Edius 4.0 FAQ

Edius 4.01 Frequently Asked Questions

Note: If you are working with the free trial version of Edius Pro, you are working with the original 4.0 release. Some significant improvements were made to the .01 patch and therefore some of the tips, tricks and tutorials may not work the same with your version.

By default Edius gives me a display of time code in the play, record monitors as well as the output monitor. How do I get rid of this?
Go to View/Overlay and uncheck "Status" or if your keyboard shortcuts have not been changed, Ctrl+G should toggle this on and off.

How do I add a transition?
Go to the effects palette and find the type of transition that you would like to apply. Edius has a host to choose from. When you have found one that you like, simply drag the effect from the effects palette to your timeline window and place the transition between two clips. Make sure that you have allowed for enough room at the end of your outgoing and incoming clips for a transition to work. If there is a particular transition that you use often, make it the default transition by right-clicking on it and choosing the setting from the drop down menu. Now you can apply your favorite transition without dragging and dropping each time you want it. Simply use the keyboard shortcut for "create a default transition".

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How do I add video effects?
Video effects are applied with a drag and drop motion from the effects palette to the clip that you wish to effect. Then to open up the various options of the effect, with the video clip that you wish to effect still selected, go to the information palette and double click on the effect that has been associated with that clip. A window will pop open that will allow you to fine tune the effect until you find something that you like.

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How do I change the "picon" that is displayed for the clips in the bins, if the first frame of the clip does not represent the content of the clip well?
Point on the clip and press down on your mouse wheel and then scroll left and right until you see an image that illustrates the clip the best. Watch Video

How do I create a still image from a frame of one of my video clips (or how do I export a still frame)?
Look for an icon that looks like a camera on your timeline icon menu strip. With your timeline cursor positioned over the frame that you want to create a still, click on the camera icon. A still image will be created and placed in your bin. If you do not see a camera icon on your timeline menu strip you can add it. Go to Logo/Settings - Click on settings and you will get a dialogue box with more options. Select Application Settings/Customize/Button, and change the internal pull down menu to "timeline" and add the button that looks like a camera. Another quick alternative is to use the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl + T" - (Assuming that you haven't changed that to something else.)

When I drag a clip onto the timeline and place it where I want it, Edius splits the clip that is there and moves part of it on down the timeline like it is doing a insert edit. How do I change it so that my new clip overwrites the rest of the old clip instead of sending it down the timeline for me to have to deal with again?
Look on your timeline icon menu strip for a symbol that looks like three blocks. If the middle one is pushed up, like this , you are in "insert mode". Click on the blocks icon once to change it to look like the second illustration, the "overwrite mode".

There will be times when insert mode will be what you want to do so keep this option in mind.

I find the Edius color scheme nauseating. Is it possible to change the UI colors to something that is not quite so grotesque?
Yes, in version 4.x this is now possible. Go to Settings/Application Settings. From the pop up window, expand the side bar menu "Application settings" by clicking on the little "plus" symbol, and then also expand "Customize", and choose "Window Color". Make adjustments using the slider bar and apply changes.

How do I make a slow motion clip?
Right clicking on a clip on the timeline opens up a whole new world of possibilities, one of which is "Speed". Type in the percentage of speed change that you want. You can use this to make a slow motion or fast motion by changing the percentage higher or lower of the 100% normal speed. Putting a negative in front of the 100% (ie -100%) reverses the direction of the clip. Version 4 also adds the ability to do what is called, "Time Remaping" which can give you greater control over speed changes using key frames. This option is accessible as a separate function, also found in the "right-click" drop down menu. You will need to play with this for a bit to get a feel for how it is working. It helps to keep the audio of the clip live to better understand what is happening as you play around with this.

Some of the clips that I am bringing in from other sources (like Artbeats) look jittery and do not seem to be exactly 720x480. Does Edius have a way to help you conform a clip to the current project settings?
Yes. Right click on the clip in the bin, choose "Properties" and go to "Video info". Edius allows you to change the aspect ratio, field order and frame rate for any given clip so that they can better match your current project settings. Most typical NTSC SD projects in Edius would have an aspect ratio of 4:3, be bottom field first and be at a frame rate of 29.97. Make the change and hit "Apply". If you need to check your current project settings, that is hidden under timeline icon menu that looks like a floppy disk, . Hit the down arrow and select project settings. After changing your clip you will have to apply it to the timeline again.

Every time I open up a clip that I have worked with before, my "in and out" points are gone! Is there any way to have Edius keep my "in and out" selections that I have chosen?
Yes. Look for the "Update Bin" button at the far right end of the icon strip under the player monitor.

