Every week, Frame.io Insider asks one of our expert contributors to share a tip, tool, or technique that they use all the time and couldn’t live without. This week, Jack Brown takes a look at Avid’s useful Timeline Clip Notes.
We probably all know about Avid’s Markers (or Locators for Avid veterans). They’re a handy way to create a set of color-coded notes attached to a specific time-coded frame. Or even a range in the case of spanned markers. But Avid Markers have their limitations.
For example, if we trim a clip slightly at the head of tail, we run the risk of losing the marker if we trim the frame it’s on. We can’t have this info displayed as any kind of burn-in. Also, unless you want to configure a lot of spanned markers that are easily broken, you can’t have a marker denote a clip or range in the timeline and show us the duration. This is where Timeline Clip Notes can help.
How to use Avid Timeline Clip Notes
Timeline Clip Notes are, unsurprisingly, a note that is attached to a clip. Meaning you can trim, extend and/or retime the clip and the note will not only persist but will update to reflect the new timing.
These notes can have many uses depending on your workflow. One common use is to show VFX IDs. One way I use them on every single cutting project is by creating rushes timelines of all the footage for a scene and then as I review the rushes I leave clip notes on each clip with my initial impressions of the takes. Slap a burn-in generator on there and I have an overlay of my initial thoughts of all the rushes that I can quickly see as I spool through them.
To use Timeline Clip Notes all you have to do is:
- Select any clip(s) with the segment tool.
- Go to the Timeline menu and select Add Timeline Clip Note.
- Type in your note.
Note that you can also map this function to a key using the “menu to button” function in the command palette.
Once the notes are applied, you can view them all in the Clip Notes window found under Tools/Timeline->Clip Notes. From there, you can browse all notes, export them as text and even choose whether the duration is denoted as timecode or frames (very useful for VFX and animation). The note will show the clip name, a reference frame, video track, start and end TC, duration and your note. Plus when you export these out it will also export out a jpeg frame reference for each note along with the text file.
The functions and uses of this feature are too extensive to list here but all very useful and so I’d highly recommend playing around with it in your Avid if you haven’t already!
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