Customizing Your Workspace in Avid Xpress Pro
- Understanding User, Project, and Site Settings
- Creating and Selecting a User Profile
- Creating, Naming, and Modifying Settings
- Using Toolsets
- Linking Toolsets to Your Custom Settings
- Using Workspaces
- Mapping Buttons to the Keyboard and Interface
- Customizing Your Interface Display
- Saving and Backing Up Your Work
- Retrieving Autosaved Versions of Your Work
- Configuring Other User Settings
- Configuring Project Settings
- Configuring Site Settings
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Everyone has personal workspace preferences, and they often defy default recommendations. Who says you should map Lift and Extract to the Z and X keys? Who says the Timeline always has to be at the bottom of the screen?
Xpress Pro gives you more than enough personal control over the look and layout of tools and windows. By mapping buttons to the keyboard and interface, you can edit in a way that is most intuitive to you and most compatible with your unique approach to editing. Furthermore, thanks to custom toolsets and workspaces, you can group together various tools for different workflow situations, such as editing, color correction, or audio work, and then map the trigger for each particular tool grouping to your keyboard.
Taking the time to create personal settings tailored to your needs will pay off when you get an Xpress Pro job at another location. Simply bring your own customized user profile along on a disk and load it in, and you'll have all of your familiar keyboard shortcuts, color and appearance settings, window arrangements, and favorite buttons instantly at your fingertips.
Understanding User, Project, and Site Settings
The Xpress Pro settings, all found on the Settings tab of the Project window ( Figure 3.1 ), are grouped into three categories. Understanding how these groups of settings differ from one another is the key to understanding how Xpress Pro views settings and will help you navigate the myriad customizable features.
- User settings: User settings address questions such as "What color do you want your buttons?" and "How are your windows arranged?"These settings are linked to the user profile you select in the User Profile Selection pop-up menu at the top of the Settings tab in the Project window. (For more information, see "Creating and Selecting a User Profile" later in this chapter.)
- Project settings: Project settings address questions such as "Is the project NTSC or PAL?" and "Are you using drop-frame or nondrop-frame timecode?"These settings are tied to a particular project, and you may have different settings for different projects.
- Site settings: Site settings address questions such as "Is your DV deck connected via FireWire or through the serial port?" and "Should the system automatically be connected to a LANshare when you launch Xpress Pro?"These settings pertain to your editing system's particular hardware and don't change unless you change your overall system setup.
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Figure 3.1 The Settings tab of the Project window lists User, Project, and Site settings. If you prefer, you can click the Settings tab Fast menu to display only active settings or selected settings. The window shown here displays all settings.