Happenings in editing.
I cut a music video for Luca Ciut, now over a decade ago, but feels like only a few years. A love letter to Los Angeles, this is something I still often think about and watch time to time. I love this music and how the cut came together. Also, it’s geographically laid out in such a way that it would involve no backtracking if you were to visit each location. That was how I was able to determine how to order this many shots.
You can listen to Luca Ciut’s music here: Spotify
How have I gotten this far in life without knowing of this setting’s existence? Or well, since late 2017 when this option became available. My bet is several others are like me. The shrill, barely comprehensible, chipmunk-like voices heard as assistant editors speed through fresh dailies in the morning is as common as hearing songbirds in a forest.
Per the release notes for Media Composer v8.9.3 on 10/25/17:
This release includes an Audio Pitch Correction option. Go to the Audio Settings in the Project window. If Pitch Correction during Shuttle is enabled, when you shuttle at speeds above sound speed, a pitch shift is applied to restore original pitch.
Amazing! Now you can actually understand the spoken words of actors as you fast forward through the previous day’s footage marking up the usable bits. I feel like Avid should have even gone one step further and enabled this by default.
Uh, what? Wait, why? What is this? Can I close it? Why does this exist?
Those were a few initial thoughts upon encountering Media Composer’s new Host Panel for the first time, introduced in v2019.6. Most shows are using older, more stable versions of the software, but you’re bound to run into it at some point since it’s now carried over into v2020.x as well.
To turn off the Host Panel, go to Windows > Host Panels, and deselect the checked display.
I’m no audio genius (despite my hopes and dreams), but I enjoy sound design quite a bit. Despite my hours in Media Composer, I’ve only just recently been enlightened to the Audio Tool. Embarrassingly, it’s something I’ve overlooked for years until now. I think the only time I even thought about it was when I was reading ‘Media Composer Editing Essentials’ while first learning the software. Guess I should have paid attention when I was reading the book; nevertheless, the Audio Tool has at last become an editing essential I can’t do without.