, and more directly from the editing timeline. Unique to Lightworks, this built-in QC functionality ensures all media projects will be finished perfectly to specifications every time.

Lightworks 2022.2 is currently in beta and available for users to try at www.lwks.com. If you want to discover, says LWKS ,”how it redefines what is achievable directly inside an NLE”, download the beta now. The official release is to follow in the coming weeks, according to the company.

Lightworks is the original non-linear editing system for editing and mastering digital video. With over 5.5 million users and more than 30 years of heritage, the NLE has helped every type of video editor and creator imaginable, from Oscar-winning Hollywood legends and broadcast professionals to corporate content creators, YouTubers and first-time editors.

Bins, as we know, are the centerpiece of your workflow(s).  They are what will make for a smooth edit, or a potential rocky one as well.  In this Let’s Edit lesson, we’re talking Bin View Modes.  Now, you might be thinking “I have no idea what that even means!”.  Well, Bin View Modes are simply Text, Frame and Script views, that we have been using since the inception of Media Composer.  However, there are been some updates to them that you might not know about, and they will definitely help keep you organized, no matter which one is your preference.  Enjoy!

Channel: www.youtube.com/letseditMC_avid
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LetsEditwithMediaComposer
Twitter: @kpmcauliffe
e-mail: kevinpmcauliffe@gmail.com

PRICE

When it comes to Boris FX products, you should know by now, I just say subscribe….and I hate subscription plans, but the cost is just one you can’t beat.  Media Composer editors, many of which are still under the impression that the cost is not justifiable, can subscribe to Continuum 2022 for $495 for the year.  That’s $41.25 US a month.  If you do two complex tracking or keying jobs in a year, you can easily charge your client the cost of the subscription, and get all the point updates (including major .5 updates) that will become available throughout the year.  The monthly subscription, compared to buying Continuum outright, would give you access to the effects and all updates through three years, for less than the price as a flat out purchase.  There’s no reason why, if you are serious about your end product, can’t justify $42 per month.

WHAT’S NEW

I always think to myself, “What’s the team going to do this year, to improve on what they have done last year”, and this year is really no different.  It might seem like there are no “huge” feature updates, but all the smaller updates combine to make this year’s release another “must have”.

BCC+ IS WHERE IT’S AT!

In Continuum 2021, we were introduced to the Continuum + effects.  What they were, at the time, was a group of 82 effects that were ported over from DFT’s effects, when Boris FX purchased the company.  What you got was……  “Eighty-two new 100% OpenCL accelerated filters for coloring, lighting, camera lens and film stock emulation, and more. Three brand new categories and roughly 1000 new presets. All of the new filters are fully HDR compliant and include a new FX Editor preset browser and custom preset generator with OCIO color management tools and the ability to edit parameters from directly inside the browser.”  Now, that’s all fine and good, but there were a few issues.  The big one was no Mocha support, via the Pixel Chooser.   So in 2022, these effects have gotten a lot of love, and it’s important to understand why.  The reason is simple.  They are the future of Continuum.  Now, I don’t mean those specific effects, but the BCC”+” effects are what the current effects will eventually morph into, beginning with Beauty Studio in this release.   I asked Peter McAuley, the Product Manager for Continuum why editors need to be excited about the BCC+ effects and he told me “I think editors and compositors alike will enjoy the benefits of the new BCC + architecture which includes full GPU support yielding faster processing times, the redesigned PixelChooser integrated masking system with mocha and the FX Editor which provides users with an interactive visual method of selecting and customizing effect presets. “

Okay, so we know BCC+ is where it’s at, but where does that now put us with the effects inside of Continuum 2022.  Well, we now have the first effect “ported” over to the new “+” architecture, as I mentioned before, Beauty Studio, which means that more goodness will be coming over future releases to get more of the standard continuum effects, “flipped over”.  One thing that I’m sure you know, if you’ve read any of my Continuum reviews, you’ll know that the team is never content with adding effects, and then forgetting about them.  

MOCHA, MY GOOD FRIEND

My biggest issue with the “+” effects when they were first added was that there was no Mocha integration, which made many of them trickier to use in Media Composer, when it came to tracking them in your shots.  Well, I’m glad to say that with the 2022 release, the team has added an updated Pixel Chooser to all the effects across continuum INCLUDING in most of the new “+” effects, which was my biggest gripe when they were first added.  

Also, speaking of Mocha, even though you might not notice it, it does get updates in Continuum (and Sapphire for that matter), to keep it up to date.  Keep in mind, you’re still getting the stripped down version of Mocha, Mocha Continuum, but having it updates with the new Dope Sheet Enhancements (slide all keyframes, zooming tools and big performance improvements), RGB channel section for tracking and in the viewport, OCIO V2 and much more, this is still an important feature update that might largely go unnoticed.

EFFECTS, EFFECTS, EFFECTS

Come on, what Continuum release would you have, if there weren’t new effects included, and this release has six new blur effects added including

BCC+ Blur

Simple, straightforward, yet tunable blurring with quick performance

BCC+ Channel Blur

Create subtle or extremely noticeable color separations with per channel adjustable blur amounts!

BCC+ Channel Blur YUV

Take the Channel Blur effect, and throw in the ability to blur the luminance of the shot, and you’ve now got adjustable color space amounts, both for subtle image restoration / noise suppression work and for more stylized washed out / degraded color looks!

