Avid Express Pro & SL Machinima

Hey there! Is anyone else out there using Avid to cut SL machinima? I run Avid Express Pro on a Windows machine, and would love to share information with anyone else using Avid to cut video from our favorite online addiction.

I have questions about useful 3rd party supporting software, screen resolution, Avid codecs, the best olive oil to use when sauteeing mushrooms....all the usual stuff.

If you run Avid for SL machinima, or know someone who does, let me know!

Hello, Douglas

I run Xpress Pro too. Try to ask me and may be I can help you.

Wonderful, Pilot! I'll give you a shout in-world....

Just to start things, I've found that the video that Fraps produces cannot be imported directly into Avid. A friend who just helped produce a machinima for Xerox told me that her editor types had to use a codec translation utility called "Procoder" in order to get Avid to be able to use the video from Fraps. I'm hoping that the cheaper version of the program, "Procoder Express" will do the same job - I'd like to find out for sure before I spend the sixty bucks for that latter program...

I did try pushing the Fraps video through the Sorensen Squeeze program that came with my Avid Express Pro, but the quality was not looking so good.

Comments, anyone?

You can convert from the raw Fraps footage to Avid-useful footage with VirtualDub.

Thanks for the tip, Osprey! I'll check that out.

I had the same problem with Fraps not wanting to load or render in my programmes, until I paid for it. It doesn't like to have its 'sound' track deleted before rendering. I used VideoConvertor to make it more playful.

Now I use Hypercam3, on my system it shows less overheads and allows me to use the raw avi output so I dont have to deal with other codex compressions before rendering.

Well fooey. I downloaded VirtualDub and pushed some Fraps video through it ---- and got the same result in Avid: white screen. Apparently I haven't hit on the right combination of settings that result in something Avid can deal with. I posted questions to this effect on the VirtualDub forums, but alas.....no replies after a week.

If anyone knows (or knows someone else who knows) the exact settings needed - well....that'd be great.

Try Camtasia - you can download the trial version here:
http://download.techsmith.com/camtasiastudio/enu/camtasiaf.zip

I feel like I'm spamming the forum with this, but I worked through that problem with TMPGEnc, and described the process here:

http://aeneaideas.wordpress.com/2006/12/02/machinima-in-sl-on-mac-os-x-a-tutorial/

The title is misleading, since I do my video capture and conversion in Windows (yay for Bootcamp!) and then edit in iMovie.

Thanks, Aenea....just at a glance, that looks like a very worthwhile and exact tutorial. One would think that if this process converts to MPEG 1, that Avid should import it without trouble. One -would- think that, but I've learned to take nothing for granted....

My video experimentations have been sidetracked by work on an artsy-fartsy project, but hope to try this out soon. Thanks to all who have contributed to a solution....

Well, iMovie takes it just fine, and it's always a bit touchy about what you feed it, so probably Avid will be ok too.

Save as an UNCOMPRESSED AVI. Worked for me and didn't take much time at all.

As for Fraps V. Hypercam3 - I say fraps. The quality is MUCH better. As you can see from the image below with Fraps on the left. You always want to start with the best quality and then compress to a web happy size. Export to mov then run through quicktime pro for web size.

Sorry for the huge picture.

I don't know why you are getting poorer quality through HyperCAM3, I get the opposite (better quality from HyperCAM than Fraps). In fairness, I do save all my movies from HyperCam3 in AVI uncompressed format and use other software to take care of the compressions, after post production/editing. This allows me to crop and zoom without loss of quality/sharpness, something that Fraps won't do. I also like the feature of being able to pan the movie window before taking a shot, without having to reset the region each time.

FYI, I don't work for, nor associated to any company that creates HyperCAM, just passing on some tips/opinions.