However, there is a longer answer that may help unravel the mystery behind the Edius bin system and how it is set up. Presumably what is happening here is that when you double click on a clip to load it up to the play monitor, the clip in the play monitor is a actually a new reference "copy" (if we can use that term) that points to the media file on your hard drive. This new reference "copy" takes on it's own identity separate from the original that you just clicked on. Changes that you make to it, like setting "ins and outs" will not be reflected to the "original" file that you started with. This may seem strange at first but there are some advantages to doing it this way. Lets say that you have digitized a long clip and there are three very usable shots in that clip. Lets say that they are very different in nature and that each usable segment should really be in its own folder for best organization. Open your clip to the play monitor by double clicking on it. Mark your in and out for your first usable segment. Hit the "Update Bin" button, and notice how a copy of the clip is sent to the bin. This copy will preserve any changes that you made to the clip, like setting a new in and out point. After that first bin update, however, Edius gets a little weird. If you continue to work with the same clip in the player window, without refreshing it from the "original", now when you hit the "update bin" button Edius does not send another new copy of the clip to the bin window, with your new changes, it simply makes the change to the first copy you made. You may notice that if you set a new in point, the picon in your copied clip will change to reflect your new in point.

If you are wanting to add a series of new copies of your original master clip, that all reflect new in and out points, use the little "down arrow" key, right next to the "update bin" button, it's keyboard shortcut, or simply drag the clip from the play monitor back to the bin window. Edius will make a new reference to your clip that preserves the in and out that you have chosen. You can make as many of these reference clips as you like. They do not make duplicates of the actual clip or take up any extra hard drive space. This gives you the ability to easily organize those huge files that you may have on your hard drive due to a auto batch digitize session you may have done. With the price of today's hard drives, more and more editors are approaching projects this way, instead of doing a detailed logging session first.

If you just want to have an assistant go through all of the clips and set the best "ins and outs" without sorting clips into new specific folders, they can load the clip up to the play monitor, set the in and out, and then simply drag the file back to the same bin. Duplicate file names are not a problem. It will go to the bottom of the list. When your assistant comes back to the same clip that they started with they will now have two complete sets of clips in the bin; one set of "original clips" with no ins and outs, and a duplicate set with ins and outs. Simply multiple-select the first "original" set and hit the delete key. This will delete the set of "original" references to the media, but not the media, from your hard drive. The new references will still remain and access the files. Just be sure NOT to use the "Delete Files" option available under the right click on a file (or files) in the bin, as this will delete the files from the hard drive.

I want to unlink my audio from the video so that I can stretch out the audio without effecting the length of the video part of the clip, but the "unlink" function is "grayed out". Why can't I unlink a clip?
Edius only considers a clip to be "linked" with its audio if they reside together on a VA track. If you have set up your environment to emulate PPro or FCP with a "single track" style where your video is on a video track and your audio is on its own separate audio track, your clip, by Canopus definition, is no longer "linked". For some strange reason Edius believes that if you are working with separate audio and video tracks that you actually want to separate your audio from your video and does that for you without asking. Very rude! (To verify that this has actually happened, drag one of your clips from the timeline to the bin window. Notice how you have two clips! Audio and video! Amazing but true!)

This is not actually very noticeable at first because the clips have the look and feel of being very much linked. If you trim the audio part of a clip, the associated video will trim automatically at the same time. Grab a clip by the video and move it down the timeline and the audio portion will move along with it. What is going on here is that while Edius has "Unlinked" your video from it's audio, it has "Grouped" them back together. Right click on the video portion of the clip and notice right under the unlink function is another function called "Remove Group". Click on that and your clip will become unlinked... er.. "ungrouped", or should we say, "separated one from the other."

Caution is advised how you use this. While you can "multiple select" many clips on your timeline and "Remove Group", if you ever want the audio and video of your clips to work and move together again, you will have to "Set Group" on each clip you want back, individually.

I have lost some of my windows. How do I get them back?
Go to View/Layout and choose "Normal" For more info, check out The Mystery of the Disappearing Windows, under the "Edius Gotchas" section.

I really like the batch logging capability of PPro whereas the logging features of Edius are practically nonexistent. Is there any way that I can log and digitize in PPro and then work with the captured video in Edius?
Edius does not seem to mind working with files captured with PPro. The only thing you need to be aware of is which metadata fields to use to type in your information. "Tape Name" for some reason does not show up in Edius. You will have to manually add the tape name to "Reel No" in Edius if you want to be able to use a batch capture in case of off-line clips. Clip Name in PPro shows up as Clip name in Edius. "Log Note" in PPro shows up as "Comment" in Edius. Time codes are preserved.