BCC+ Directional Blur 

This one really showed me what the + effects can really do,  Directional Blur.  Pretty straightforward.  I dropped the effect on, cranked the blur up, grabbed the direction parameter and swung it around, and the system handled it no problem, soooooo, I thought I’d take the standard BCC Directional Blur and do the same thing.  I thought my poor system was going to croak.  Fans start spinning up, the system is stuttering trying to keep up….it wasn’t even close. “+” blew away the standard effect by a long shot!

BCC+ Smear Blur

I really liked this one.  You can blur, zoom, bend, twist and even create a “tornado” look to your footage.  Very cool

BCC+ Prism Blur

This is a better quality “Prism Blur” to its standard BCC counterpart which gets you stylized color separation combined with geometric/smeary blurs.

Keep in mind that these new blur effects are 100% GPU, with CPU fallback if necessary

PRESETS

You can’t mention effects without mentioning presets, and two effects in particular have received a ton of new presets, and they are two of the standout effects for in in the “+” effects category.  First, BCC+ Film Stocks has gotten 60 new movie “Looks” for you to quickly add to your footage, and probably my favorite effect in “+”, BCC+ Lights has received 50 new glass style gobos to add to the already massive collection.  

Speaking of Presets, we’re now going to talk about another “newer” and awesome tool in the “+” effects, and that is the FX Editor.  Not to be confused with the FX Browser, which is only used to preview presets that you might want to use, the FX Editor is designed to create those presets in a very visual way.  It’s also gotten some love in the new Continuum 2022 with an update to the UI’s look with a much cleaner and flatter look.  You can now also save and load your workspaces, and there’s better preview control for previewing Over Black, Over Gray, Over White, Over Checkerboard, and Straight RGB.  If you’re not using the FX Editor, you really should.  I got my first look at it with Boris FX’s Optics, and loved it, and am really glad it’s made the transition to Continuum.

PARTICLE ILLUSION

Particle Illusion really needed its own section here, as there have been a couple of major enhancements that really take particle work in Media Composer to the next level.  Whether you want the particles to enhance a title, or use them to illuminate a lower third, particle work in Media Composer has never been easier, and two major updates to Particle Illusion will help you even further.  The main new feature is fluid dynamics.   At its core, what fluid dynamics is, is the way gases and liquids flow and swirl as they move.  Now, you might be thinking…………what does that have to do with particles.  Well, think of the particles you’re creating, not flowing through a vacuum, like they have done before.  Think of them floating through an actual atmosphere that would have air (or water for that matter), being able to have influence over it.  That is fluid dynamics at its core.  The feature itself is ridiculously cool, and super simple to apply.  It’s included in the Force parameter, and once it’s turned on, it’s on for any future forces that are added.  Then, it’s time to play with it, and tweak it as you like, until you have the look you want.  Here’s a quick look at it below, in Particle Illusion AVX.

The other big Particle Illusion feature enhancement is the ability to save entire scenes as emitter library entries.  Now, what the heck does that mean?  Well, in the past, you could create very cool particle emitters, but the problem was they were just that.  The emitter.  If you had created any looks or animations using Forces or Deflections, they were not saved with the emitter, so you’d have to constantly re-create those elements, any time you added that particle to a scene.  Well, not anymore.  Now you can save the emitter, and all the other parameters added to your scene, as a “scene” in the emitter library.

IS IT WORTH YOUR MONEY

In two words, 100% YES!  One thing that drives me insane to read in forums like the Avid Editors of Facebook, is when editors are posting questions like “SpectraMatte is not doing ABC for me….what should I do?” or “I’m having this, that or the other problem with Avid’s built-in Motion tracker.  Can someone help me?”  Something important to keep in mind is that, other than Title+, Once a feature in Media Composer, especially those very legacy features, have been added (effects specifically), they never get updated.  Titler+ is getting updated because it’s a dog, and Media Composer only has it for a larger than HD titling option.  Or does it?  This is where a third party company like Boris FX and Continuum come into play.  Need Titling in larger than HD projects?  No problem, Title Studio is ready to go.  Need top of the line keying?  Primatte Studio is ready to go.  Need motion tracking for a project you’re working on?  How about the built in Mocha planar tracking (which is WORLD’s better than point tracking) of Corner Pin Studio.  The Continuum team have not only included awesome “single” effects, but “studio” effects for jobs that require more than one effect.  Beauty Studio, Title Studio, Corner Pin Studio and Primatte Studio.  Continuum has just about every effect and/or transition you could ever need, and if you’re on the subscription plan, yearly updates keep the good times rolling.  If you’re a Media Composer editor who’s serious about your projects, you’re doing your clients a major disservice by not having Continuum as part of your toolkit.  It is easily the best collection of plug-ins available for Media Composer on the market today!  All of the features above are available now, and you can check out a free demo of Continuum at www.borisfx.com

FTC disclosure

Boris FX is not paying me to write this review.  Boris FX does, however, sponsor my tutorial series on my personal YouTube channel.  This does not change my opinion of this product in any way.  All opinions posted in this article are my own.

THE DESIGN

If you read my article about building a PC for Media Composer, you’ll know my issue with Mac’s.  Ventilation.  So, getting the best laptop I can, with the absolute best design for what I’m going to be doing is essential.  The last PC laptop I had was from a while ago, and the design left much to be desired.  Gaming is Razer’s thing.  They design for gamers.  Have you seen games today?  The toll they take on your GPU and your system in general is huge, and the design of the laptops needs to be one that can sustain that type of workload for hours on end, days, weeks and years at a time.  The laptop itself is a what I want it to be.  Lightweight and thin, but not so small that it it’s difficult to use.  The Razer Blade 15 is 9.25”x14”x0.8” and weighs in at a whopping 4lbs 13oz.  That’s super small and super lightweight.  Exactly what I was hoping it would be. What’s important to keep in mind about the height of the unit is that there are two bumpers on the bottom that let the unit side a good 0.3 inches off my desktop for the ventilation underneath, but we’ll get to that in a second.

