From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 110

Edit straight from the Source Browser - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 110

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Edit straight from the Source Browser

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- [Instructor] While we're looking at the Source Browser, I want to show you one really nice additional feature. I'm going to just resize this bin for a moment and in my Sequences Bin, I'm going to right-click and choose New Sequence. Let's call this, "Master Sequence". There we go. So, we have a sequence open in our Timeline window. Now, I'm going to go back to the Source Browser and I'm going to look in here, remember on the left of the Source Browser we have the contents of our drives and what I'm looking for is in My Media. Here we go, For Ingest. I've just set three clips aside to show you this. What I'm going to show you is a workflow that allows you to take clips straight from the Source Browser into a sequence directly and let's just see what happens when we do that. The first thing we need to do is decide if we're going to Link or Import, well, for this particular workflow I'm choosing Link, but of course, you could choose Import and if you do you get to choose the resolution that you want to import at and you can specify your drive. I'm just going to choose Link for now. I've got my Double Click To menu set to Load Clips in the Source Monitor and that's important because I want to check this content and I'm going to leave these options as they are, I don't want to close the Source Browser after I link or import and I don't particularly want to clear the source monitor after closing the Source Browser. Let's say I like one of these shots. I'm going to double-click to open it and it opens in my Source Monitor. Now, I'm going to want a bin open in order to add the clip that I'm about to import so let's just go into our project panel and I'll add a bin called "Source". Just so we have something to use. Okay. And because I've created that bin, you see the Target Bin option at the bottom of the Source Browser. Now, it shows Source. That menu will show you the most recent bin that you've had active or created and so on. So, I'm going to choose a part of this clip. Let's say ... There we go. Just as the actress comes into the shot, I'll mark an In. And I'm just treating this like an assembly, so, we'll get just after the main action there and mark an Out. Okay. I'm going to move my Source Browser a little bit out of the way, here, because we're recording at a relatively low screen resolution, we're a little bit bunched up with our panel, but I want you to see the timeline and I want you to see this player monitor and I want you to see the Source Bin I just created. I'm going to overwrite edit this clip into my sequence, of course, it doesn't matter which method I use because there's nothing else there. I'm going to click the button and look what happens. The clip is added to the sequence and it's linked in my Source Bin automatically. So, if I want to, in fact, I can maybe take a clip and drag it straight into my sequence. Let's just drop that in there. And you'll notice that, of course, all of the usual rules apply. I have both my Splice-in or Extract Splice-in and Lift Overwrite mode smart tools enabled and this means that, by default, if I drag a clip into a sequence it's going to be spliced in rather than overwritten. This is exactly the same rules as apply if you pull something from the Player Monitor or from a bin directly. And I've just dropped this in in entirely the wrong place, it's right in the middle of another clip. So, I'm going to Undo and let's take that shot again but this time, let me pull over a little more. I'm going to drop it in. You see I get a preview of where the clip is going to go. I'm going to hold down Command, here on Mac OS or Control on Windows to snap to the beginning of my sequence and release the mouse button, and now I've spliced in the entire clip in the beginning. Let's go back to my Source Monitor and open up this 3C-4 clip. Notice that it's still has the In and Out marks intact. Let's go to 3-3. Let's just go from here. I'm pressing I and O to mark in and out points on the timeline and I think now I'll just position my playhead to the end of the sequence and I'll overwrite there. Just as when you're editing from a bin it's important that you have your source track selection buttons correctly configured and if you haven't yet opened any clips in your project, you might find that, for example, you just don't have a setting for your Audio 1. For this reason, rather than dragging directly from the Source Browser, you might want to just first open at least one clip in the Source or Player Monitor, just to make sure these buttons are available. So, that's a quick shortcut way for you to import or link media using the Source Browser directly into a sequence. Oh, and there is just one word of caution I would mention, here. You'll notice that only two of the clips have turned up in my Source Bin. We've got the 3-3 and the 3C-4. Notice that 3B-3 is the clip that I dragged directly from the Source Browser into the timeline. That's the one right at the start of my sequence. Rather than first opening it in the Source or Player Monitor and editing it into the sequence. I think this is, perhaps, not intended. I don't think Media Composer is, by design, failing to add the clip to the bin. And, of course, there's no reason why the sequences in your project need to have clips in the bin. It's not, for example by comparison, like Premiere Pro where it's a requirement. Sequences in Media Composer can have clips that are just there without them being anywhere other than inside the sequences itself. However, this inconsistent behavior, as far as I can tell, is something that the engineers at Avid may want to iron out. So, in this video, what you're seeing is clips dragged straight from the Source Browser into the timeline not being added automatically to a bin. It wouldn't surprise me, as we move on beyond this version of Media Composer, if that gets adjusted. So, if it does seem different in the version you're using perhaps now you know why.

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