If you would like to log in PPro and capture with Edius to be sure that your clips are in the Canopus codec, there is a way to accomplish this. Note: This has not been tested with 4.x

1. Log in PPro. .
2. When you are finished logging all of your tapes, select all of the off-line clips and drag them to the time line at once. They will automatically line up on the timeline as off-line clips.
3. Export project as a EDL. (Project/Export project as EDL)
4. Start a new project in Edius and import the EDL into Edius. (Click on the open folder icon from the icon list at the top of the time line window, select import project/EDL and make sure that your settings are for a CMX 3600 EDL - to do this click on "detailed settings" from the file dialogue box")
5. Once your project has been imported in you will see your off-line clips on the time line and you will be presented with a dialogue box that says that there are clips that are off line. Select "Open the clip restoration dialogue".
6. In the bottom left hand corner, click on the button that says "Start batch capture"
7. I recommend saving this as a "Batch Capture list" using the floppy disk icon at the top of the window. If for some reason you are not able to complete the capture process in one setting, the next time that you open the project you may run into difficulties and it will be good to have this list saved.
8. If your capture button is "grayed out", go to the long, empty blank field at the top of the batch capture window and using the down arrow, select the appropriate link to your camera or deck. You should now be able to capture.

The one advantage of going through this convoluted workaround process is that not only do you capture using the Canopus codec, but the batch capture tool is also able to find the "Tape name" field and puts it into the "Reel No" field. Now, should a hard drive go down and you have to rebuild your project, you will have tape names associated with your off line clips! The big downside to this approach is that the the PPro export EDL feature does not save clip names or comments. Edius generates a new clipname based on the tapename and all of your comments or lognotes are not carried over.

Why does the wave form generator take so long? I selected a 3 sec section from a clip and when I dropped it on the time line it took a good 30 seconds to make a wave form! This is nuts! I don't have time for this!
The first time that you use a selection from a clip Edius generates a wave form (If you have wave forms turned on) for the WHOLE clip, not just the 3 seconds that you may have selected. If the particular clip that you chose is a very long clip, it may take a while to generate the wave form. The good news is that once it is done, it will not have to do it for any further selections that you make from that clip as Edius saves the wave form and uses it again. Do it once and your done. This can be kind of tedious at times, but I submit that it is way better then being forced to do "audio conforming" on ALL clips whether they are used or not - as some other program that know cause you to do ...

You mentioned that one could add a title track at any time during the project. I want to try using some of the title effects but I cant seem to add a title track. I can see how to add a audio or video track but it does not seem possible to add a title track once a project has been started without one.

It is a little tricky to find this one. In the very top left corner of the timeline window is a round green and white Edius logo.

Click on that for the menu that will allow you to add a title track. There actually are some nice transitions that are only available using this title track. The big downside is that you are not able to drop a anti-flicker effect on the title track and I find most titles, especially smaller ones, to be just a little too jittery in Edius without at least a 50% anti-flicker effect on them.

I can't seem to find how to launch the Titlemotion Pro program that is supposed to come with Edius. When I click on the "T" icon above the bin window all I get the elementary "Quick Titler". How do you open Titlemotion Pro?
There could be several things going on here. Not all versions of Edius ship with Titlemotion Pro. The station you are working at may not have Titlemotion installed. Or, it may just be a simple matter of changing Titlemotion Pro to be the default titling program that opens up when you hit the "T" icon. Go to Settings/Application Settings and expand left drop down menu. Click on "Application" check out the options under "Default titler" by using the little down arrow beside the field. If Inscriber's ICG file importer shows up, select that and hit apply. Titlemotion pro will now be your default titler. If Inscriber does not show up as an option in this setting menu, it means that Titlemotion Pro has not been installed at your station.

I consider myself fairly adept at picking up new programs fast. However, for the life of me I cannot seem to figure out the title program, "Titlemotion Pro" that comes packaged with the full version of Edius Pro 3.x. What is up with this program?

As much as I like Edius, I have to scratch my head and say, "What were they thinking, when they chose TMP as their titler"! Either this works a lot better with Japanese characters, or they just couldn't get a license for one of the better titling programs. Titlemotion Pro is extremely frustrating and seemingly the most counterintuitive, most ill-conceived, poorly designed software program ever created by man! Most Edius editors will use something like Photoshop, Boris, or After effects to create their titles in order to avoid having to deal with this odd program.

Should you insist on trying to work with this bizarre software, here are a few tips that may help. Try them at the risk of your own sanity!

1. Go to inscriber.com and download the manuals, not only for Titlemotion Pro but also Title motion.
2. Print out and read
3. Note especially page 26-35 of the Titlemotion manual. This is where some of the frustration is solved.

Basically the trick is, if you want to be able to work with a body of text in a normal way - here is what you need to do:

1. Create a "text box" by clicking on the "A" icon in the top right-hand corner of the "tools" palette. Then with your mouse drag open a window in the text plane area about the size that you think that you will need.
2. Type your text into the text box and it will wrap in the normal way that you would expect. Plus it can now be formatted, moved and re-wrapped as a whole group of text and not the extremely frustrating "line by line" that you are given by default.
3. Changing font and font size is under the "Size and Attributes" tab. To change a font size you change the height and width. You can also make adjustments to Kerning and Leading. The trick here is that your body of text is going to look strange until you do a "Re-Wrap" under the "Element" menu. Once you have a font and size that you like you can save it as a style and have it as your default.