It has 3 USB 3.2 ports (two on the left and one on the right), two Thunderbolt 3/USB-C (3.2 Gen 2)  ports (one on the left and one on the right), as well as an HDMI port that supports Dolby Atmos 7.1 on the right side of the unit.  Last, the headphone jack and power supply input are located on left hand side as well.

Now, I’m specifically mentioning the location of the ports as, for me, that’s important.  I don’t want all my ports on one side, as I want flexibility when taking the unit on location, and the Razer Blade 15 definitely offers that.  One thing that I also want to mention is the heavy duty power cable, and the fact that it is a bent cable, which is very nice, as I hate power cables that plug in directly out of a laptop, adding length to the side to side dimensions of the laptop.  Another thing that I’m super happy with is the fact that there are no input/output ports on the back of the unit.  Keep it simple!  I like that.

The Razer Blade 15 has some pretty impressive speakers sitting on the surface of the unit.  4.25”x1” Stereo speakers on both sides of the surface, which is way more than enough if you choose to go without headphones.

You’ll also notice that, much like with Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup, the Razer Blade 15’s 15.6″ OLED 4K Touch 60Hz, 100% DCI-P3, factory calibrated display sits edge to edge

Alright, let’s get to my most important feature.  Ventilation.  If you flip the Razer Blade 15 over, you’ll notice there are two 2.25”x1.75” vents on the bottom of the unit.

You’ll also notice that there is a ventilation “bar” located across the back of the unit which is almost 12” long AND, if you actually look at the unit from the back, when the display is closed, you’ll see a matching ventilation “bar” located across the back of the unit.

That’s a lot of airflow that can go to and from the unit.  Remember, this is a gaming laptop designed to play the newest Call of Duty game all day.  If the laptop can handle the ventilation required to stop overheating for that, it can handle DaVinci Resolve’s GPU needs.

One thing that I do mention to people is that I always like to pick up a cheap laptop cooling pad.  Does the unit need it?  From my testing it doesn’t, but I always like to air on the side of caution.  You can’t have too much cooling!

GUTS & GLORY

Alright, now that we’ve talked about the laptop’s design, let’s talk about the guts of this particular machine.  The unit that was sent to me is an i7-10875H 8 Core-16 thread CPU with a max turbo frequency of 5.10 GHZ.  This is the same processor used by Razer across their entire laptop product line.  RAM, you’re looking at 32G as a max, again, across the entire product line.  Keep in mind, that I did say a max of 32.  There are lower end models that do come with 16G of RAM, but if you’re purchasing this for post production work, 32 is the absolute way to go.  Much like with RAM, the hard drive capacity will fluctuate between a 512G SSD and a 1TB SSD.  The one in the Razer Blade 15 that I have is 1TB, which is way more than I’d ever need in an internal drive, as the TB3/USB-C ports give me a never ending (not really) supply of external drives that I can hook up.  Now, you might be thinking that 32G of RAM is a little bit light, but the graphics card more than makes up for that.   The GPU in the Razer Blade 15 is an NVIDIA® Quadro RTX 5000 Studio Edition with 16GB GDDR6 VRAM.  Yep.  16G.  That’s a lot.  Editors know that when it comes to graphics in applications like DaVinci Resolve, it’s a GPU pig to put it politely.  I played around with RED 5K footage at 5:1, using Continuum 2021’s Lens Flare 3D effect, and Resolve was super responsive, and didn’t have a single GPU issue.  The funny thing is, that I don’t even remember the fan of the unit coming one the entire time I was playing around with the RED footage in my timeline.  I’m sure at some point it would have come on, but the fact that it didn’t, as opposed to my PC tower that’s fans start screaming once I’m working with RED footage, is pretty impressive.  This is great news for editors who use any GPU intensive applications out there (Resolve, After Effects, etc), as normally to get a GPU with 16G of VRAM, that’s a major upgrade cost, which is included in the base price of the unit.

There’s something else that I just want to mention on a side note.  I’ve never really been a big laptop guy until I sat down to use the Razer Blade 15, and it’s really the first laptop that I could see myself taking on the road with me, or even sitting in my backyard, and working with it.  But that does beg the question, what’s the best way to hook up external hard drives to it.  Most people who ask me, I tell them that Thunderbolt 3 is the way to go.  The USB-C connection will give you 20G/s, but something more important than that, is the cable run to your hard drive.  How annoying are Thunderbolt cables, as the are notoriously short.  Well, they do man Optical Thunderbolt 3 cables that will give you cable runs of 16′ to 164′, which makes using those big external hard drives with a laptop much more appealing, as your drive doesn’t need to sit less than 3ft away from you, due to the super short cable runs, traditionally associated with Thunderbolt.  Just keep in mind that the longer an optical TB3 cable you need, the more it’s going to cost you.  But anyways, back to the Razer Blade 15!  Alright.  Let’s talk about cost!

