Avid EDL Manager

Avid EDL Manager imports and exports EDL (in various flavours) – from/to a bin (e.g. thumbnails storyboard layout?) (or a Sequence or MXF file?).  It can be run stand-alone or from within Avid.  EDLs are somewhat of a hangover from the past, so it’s unlikely to be of much use in my case, but worth knowing about as an option, and as such still features in other people’s current workflows.

Research:

  • http://www.eskayproductions.co.uk/Avid%20Manuals/EDL.pdf
    • An edit decision list (EDL) is a list of instructions for all the edits you make for creating a program on videotape. This list might include cuts, wipes, dissolves, fades, and black edits.
    • The EDL Manager application organizes the instructions as a series of chronological edits called events. Each event specifies a timecode for the source and master tapes.
    • In most cases, you generate an EDL to take a project from the offline editing environment, where rough editing and experimentation are less expensive, into the online editing environment, where an editor using
      an edit controller can produce a finished master in less time. The EDL Manager saves EDLs in a format an editing system can use, such as GVC or CMX. You might also need to import an EDL from the online environment back into the offline suite to make further changes before completing the master tape.
    • You can use EDL Manager to generate an EDL from a sequence in a bin or from an OMFI file.
      • {OMF(I) is an obsolete Avid format, now Avid uses MXF}
      • OMFI is a file format for importing and exporting media; it allows you to share information with other
        platforms.
    • You can also read a previously saved EDL into EDL Manager. After creating an EDL, you can save it as a text file that can be read by different edit controllers, such as Sony®, GVG, or CMX, or you can save the EDL as an OMFI composition.
    • You can use EDL Manager to create an EDL that displays additional types of information, such as comments or patches.
    • You can specify the different audio and video tracks in the sequence. You can also specify the assembly modes that the online edit controller uses when creating your program.
    • Because EDL Manager is a standalone application, your other Avid applications do not have to be running when you create EDLs from sequences.
    • When you run EDL Manager with your Avid editing system, you can bring the sequence that is currently in the editing system into the EDL Manager window.
    • After working with the EDL in EDL Manager, you can create a sequence in the Avid editing system from the EDL.
  • Me
    • I’ve never used an EDL but have read that each EDL represents only one track.  If using a multitrack NLE then one workaround is to generate individual EDLs for each track.
    • EDL  harks back to the days of mechanical editing of film and tape.  In this current age I’ve seen forum posts about using AAF and also XML formats and Automatic Duck (an application) to transfer between NLEs.  While a good option to keep, it seems somewhat out-moded nowadays.

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