Getting Started with Edius Pro 5.x

Welcome to Edius Pro! While there are a number of excellent editing software programs available on the market these days, Edius Pro is fast becoming an "industry standard" and has gained in market share over the last few years, primarily due to its speed, real time capabilities, beautiful codec, and the adoption of the program by industry leader, Grass Valley.

Whether you are a seasoned editor that has been given the task of learning Edius Pro, or a hobbyist, just starting out in video, Edius Tips can help you navigate the unchartered waters of a new program.

Here are some quick tips to get you though the first few screens of the program. Or, if you prefer, Watch Video Tutorial.

The first time that you open the program you will be asked to assign a hard drive that you would like to use as the default drive for storing the project files. It is a good idea to choose a drive that is, if possible, a permanent drive to your system, (ie an internal drive rather than an external drive) and something that is not your system drive. (the drive your operating system is on, and presumably, where the Edius program has been installed.)

Don’t worry if you are trying Edius out on a laptop, and all you have is the C: drive. You’ll still get great results…

The next screen that you are faced with can be a little confusing to the first time user, especially if it is with a brand new installation of the program. It is practically blank and the “start” button is “grayed out” or not clickable.

What Edius would like you to do before you start a project, is to define some initial settings for the project that you would like to start. Today’s video editing environment has so many options and variables, it is a good practice to narrow the parameters some, before you start a project. Is most of your media HDV, HD, Standard DV, 16x9, 4x3, PAL, or NTSC? Edius is great at "mixing and matching" different formats and flavors of video on the same timeline, but if most of your media is HDV, set up a HDV environment to work in, using this preset tool.

We will set up three typical environments in this tutorial, and then save these as presets. Once saved, you will not have to bother with these settings again and starting a new project will be much easier! But before we do that, go ahead and set up a user preset. Edius will remember the unique interface settings of each user, so if there will be more than one user at this station, it is a good idea to set up a user profile.

Click on the New Profile button and sign on as a user.

Now lets set up some typical editing envornments. A Standard Definition Video Environment, a HDV environment, and a Full High Definition video environment. Click the "New Preset" button. You should see a screen something like this:

If you have a Canopus card installed in your system, you will see this represented in your "Output device" column, but for the most part, your screen should look close to this.

Don't put too much concern over the labels "Output device" or "Output format". Even though your deck may be SD, or your client has only asked for a SD DVD, if most of your media is HD, it is better to work in a HD project. When making the choices for your preset, think more in terms of, what "editing environment" would I like to work in? What format is most of my media for this project? Try to, as much as possible, match the native format of the majorty of your media with these settings. Don't worry if some of your material is in a little different flavor of HD then the rest, Edius will still take it on the time line. (For a discussion of why it is better to edit HD media in a HD environment rather then let the "Output format" or "device" be your guide, read this.)

As many cameras in circulation today use the HDV format, let's set up a preset for one of these first.

HDV Preset

Using the red arrows as your guide, choose the following settings for an HDV project where most of the footage will be from a HDV camera that is shooting at 30 frames/second (actually 29.94/sec), which is represented by Edius as 59.94i (or 59.94 interlaced fields/second) This would be the typical setting of an HDV camera sold in countries that have primarily used the NTSC TV Standard, (ie US, Canada, Japan) and/or whose electrical systems are set to 60 cycles/second. If you are not sure what your HDV camera is shooting at, consult the spec sheet of your camera manual.

Notice in the right hand column, I have selected the following settings, that may be different from the default settings:

Render format: Canopus HQ Fine
Audio Reference Level: -12.0 db
Track Defaults: V tracks 2, VA Tracks 0, T tracks 0, A Tracks 3

There is no right or wrong here, but these work best for me, and will work best with the tutorials that follow on this site.

If you know that your HDV camera is shooting at 50Hz (ie your camera was purchased in a European country or some other place that has traditionally used a PAL TV standard) go ahead and select the "Generic OHCI HD 50 Hz" for out put device, and then select the appropriate Output format, most likely 14401080 50i. If you know that most of your footage has been shot using a camera setting of 25p, an option favored by film majors, then choose that setting instead.

When you are happy with your settings, hit OK, and you will be brought back to your start screen, now with one preset appearing in the preset window.

Before starting a project, lets quickly set up a couple more commonly used presets.

Standard Definition NTSC

I have selected the most common SD setting in NTSC, but again, if you know the camera footage is primarily in the "widescreen" or 16x9 format, or shot using a progressive mode or with a PAL camera, select the most appropriate settings for your needs. You will notice that Edius has remembered the "Setup Default" settings in the right hand column from your last visit here, so you shouldn't need to change these again. Hit OK and you should be brought back to the Presets window.

Lets make one more before we start an actual project. Some of the latest prosumer cameras on the market today, including many SLR cameras, shoot video in Full 1920x1080 HD. Some, like the popular Canon 7D shoot in the progressive format. Here is what we would use for a camera like that:

Full HD Preset

With these three presets in place, let's start our first project. Chose the preset that will work best with the media that you have ready to play with and double click on that preset.

A pop up window invites you to enter a name for your project, gives you the option of choosing where you would like to save the project, in case it is some other place then what you selected as your default location. Check the box "Create project name folder" Click "OK" and Edius will open with your new project ready to go.

One last thing you need to do, before you move on to the next tutorial.... SAVE the project! Until you save the project once, Edius seems to think that you are just "fooling around" or running some test for which you do not intend to save to a folder on your hard drive. Until you save your project once, Edius will not remember your project the next time you start, or do ANY auto backups. You could work for hours on a new project and loose everything should the power go out or you have a crash. Get into the habit of saving your project once, as soon as you open it!