COST

The Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition’s normal MSRP is $4299 US, but I have consistently noticed that it’s on sale for around 10-12% off, so you can pick it up for $3799 US.  If you’re relatively new to post production,  you might think that’s a lot, but in reality, I find it to be totally comparable with other systems out there.  Laptops, especially for what we are, are normally fairly expensive, but a laptop like this, with all the features is right in line with its competitors when it comes to the price of the unit.

RAZER CARE

Much like AppleCare for Mac’s, Razer Care is here for purchasers of this laptop, and it comes in two flavors.  Elite and Essential.  What is the difference you might ask, well both flavors offer:

• Automatic registration
• 24-hour RazerCare claim support
• Mechanical and electrical failures
• Surge protection (from day 1)
• Extends coverage to 3 years (from day 1)

Now, here’s what separates the Elite from the Essential (above).  Accidental Damage Coverage (ADC) from day 1.  That means that the system is covered additional for drops, spills, falls and collisions.  The price difference between the two is $369 for the Elite (includes ADC) and $249 for the Essential.  Now, please keep in mind that Razer Care is only available in the US, and how it actually work, if you read the fine print is very clever.  Let’s say something happens, and your screen dies.  You’re on the Elite plan, so you ship your laptop back to Razer to be fixed (two-way shipping is included in Razer Care).  Razer determines that the screen will cost $500 to replace.  You paid, in our case – using the RB15SE as our system, $3800 US.  That $500 is deducted from the $3800 you paid originally, and you now have $3300 “banked” for any further accidents you might run into, throughout the remainder of your service contract.  It’s a very clever way of doing things, this way, if you have multiple issues with your system, you’ll still have “credit” banked away to use as needed.

THE DOWNSIDES

If I had to pick one downside to this laptop, it would be that there’s no way for me to customize it at all.  That seems to be the way Razer sells their entire laptop product line.  Really, the only thing that I would be customizing in it would be to bump the RAM up to 64G, which is what i would do if I was purchasing a comparing Mac, but at the end of the day for the work that I’m doing, the 32G of RAM works out well for all my editing and graphics needs.  I will say, however, that having the super powerful GPU does help ease the pain of only being able to have 32G of RAM in the machine.  LOL.  I also found the Razer Care “Only in the States” issue to be annoying, as AppleCare is covered worldwide, which is something that Razer should look into.

THE VERDICT

I love this laptop.  Razer designs laptops for gamers, and by doing that makes them an easy slide over into the post production world.  The things we care about, power, design, portability, reliability, value for your dollar and (assuming you live in the States) Razer Care are everything that makes this laptop great.  If you’re looking to pick up a Windows laptop for Post Production work, you need to give serious thought to the Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition.  What you get for the price can’t be beat!

What got me thinking about this article was an e-mail from Scott Simmons, asking me if I had any tutorials or articles about mixed resolution/mixed frame rate workflows, but more specifically, relinking with archival footage that comes in different frame rates.  Funny enough, I’m actually working on a pretty major project right now, that uses 25p, 29.97i and 23.98 footage, all in the same timeline, that I have offline and online and have become pretty comfortable with the entire process, so I thought, for this article, I’d share my findings with you.  Here we go!

The first thing that’s exceptionally important is getting your footage into your project properly.  Now, I have to make some assumptions before we get rolling.  I’m going to assume you know the difference between Consolidating and Transcoding, and when to use either/or.  We’re going to assume that Transcoding proxies/low-res media will be all you’re doing for this project, and we’ll be walking through things accordingly.

First, please don’t make different projects for different frame rates.  Yes, I know, we had to do that in the past, but we don’t have to do that any more, and good Lord, what a mess that creates.  All of your different frame rates can be put nice and easy into one project with no issues.  So, first thing’s first.  Project creation.  You’re creating the projects in the format of how you will be outputting.  I’m going to assume for this article that you’ll be delivering 1080p 23.976.

STEP 1 – LINKING TO YOUR FOOTAGE

Once you’ve created your project, and entered it, you’ll have an open bin, ready to link to your footage.  For the purposes of this article, we’re going to dump everything into one bin, and organize it after the fact.  To be honest, that’s really how I do things.  So, using the Source Browser, navigate to all the clips you want to link to, and bring them into that bin. What I normally like to do is bring things in “source by source”, meaning that a camera card is a source, and archival footage is a source.  What I do is each source that comes into a bin gets flagged with a color so that after I’m done transcoding, I can place everything into the appropriate bin, and nothing gets confused.  As you can see below, the three colors represent three different sources.  I try to stay away from the color RED, as RED normally means there’s an issue with the shot/footage, and is a DNU.

Please keep in mind that this process, depending on how much footage you have, could take hours to do properly.  Don’t rush this.  Take the time to do it properly now, so you don’t run into problems later.  Also, chances are that clips coming from the same sources will have the same frame rates, so I normally tell people that if you don’t have a bin view to show you the FPS, it might be a good idea to create one now.  The reason I suggest this type of strategy is that you can set up your transcodes, which traditionally are brutally slow, to run all day, or overnight, without you having to come back to the application each time you have to start a new source Transcoding.

STEP 2 – SOURCE SETTINGS

Next, it’s time to check out the Source Settings for each source you’re bringing in.  This can be done a source/clip at a time or, in situations where you might have a ton of RED footage that was shot, you can do all of those at the same time.  Keep in mind that can be done over all like sources.  As you saw from the image above, I’ve brought in a RED clip, to show you how your Color Adapters and FrameFlex come into play.  So, select the clip(s) you want to adjust the source settings to.  Right click and at the top select “Source Settings”.  You’ll be brought to the below window.

