I just got back from Los Angeles, where I received my official certification as an Avid Certified Instructor (ACI). This certification makes me only the third ACI in the state of Arizona and the second at Scottsdale Community College, the premier Avid Training Partner in the state. Avid is the industry standard non-linear editing system used to cut the vast majority of professionally produced films and television programs today. Avid has won 2 Academy Awards and 14 Emmys for its products. To earn my certification, I had to pass a number of exams as well as take a week long training course at...

I’m proud to be able to announce that “Afghanistan: Between Light and Darkness,” a short documentary I cut last year, just won an Honorable Mention Award at the 2011 Los Angeles Reel Film Festival. The film is about a non governmental agency called PARSA that works to improve living conditions in Afghanistan.  Central to their work is providing educational and economic opportunities to women and children affected by the constant wars that have been fought in Afghanistan over the previous decades. One of their earliest programs was finding, training and paying teachers who could work...

This post is a favor for a journalist friend of mine who every six months or so will work with a new editor and need me to explain how to set up a sequence in Final Cut Pro with split audio channels. When editing and delivering a news feature or segment, the delivery specs usually require the piece to be output with split tracks. What this means is the station or producers want a mono mix of all voiceover and non sync dialogue (for example, a dubbed translation) on channel 1 and a mono mix of all sync and natural sound, with no voiceover, on channel 2. There are two reason this is asked for.  One is...

The one thing I’ve found I had to teach assistant editors more than anything else is the proper set up for a sequence in a professional edit. For every new project I start, this is the first thing I do. This is not the setting up of the project or the naming of the bins, which varies from editor to editor and project to project, but the creation of a basic timeline template that all cuts will begin with. 1) The first thing is to create a sequence with the working specs of the project.  Usually this decision is made when creating the project, but this the time to check and absolutely make sure...

One of the hardest parts about learning to use Avid Media Composer is that many users fairly quickly find themselves in the gulf between beginner and expert in using the program. Especially if you are using the software professionally, and even more so if you are coming from another program like Final Cut Pro or Premier, there will be moments when you know exactly what you want the software to do, and you know the software can do it, but you simply cannot figure out how to make those two resolve. For the simple issues, you can check the manual or do a web search. Oddly enough, sometimes the more...