From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 101

What's new in 8.9: Display options - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 101

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What's new in 8.9: Display options

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- [Instructor] For this video, I've created a new project called Display Options. This is in the Update Project Files folder inside the MC, for Media Composer, 8-9 folder. Just click OK to open this up, and this is a pretty simple project. We've got some clips in a bin and a sequence with a couple of extra audio tracks. The first thing I want to show you that's new in the 8.9 release of Media Composer is an interface display option. So here in the project window, I've got the settings displayed. I'm going to double click on interface, and we've got a couple of extra options, show source/record colors in composer and show source/record colors in timeline. I'm going to turn these on and apply that setting, and let's take a look at our composer. Right away, you can see we've got a green background to the play header area, the timeline down here in the player, and in the record side we've got blue. Also, if we look in the timeline, you'll see, as well, we've got green on the left and blue on the right. This is fantastic when you're learning Media Composer, although I must admit I'm a little bit old school about having a gray interface when I'm cutting, but there is another major benefit to this. If I right click in the composer and choose show single monitor, now you can see when I toggle between the source and record display, it's a little bit easier to see which I'm looking at. I'll just turn this back to show dual monitor. Another nice new interface feature in Media Composer 8.9, if I scroll down to the timeline settings here, is under the edit tab, I've got this option, applying effects opens effect editor. I'll just turn this option on and click OK, and I'm going to pick one of these shots pretty randomly. Let's go for this one. I'm going to go to my effects and maybe just in the image category here, let's take something like the mosaic effect. I'll apply this to a clip. As soon as I do that, the effect editor comes up and I'm ready to start working on the effect. I can give this a region and start modifying and applying some settings. It's a very small feature but one that I really think's worth highlighting, 'cause it does speed up the workflow and save you hunting for the effect editor. So I'll just close that, and probably the biggest display option that's changed in Media Composer 8.9 is the introduction of more narrow fader controls for the audio mixer, so let's take a look at that. Going to the tools menu here, and I'm choosing audio mixer, and you can see right away by default, we have this new design. These are, according to Avid's description, 35-45% thinner, depending on the tracks you've got selected. This option is on by default, and I'm a fan of anything that takes up less real estate on the screen. You'll notice in this mode the fader controls and the volume display has been combined for each of the tracks. It just takes up a little bit less room horizontally. The button size has been reduced, stereo sound panners have been combined, stereo link and mirror buttons have combined. There's a few things that have been done to shrink down the size, but none of the functionality is being removed. Now, if I right click anywhere here in the mixer, you'll see down towards the bottom of the menu, I've got the option to turn off or on narrow mixer mode. This is in the set display options menu. I'll just turn it off so you can see the original design. On this relatively low screen resolution, it looks really massive. Obviously on a higher screen resolution it won't be quite so bad. I'll just right click and turn this back on. But you'll notice, as well, if I right click and go back into the set display options, I've got a few options for my fader legends. Well, what does that mean? Well first of all, the fader legends just means that I'm getting dB markings for my fader, so if I make an adjustment, you're seeing the numbers that apply to the fader. If I right click, go back into set display options and choose meter legends, now I'm getting the numbers that apply to the meters. If I play back a little, well, you can see, we're getting the numbers that relate to the audio level. However, if I right click and choose set display options and choose dynamic legends, and this is kind of interesting, by default I'm going to see the levels for the meter, but you've just seen it there, I'm going to move this out of the way. I'm going to click back into the timeline. Now I'm seeing the dB ratings for the audio level, but if I move my mouse over the top of a fader, now I'm getting the fader adjustment controls. Well the jury's out for me on whether this is a really useful feature. I'd probably end up using the dedicated meter if I really cared about level while I was making these audio level adjustments, but we'll see. I think it is pretty handy, and it does mean that you can use the audio mixer as a multi-track level indicator, and also to give you some fader controls for your automation gain. By the by, as well, the audio mixer now allows you to use the mouse wheel. You can scroll, and this will do .1 dB adjustments, and if you hold the shift key as I am now, you get 1 dB at a time adjustments, and that's a feature I really do appreciate. So those are the new display and interface updates in Avid Media Composer 8.9.

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