You’ll notice in the image that Media Composer has figured out that the metadata with the clip is tagged to show that it needs a LOG3G10 to REC709 LUT added to it, so it has done it on its own.  Depending on your footage (Alexa, etc), you might need to add a LUT in this window if necessary.  If you need to add a LUT to your system, you can click on the Color Management Settings at the bottom of the window, click on “Select LUT file”, choose whether you want it available across all projects, or just the current one you’re working on, and then import to use in the Source Settings window, or in your timeline via the Color LUT effect.

The next thing you’ll want to do, assuming your adjusting the parameters of RAW media (Blackmagic, RED, etc), is head to the “Linked Plug-In” tab to adjust any necessary parameters, before you transcode.

Last, but certainly not least, you’ll need to head to the FrameFlex window.  If all the footage you’re working with is 16×9, you’ll be able to skip over FrameFlex here, as Media Composer will default to working with Frameflex in a 16×9 workflow.  If your footage, like the RED footage here, is a different aspect to your timeline, you’ll want to make sure that your Frameflex window matches the aspect of your timeline.  You can do that by making one simple adjustment.  Keep in mind that you can change the framing after the fact in your timeline, but it’s best to get things 90% of the way there here in your Source Settings, so little to no work is required later on.

If you’re doing this clip by clip, you can simply hit Apply, and get back to your bin, or if you’ve selected multiple clips, “Apply” will change to “Apply to All”, to add any parameter adjustments across all selected clips.

STEP 3 – TRANSCODING

Ok, once you’ve set all your Source Settings, it’s time to Transcode.  Let’s select all the clips, and transcode them.  Select All>Right Click>Consolidate/Transcode.  You’ll now be greeted by the window below.

First thing to do is to change from Consolidate to Transcode, and choose the drive you want to Transcode to.

This is where things can fall off the rails, if you’re not careful with what you’re doing.  I’m going to break things down here to how you’ll want to set things up, and then I’ll give you a snapshot of the Transcode window, so there’s no confusion.  First, “Raster Dimension”.  Most people, mistakenly, leave the raster dimension set to “Project Dimension”.  What this means is that no matter what the size of your footage is, it will be crushed down to match the 1920×1080 size of your project.  For me, I want the footage, since it’s being transcoded at low-resolution, to be at the original raster dimension.  Make sure you drop down the menu to select the “Source Dimension”.  By doing this, you’ll be able to utilize FrameFlex to adjust the framing of your shots, either on a clip by clip basis in your bin, once you’ve transcoded or inside your timeline, via the Effects Editor.

Next and here’s one of the big ones……. Keep Source’s Frame Rate or Convert to Project’s Frame Rate.  If you want to be able to Relink to the master clips later, to transcode your final timeline at its highest resolution, please, please, please select “Keep Source’s Frame Rate”.  Next, since we’re going Offline here, our Target Video Resolution will be DNxHR LB.  You might be wondering “Why not DNxHD?”.  What’s important to keep in mind is that Media Composer is assuming that you will be working with non-project native raster dimension & frame rates, so DNxHR is your main codec of choice.

Assuming you’re working with RAW footage you can choose “Full” for the linked source quality, and if you’ve set up your footage to look correct in the Color Encoding window, you can bake that information in, by selecting the check box.  I would recommend against checking the Frameflex box, as if you do, you can’t make any framing adjustments after the fact.  Something else important to keep in mind is that any RAW adjustable clip parameters will always be baked in, once you transcode.  Your “ideal” setup should look something like the image below.

Keep in mind that there are some transcoding options I didn’t discuss like sample rate conversion, etc, as I never normally am converting that, that is why it’s been left out.  Once your footage is transcoded, your bin will look a little like what you see below.

The beauty part with this method, as you can see from the above image, is that we now have actual Avid encoded Media in our project, and it has been tagged with the same color tag we applied earlier, so it’s easy to now move that media into whatever bin we want to have it in.  Something else that is exceptionally important to note is that we have the newly created media, but we also still have the linked media.  Many people think that we can remove it by deleting it.  I would recommend against that, as Media Composer will need that linked media, to know where to link your transcoded clips back to, to create your high resolution master timeline.  What I normally do is simply create a bin called “Linked Clips”, and drop them all in there.  As you can see from the below image, I’ve created bins with names based on frame rates, just to keep things as simple as possible.

If you don’t like seeing the .new.01 at the end of every clip name, you can feel free to delete it, as it really has no impact on the relinking process.  Well, that’s pretty much it for the first of the two hard parts.  The setup.  The easy part is the editing.  You will have to consider some things, so let’s talk about those now.

STEP 4 – EDITING TIDBITS

Adapters are super helpful when editing in your timeline with different raster sizes and different frame rates.  You can use them to quickly see what is happening with any specific clip.  “T” stands for Temporal, meaning that a time change has happened with that specific clip.  Meaning it has been converted from one frame rate to the other.  “S” stands for Spacial, meaning that the raster size of a clip has been changed from its original size, to match that of your timeline.  Obviously a clip can have one, two or even none of the adapters on it.  There is another adapter, “C” representing Color, if you have made a change to the Color Encoding settings in your Source Settings.

Speaking of Spatial changes, if you have clips in your timeline with a “S” adapter on them, you can access FrameFlex via the Effects Editor, to quickly adjust the framing of a shot.

Now, there is one last thing that I want to mention, and that is that depending on the type of footage you’re working with, you may need to step into your Motion Effects Editor to adjust the type of motion conversion that is happening.  In most cases, you’ll want a “Both Field” adjustment, especially if you’re dealing with interlaced to progressive frame conversions.

