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If you are looking for some basic knowledge for Avids Media Composer-Software, I can recommend reading “The Avid Handbook” written by Greg Staten and Steve Bayes, published by Focal Press. It really covers nearly everything you might need in your every-day-editors-life: starting with editing into the timeline, to trimming, material organization, technical descriptions of SD- and HD-video, import and export settings including workflows from and to Adobe After Effects and Digidesign Pro Tools, a chapter about effects, one about color correction, onlining and even a chapter regarding assistant editors and their tasks, such as backing up, blacking tapes, maintenance… Even with some years of Media Composer experience you will find new aspects in this book and having it in your edit suite might be a big time saver for you at some point.

Also, what might be very helpful for you is the really active Avid community, there are lots of tutorials in the “Avid Media Composer – PC” section, all done by the restless Douglas Bruce aka “drbgaijin”. Pretty basic, but hey, the brain tends to forget things you have not done a while. So have a look. And if you struggle with a bug or an error you can’t explain don’t be afraid to ask in the forums, the community is very helpful and really tries to solve your problems.

OK, enough advertisement for today, maybe I will start to post some tutorials here too. If anyone wishes a certain topic to be addressed: just comment.

Disclaimer: this is, and always will be, a non-commercial blog. I recommend what I think is good and helpful. I do not get money from anyone!