Edius Pro 3.6

Edius Pro 3.x — Powerful and Flexible!

Even though Edius 3.6 is now being retired, I am sure that many editors may still be working with it for many months to come. In fact, there is a good chance that you may have been asked to learn Edius, and the only seat in the house is a 3.6 version. Rest assured that many of the things that you will learn here will easily cary over when you do upgrade to Version 4.x

If you are like me, you may have been lured in to the Edius program by rumors of powerful real time capabilities and the ability to work with and mix a variety of video formats, only to find yourself staring at a GUI that is so non-traditional that it leaves you scratching your head in disbelief!

The truth is that Edius is a very capable and powerful video editing program. If you can invest an hour or two into learning a few tricks, avoiding some quirks, finding some hidden menus, and setting up Edius to work like the program you learned to edit with, you will be rewarded many times over in the months to come. Edius can not only give you amazing real time power but also actually make your edits easier and faster, saving you time and money.

Probably the greatest kept secret about Edius is its incredible flexibility. While some video editing programs are very strict in the way that they force you to edit, you can set up Edius to work almost any way that you would like. If you like the A/B style of editing from the "olden days" of Premiere, you can set Edius up to work like that. If you learned on an AVID and you are more comfortable with the single track, "three and four point" style of editing, mapping audio and video to specific tracks, Edius will work with you. If you prefer the more "free spirit", drag and drop style of editing, that is offered in other programs, be assured that Edius can be set up to work like that as well. Whatever style you prefer Edius can accommodate you and has enough time saving shortcuts and real time power that it just may become your tool of choice! The trick is to figure out how to get Edius to do the things you want. As you start playing around with the program always remember, just because you can not figure out how to do something in Edius, does not mean that Edius can not do it. Just because you can't find the features, does not mean that they are not there. New releases along with added features are coming out all of the time, but for the most part, Edius is already very capable, robust program. When you know how, you can really fly!

The Good

First of all the good news is that Edius does not do audio conforming like some programs I know.... One other huge benefit that you will discover very quickly is that the bin file architecture is much easier to work with then the program that you may be working with at present.

Also in the good news section, a reference must be made to the RT ability of Edius. Even without a Canopus hardware card in your system, the RT that is "really real", is amazing when compared to other editing software. No other software-only solution comes close. Add a Edius NX card (or even a used Storm card) and a new computer with a fast processor, and say "hello" to many levels of RT when editing SD video. Not just a degraded RT "preview". I am talking about real RT that can be printed to tape without rendering. This is good news for event producers that need to add CC or other filters to long programs and need to go to tape fast.

The Bad

The bad news is that Edius is still a "work in progress" and some of the features that you may use in other programs may still be 6 months away in Edius. There are some things that you may still need to do outside of Edius and then import them in. But hey, its hard these days to finish a project with any stand alone editor! So you have to go out to AE a couple of more times then usual, its no big deal! Canopus has been good about releasing upgrades in rapid succession and Edius should be up to speed with the "feature set" of most other apps very soon.

Also in the bad news section it must be said that Edius is weak on documentation. Manuals and help files, while fairly good at explaining available functions and features, are not always clear on how to activate, apply or launch said features - which given the Edius interface can often be the biggest challenge. Originating in Japan, the program seems to sometimes start with a different "world view" and then tends to lose something in the translation to English. (On a positive note, there are some dedicated users at the Canopus US web site forum that are very helpful and patient (usually) with new users who can very quickly get you out of a jam. Search the forum for old posts first, and then if you haven't found what you need, post your question and someone from a crew of friendly moderators and power users will often have your answer within minutes!) Go to the Canopus Forums, and look for the Edius group. Canopus has also released an excellent free tutorial video on DVD prepared by a professional trainer and power user of Edius, Mike Downey, who also speaks English! You can also view these on line for free at the Canopus site.

The Ugly

The ugly is that the designers of the Edius program, apparently out of some dark sense of humor, decided to abandon a traditional GUI for an iconic interface where simple functions and features are hidden away in obscure places! Your first few hours (or days) with Edius can be a very frustrating, head scratching experience as you look for something as simple as "save as". Hopefully these tutorials can help make this as painless as possible. Or, you could do yourself a huge favor and upgrade to 4.0 and then download the latest updates to bring you to the 4.61 release of the program. Most of the issues addressed in these tutorials have been resolved and you can save yourself a lot of grief!