The last thing I want to mention is that what I normally like to do is to identify frame rates by color in my timelines.  Media Composer does this by default, but the color changes are very subtle, and might not readily stand out.  To adjust the clip colors, you can navigate to the timeline fast menu and head up to Clip Color.

Once there, you’ll see that Media Composer has colors set for a variety of clip types including Offline, Proxy, Linked Clips, etc, but what we’re interested in is the “Mixed Rates” section.  Here, I will change the colors to something more noticeable, and something that I’ll be able to recognize right away, like below.

Now I can easily see what is what in my timeline.  This might be a little much for some editors, so you can adjust the colors as little as needed to differentiate between the different frame rates

STEP 5 – DELETING THE MEDIA FOR RELINKING

This is a step that I take.  Some editors might choose to take the next steps with media in their project, but what I normally will do is either create a mixdown with timecode burn of my entire timeline (locked offline), or export it so I can relink to it if necessary.  Next, Call up the Media Tool, and choose to show the Precomputes (both) and the Media Files.

You might think that this point you can just blow everything away, and you’re good to go, except take a look at what has also been populated in the Media Tool window.  Files called “Linked Metadata Files”, and they are referencing the location of the files on my desktop that I originally linked from, to get the footage into Media Composer.

Now, I’m going to assume, since I haven’t been able to find any information otherwise (but if someone updates me, I’ll be sure to add it to this article), that this is the information telling Media Composer where the originally linked files live, so I’m not going to delete this information.  Only the actual media files.

So, with that metadata still intact, along with the linked files still living in our project in a bin, we’re good to go to relink.

STEP 6 – RELINKING

A common misconception at this point is that you need to go back, bin by bin, and relink everything to have it appear in your timeline.  You could do that, but for me, since this timeline is locked (yeah right, when is anything ever REALLY locked.  LOL), I only want to relink to the clips that exist in my timeline.  So, to do that, I first make sure my sequence is in a bin by itself.  No other clips, sequences, etc in there with it.  Then, I head to the bin fast menu, and navigate down to “SET BIN DISPLAY”.

Once there, check “Show Reference Clips”.

Now, you’ll see that Offline Master Clips have now appeared in your bin.  The clips that have appeared represent only the clips that appear in your timeline, so please keep that in the back of your head.  Alright, let’s relink to the master files.  First, select the clips, right click and select Relink.

Ahhhh, the window that drives fear into the hearts of editors everywhere!  The dreaded Relink window.

The funny thing is that as daunting as this window appears, there’s only a couple of things that need to be set.  You want to make sure the “Source Name” drop down is set to “Tape Name or Source File Name”, you want to make sure that you’re relinking to “Any Video Format”, and by default, the Relink tool is set to relink across frame rates, but just to make sure, there’s a checkbox in the lower left corner.  Here’s a snapshot of the relink window with only the parameters you should need to adjust.

Woo Hoo!  That’s it!  What you will notice is that the master Reference clips that are in the same bin as your sequence have switched back to linked clips, and all the clips in your timeline are now relinked to the originally linked clips, and your timeline is ready for online.

HOWEVER, with that being said, WHEN HAS IT EVER REALLY BEEN THAT EASY?????  I can tell you that on more than one occasion, some clips have relinked, and other haven’t, and there’s really no method to the madness as to why some do and some don’t, so if you run into this problem, the first thing I recommend doing is to select the clips that didn’t relink, head back to the Relink window, and there is one option that is turned on by default, that I always recommend turning off if you run into relink problems, and that is “Match Case When Comparing Source Names” checkbox.  Uncheck this box, make sure your options are set as we discussed above, and you should now see all your clips relink as they should.

Now, I would suggest going back into your “Set Bin Display” settings and turning off Show Reference Clips, as we’re ready to transcode our footage for online.

STEP 7 – TRANSCODING FOR ONLINE

Now that the footage is relinked in your timeline, you’re ready to transcode it in high resolution, assuming you’re finishing in Media Composer.  First, select your sequence, and head back to the transcode window.  You’ll now see that it looks a little different with a sequence selected, as opposed to your dailies.  I normally recommend creating a new sequence, as you’ll have one that is referencing your linked clips, and one referencing your newly transcoded master clips.  Also, I recommend two second handles on either side of the used media, just as a safety.  As far as the quality of your transcodes, that’s really up to you.  I normally will recommend DNxHR HQ or HQX depending on the footage that was show.  Your transcode window should look a little bit like the image below.

As you can see in the above image, I didn’t bake in Frame Flex, as I always have clients changing framing right up to the very end, so I like having that flexibility.

That’s it.  Your Relinking masterclass is now over.  However, there are a few little options that I do want to point out, before we wrap up

STEP 8 – HIDDEN BELLS AND WHISTLES

Have you ever had an issue with trying to link to a file that you know you should be able to link to, but Media Composer just won’t let you do it?  Well, Media Composer can be dumb sometimes, and it often helps for us just to tell it how we want the footage linked to. Via the Universal Media Engine, or via Quick Time.  You can always head over to the Plug-In column in the Source Browser, right click and tell Media Composer which one it should use.  You’ll also notice the options here changed based on the footage type (RED, BMD, etc)

Have you moved your footage that you linked to, from one drive to another and now it comes up as offline in Media Composer?  You don’t have to relink it all, just point the Source Browser to where the footage has been linked to, and it will automatically relink the footage to it’s new location in a matter of seconds.  Super helpful.

