Locator 2 VFX Utility (For Avid Media Composer)

This utility will take an exported list of locators (markers) from your Media Composer sequence and auto-name them as VFX . It will also optionally export a Sub Caption list for creating video burn-ins of the VFX identifiers on your outputs.

To use the utility, simply place a locator of a given color on each VFX shot in your sequence. Then, on the first locator of a given scene, simply name the locator with a 3-digit scene number, ie: scene 1's first locator would simply read 001, and scene 25's locator would read 025, etc. See the timeline and locator windows below for an example.

Once your locators are prepared, then export your locators as a text file.

That's all you need to generate a named list of locators for your sequence. However, if you'd like to also generate a Sub Caption file to lable your outputs, then export an EDL of your sequence. Use "File32" format if you have more than 999 events in your EDL.

Once you've exported your Marker list, and an EDL if desired, then launch the utility:

Once in the app, enter a VFX identifier: DEMO, in my example. Tell it how you'd like your counts to increment: by 1s in my example. Tell it what color your locators are: red in my example. Tell it what your sequence framerate is: 24 in my example (use 24 if sequence is 23.976) And lastly, when you check the EDL button it will prompt you to locate your EDL.

Once this information is entered, press the CONVERT button and you should see two lists generated in the app's windows. The top one is the new marker list, with each marker named and placed to the head of it's shot and a "closing" marker placed at the tail of it's shot. The bottom window displays the SubCap file, which can be imported into Avid's SubCap tool to automagically create visible labels on each of your VFX shots.

At this point, simply press Save. Name your file and give it a .txt extention. The app will save the marker file first, then it will save the SubCap file with the same name and a _SubCap appended to it. Import each of the files into Avid. Format your SubCap to your liking and then save the format as a "Global Setting" so all of them are consistent.

The final result, once the Marker list and the SubCap list are imported into the Avid will look like this: