Avid Xpress Pro for Windows and Macintosh (Visual QuickPro Guide)

Josh Martin ©Copyright 2004 Josh Martin and Creativecow.net. All Rights Reserved.

First, let me tell you that I did not read every word of the book. I am not going to be able to tell you about every nook and cranny. What I did do was use it as my main source of information in my initiation into the AVID world, and there it excelled.

I dove right in at the beginning of this book, and right from the start ended up learning more than I expected. The first few chapters, which have to do with the basics of the avid workspace, were highly informative. A good bit of that information wasn't of immediate use to me, since our workstation is already set up, but I came away with knowledge not just about our system, but non-linear editing systems in general, which felt nice. Also, chapter 3 "Customizing your Workspace" was an early empowering exercise. I couldn't edit, but I had personal settings and my own color scheme; which made me feel like I was part of the process.

From there I moved on to Chapter 4: "Capturing & Importing Media". I got a little bogged down here, and just pulled out what I needed, which was right there in the first few pages. I've got a lot to learn about all the ways to capture, but I'm up and running with the basics.

Then came the revolution: Chapter 6: "Making Edits". Loading source material. Setting ins and outs. Patching source tracks to record tracks. Selecting the record tracks I want to target. ...AND EDITING. This is the chapter I spent a week in. This was the doozie. For a newbie, this is the reason to buy this book. Up until using this book, I had been very intimidate by the avidn's timeline interface. NO MORE. In a very short time I have soaked up all those cryptic symbols on the avid keyboard and can now do some basic editing with ease. This chapter could almost be a book in itself, and I would recommend that book too.

From there I went right to chapter 9, which concentrates on video effects. Again, this book goes right to the heart of the matter and explains the difference between Segment effects, Transition effects, and Motion effects. I admit that I was bamboozled early on as to how to modify effect parameters, but there are several pages on just the effect editor window, which cleared me right up.

©Copyright 2004 Josh Martin | Creative Cow
All Rights Reserved