Well, that’s it.  Our Masterclass is done.  Please keep in mind that this document is designed to be an ever evolving lesson in how to relink, so if you have suggestions, improvements, etc on what can make it better, send it to me at kevinpmcauliffe@gmail.com, and we’ll keep it updated for the benefit of experienced and new Media Composer editors alike.

BACK STORY

So, I thought it would be important to preface the review itself with why I think an LTO option is good for the job that’s going to be coming up.  In 2022, I’m going to be doing a ton of Media Management in a very short period of time, let’s say 45-60 days.  We’re talking about 3-5TB of footage acquired each day, almost every day for that stretch of time.  Let’s say it’s going to be about 30 instances of 3-5TB of media, so anywhere between 90-150TB of media.  Some people would just say “go with hard drives”, and yes that’s a possibility, but my concern is that this media is essential.  If a drive or RAID fails, we lose media that we’ll never get back.  There’s no reshoots.  It’s one and done, and I need to make sure that 100% of media is securely archived, and some is available for daily editing.  That’s where LTO comes into play.  Copy multiple hard drives over from separate locations to one central storage, and then daily archives to LTO.  With that said, LTO 8 is what I’m looking at.  So that’s the backstory, now let’s take a look at the LTO drive I chose to take for a test drive, and why it’s the one for me.

WHICH LTO DRIVE TYPE IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

I have a PC with Thunderbolt 3 built in, so that’s what I’m going with (want to hear the backstory of that, check out my article about building my own Media Composer PC).  However, mLogic has a lot of different options for you to choose, when it comes to LTO drives.  They have 1U rack mountable versions, SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) internal & external versions as well as, what we’ll be looking at in this article, the Thunderbolt 3 external LTO drives.  Now, with all that being said, there’s something else you need to take into consideration, and that is the version of LTO you want to archive to.  Currently, mLogic has LTO 6, 7 and 8 drives which basically gives you more storage capability per tape, the higher the LTO version you go.  What’s also important is that you’ll see the term “Ultrium LTO” on tape stock as well as drives.  “Ultrium” is the format that you are copying to, so you’ll want to look for that on the stock you buy, so let’s talk about that now.

SIZE IS KEY

As I mentioned above, depending on the LTO drive you decide to get, that will directly determine the maximum size you’ll be able to fit on a specific tape.  What’s also important to consider is compression.  Now, for the purposes of this article, we’re going to throw the compressed sizes out the window as, for the most part, video clips can’t be compressed (ProRes, etc).  As you can see from the chart below, LTO6 cartridges max uncompressed tape size is 2.5TB, jumping to 6TB for LTO7 and 12TB for LTO8.  You can also see that when it comes to the speed that the drive can archive at for uncompressed data, you’re looking at 160MB/s for LTO6, 300MB/s for LTO7 and 360MB/s for LTO8.  Now, at the end of the day, I always hate the MB/s number, because I don’t really care.  Just tell me how fast I can fill a 12TB tape at the 360MB/s speed.  Well, you can see below that to fill an entire tape for LTO6 you’re looking at 4h20m, LTO7 5h33m and LTO8 9h16m.

TAPE COMPATIBILITY

Something else that’s exceptionally important to keep in mind is that the mLogic LTO8 (mLTO8) drives are backwards compatible when it comes to tape stock.  I’m not going to go into details about generations pre-LTO8, as that is what we’re focusing on here.  mLTO8 drives can read and write to both LTO8 and LTO7 tapes.  However, keep in mind archiving to LTO7 does limit you to the 6TB tape size, so to be honest, I’d only be using LTO7 functionality to read older tapes, as I don’t want to be limited to the 6TB (not compressed ceiling of LTO7.  Alright, let’s now get in and take a look at what you get with your mLogic LTO drive when you purchase it.

WHAT YOU GET

The unit itself is pretty straightforward.  You get the unit, a Fuji LTO8 tape, the power cable and a Thunderbolt 3 cable.  Now, here’s where things get really interesting.  You will need to purchase a program that will take your media from your system/drive, and copy it over to the LTO drive/tape.  This program is included in the purchase price of the drive, and there are a few options if you’re on the PC, and one if you’re on the Mac.  Setting up the drive was simple.  Plug it into the wall.  Plug the TB3 cable from my computer to the drive.  Keep in mind that you can use the TB2-3 adapter if you’re running an older Mac.

For Mac users, included with the drive at no cost ($299 if you purchased it on your own), is Canister from Hedge.  And I’m just going to say this now.  I tested Canister with the mLogic LTO8 drive and it, quite frankly, had to be the absolute easiest thing I have ever done, when it comes to archiving and restoring media from an LTO drive.  Here’s how it works.  First, it weighs in at a whopping 11.6 MB, and the first thing Canister wants to know is what manufacturer your LTO drive is from.  We’re obviously mLogic, so we’ll choose it.

Something that I want to point out before moving forward is that there will be three apps you actually have to download and install.  Fuse.dmg, IBM_LTFS.pkg and ICU_IMB.pkg.  Best part is that Canister will download all these for you.  You’ll just have to deal with MacOS’s annoying security features where it doesn’t want you installing “Non-Apple” developed apps.  Choose to override that, and you’re all set to go!  Now that you’ve got your drive set to go, you’ll need to install the cataloguing app, so you can see the catalogue of each tape, so you can quickly track down files.  To install it, simply click on the icon in the upper right of the Canister application and, again, Canister will do all the work for you.  You just have to click “Install”, and you’ll be all set to go.

