Avid Tip

Pre-7.0 Cut List Tool Workaround

by John Axelrad

Guild members starting to work on Avid's new Film Composer version 7.0 will notice as many bug fixes as new software features. The main improvements affect the cut list and change list tools, as previous troubles with such actions as forward moves, rebalances, and sound changes have been purportedly rectified.

The Avid Hollywood Council, a group of Avid software engineers and Editors Guild representatives, has been meeting on a quarterly basis to discuss issues affecting the 24fps market. The focus of the last few meetings has been tackling a long list compiled by Guild members of bug and feature requests to Avid Film Composer software. Avid representatives, with revitalized interest in our niche community, now seem very willing to address our needs and concerns, but they stress that it will take several software versions to implement the large portion of our suggestions. As problems with the cut list and change list tools were identified as the priority, they were hence attended to before the 7.0 release.

While news of cut list improvements is encouraging, it does little to help the majority of assistants currently in the throes of post-production on early versions of 6.5. The most common problem is the crash-prone nature of the cut list 'save settings' function. The workaround is to immediately save the italicized "untitled" setting as itself when first going into the cut/change list tool for the day. After saving, the italics on the word "untitled" is replaced with normal typeface, and it is now safe to switch among saved cut list settings without crashing. But beware that once you quit the Film Composer application, it is necessary to repeat this process after the next re-launch.