The rest of the program should come easy by just clicking around and the occasional glance at the manual. However, I should add the disclaimer that I rarely use the program and opt out for doing most of my titles in AE 7.0 and then bringing them into Edius. AE just works smarter!

The first time I started Edius I used a hard drive that is no longer attached to my system and now, every time I start a new project, Edius wants to default to that missing hard drive. Is there any way to change this?

Yes. Go to Settings/Application Settings and expand the left hand drop down menu "Application Settings" Click on Application. Change the Project File to something that will work better for you. That will now become the default drive (and folder) that you will be presented with when you start a new project.

Whenever I am working near the end of my timeline, the timeline cursor keeps jumping to the beginning of the program. How can I stop this?
Put a piece of media a little further down the timeline when you first start a project. Now your timeline cursor will continue to play past the end of your edits.

My hard drive is getting full and I want to delete some clips to make room. When I delete a clip from my bin window it deletes the clip from the project but not from my hard drive. Is there a way that I can delete clips from my project AND my hard drive at the same time?
Yes. Right click on a clip and select "Delete File", (not "Delete") As a part of my workflow, I have a folder in my bin window labeled trash. When ever I preview a clip that I know that I will never use, I drop it into the trash folder. Then once a day, I will open up the trash folder, select all, right click and "take out the trash" with "Delete File".

Some of my clips have gone off line and I am trying to do a batch capture of the clips that were shown to me in the "Restore Offline Clip" tool. I have highlighted the clips that I want and pressed the "Start Batch Capture ..." button. This opened the Batch Capture window but the "Capture" button is grayed out and I can't make Edius Capture. What is going on?
You just need to tell Edius what capture device to look for. The dark long bar at the top of the Batch Capture window has a drop down menu. Choose the capture card or other connection that is connected to your camera or deck and the "Capture" button should now light up.

When I drag clips from my timeline to a bin, the clips show up as two separate files, audio and video. What is going on?
This happens to editors who have set up their project to emulate other popular editing programs with separate audio and video tracks, (ie 1V, 2V, 3V, etc and 1A, 2A, 3A, etc). While Canopus was trying to accommodate editors who are used to working with separate Audio and Video tracks, and have made Edius very flexible, there are a few oversights like this and some things just don't work quite like they should. Here is what is happening.

In most editing apps, when you drop a clip on the timeline, the audio portion of a clip will be "linked" to the video so that as you move them or trim them they will always stay in sync. If you do want to move or trim audio separate from video, most apps have a way to "unlink" audio from the video. However, in Edius, if you set up your editing environment with separate audio and video tracks, Edius considers video clips on this kind of timeline to be, by default, automatically "unlinked". By the very fact that you have set up the system to have separate audio and video tracks, Edius believes that you mean to have your video land on the timeline, unlinked from its audio. To the first time user, it may seem like the audio is still linked to the video. It looks, acts and feels like it is still linked. You can grab a clip by the video portion and the corresponding audio portion will highlight and will move or trim together as though they are still "linked". However, if you right-click on the clip you will notice that "link" and "unlink" are not even an option with this kind of timeline setup. They have been grayed out. And even though your clip may seem as though it is linked, it is not, and that is why it ends up in the bin as two separate files.

What Edius does to make it seem like the clip is still "linked" on this kind of timeline, is to make the files automatically "grouped". In other words, behind the scenes, Edius is unlinking the video from the audio, making them two separate files, but then grouping them back together so they will act as one file on the timeline. Many first time users who set up their timeline to have separated audio and video tracks will complain that they are not able to "unlink" their video from their audio when they want to perform separate trimming functions, that the unlink feature is grayed out. What you need to select instead is "Remove Group" by right clicking on the clip.

To get back to the question at hand, a dragged clip from the timeline creating separated files in the bin seems to be a weakness of the current version of Edius. The bin is just not smart enough to know that individual clips that are placed on a timeline with separated A and V, that have never been "ungrouped" are in essence still "linked" and should be represented as one file in the bin.

The only work around I have found is to double click on a clip so that it pops up in the play monitor, and then drag it from the play monitor to the bin. Hopefully the bins in E5.0 will be a little "smarter" and recognize that a clip that has never been "ungrouped" is still, in essence, "linked"!

Something else that should be noted here is that the "remove group" and "set group" functions are not just for use as described above. It also acts as a way to group multiple clips together so that they can be moved and manipulated as one set. Just be aware that after you "remove group" from a group of selected multiple clips on a timeline that has been set up with separate audio and video tracks, all of the clips in your selection will now act as separate audio and video files. Now they are truly unlinked! The only way to get them back is to "set group" on each individual clip.