Let’s archive something.  When you launch Canister, it’s sitting on the Archive window, asking you to choose a Drive or folder to archive.

Once that’s done, simply click “Next” to move onto the “Destination” window.  Once there, you can now “Erase” an LTO tape by simply clicking the three horizontal lined button that appears when you hover over the drive icon.  In the Erase LTO window, you can give you tape a name, and a serial number for cataloguing purposes.

That’s really it.  You’ll now see your drive/folder in the Queue, and you can simply hit Start Transfer, and just wait for it to finish.  Yep.  That’s it.  Super simple.

Alright, now that we’ve discussed archiving, let’s talk about restoring.  First, insert the tape you want to restore from, and launch Canister (assuming it’s not already open).  Next, click the “RESTORE” tab at the top of the interface, and you’ll see the drive icon in the middle of the interface.  Simply hit the three line icon in the upper right of the drive icon, and select “Mount”.  Now, don’t worry if your drive sits there for a minute, thinking about what it’s doing.  Eventually the drive will kick it, and mount the tape.  Keep in mind, it’s not mounting it on your desktop.  It’s mounting it in the Canister application.

Once the tape is there, you have a couple of options.  You can see all the catalogues of tapes that have been archived, by clicking on that icon in the upper right corner (same one you used to install the catalogue library)

Or you can, again, click on those three horizontal lines that appear when you hover over the mounted tape, and hit “Select Files”.  From there you’ll be taken to a Finder window, where you can select files or folders to unarchive.

I have to be honest with you.  Canister is the simplest, most effective way to get your feet wet with LTO drives, it is worth the $299 price tag that you didn’t have to spend, as it’s included if you’re a Mac user.  Now, with that said, for Windows users you have some choice, so let’s talk about what to do if you’re a Windows user.

I’ll start out this section by saying that I didn’t know anything about any of the companies you have the option of choosing, when you purchase your LTO drive.  This has a direct impact on the price.  Different companies charge different prices, so I decided to give the Archiware P5 Desktop edition a spin, to see how easy it would be to do an archive.  Here’s how it went.

The first thing that I do want to point out is the P5 is available for both Windows and Mac, so if you currently have an LTO drive, and are looking for some software for it, this is an option as well.  Alright.  I have my license, and I’ve downloaded and installed the software and when I hit the P5 Client shortcut I get the below screen.

So, the first thing to do is punch in the username and password (that can be changed after the fact if you need to), and once done, I’m brought to the main home window, where I see my license, and everything that it unlocks.

If it’s your first time using the app, you can simply enter your license manually, and you’ll be all set to go.  So, where do we start?  Well, since I want to do an archive, I hit the “Archive” button at the top of the interface, and I’m now sitting on the “Getting Started” option.  If you don’t see that window, you can simply click on “Getting Started” in the sidebar, and you’ll now see an Archive Wizard, here to get you rolling.

So, let’s follow it through.  The first thing that happens when I hit “Start Setup Assistant” is that I’m brought to the “Select Target Storage” option, where I can choose my mLogic LTO8 drive.  Keep in mind that I am running the drive with Thunderbolt 3 natively on my PC using a Gigabyte Z490 motherboard with onboard TB3 ports.

Once I’ve selected my drive, it’s time to choose what I want to backup.  No problem, simply navigate through your drives, and choose the folder/s  you want to backup.

Once that’s done, you’re ready to pick a time (or start it archiving right away).

That’s really about it.  Once you’ve started to back up folders on your system, you’ll start creating an archive that you’ll be able to access, via the P5 web browser app, that you can easily set up your archives to run once or every day at specific times if you needed to, and unarchiving is just as simple.  One thing that I do want to point out, and that is that I’m only scratching the surface of what P5 from Archiware can do.  I have to say that I had initial hesitancy with doing archives to LTO from Windows, as every application I have ever used I’ve found very convoluted and confusing, but any hesitancy I may have had was put to rest with Archiware’s P5, as they have put in a simple to use archiving wizard to get you archiving within minutes of opening the web interface, AND you can start out simple, and expand your archiving needs with this super in-depth application.

DOWNSIDES

If I had to pick a downside to the drive, there really is only one.  It’s loud.  Really loud.  Even when it’s not archiving.  Loud enough that I wouldn’t run it while I’m trying to edit, as it has to sit pretty close to my computer, as the TB3 cable is only so long.  If your CPU is in another room (CER – Central Equipment Room), this won’t be an issue, but just keep it in mind that you don’t want to have a zoom meeting while it’s running, as the noise is….well…..noticeable.

IN THE END

I have been in the market for an LTO archiving solution for a while now, and mLogic’s LTO8 drive is, in a word, awesome.  What can you say about dirt simple, as that is what pretty much everything has been with the drive.  Simple to setup, simple to archive to and simple to restore from.  Don’t let the base price of $5000 US scare you away (Mac users, as Windows users will need to pay more to have an archiving app included with the drive), as what you’re getting is 30 year safety on each 12TB (not compressed) tape that you put on your shelf.  If you’re a Mac user, getting Canister with your drive is an absolute steal, as it’s easily worth every cent of the $300 price tag if you were to purchase it on its own, and Windows users out there can rest easy, as Archiware from P5, although at an additional cost, is simple to get up and running with, and have your projects archiving, minutes after you have used them.  You can find out more about mLogic’s LTO8 drive at the included link.