Action Media

You should have a working understanding of Action media and the relationship between media and surfaces/maps to be successful in using Action. Media has the following characteristics:

• Each front and matte clip combination that you load into Action is called media.
• The clips you load into Action are listed in the Media list.
• When you first open Action, you load the front clip and matte clip for the first media and a common back clip for all media.
• Media must have a front and matte of the same resolution, but each media can have a different resolution from the other.
• You can work with front-only or matte-only media. In this case, the empty front or matte is replaced with an internal white frame of the same resolution.
• The same media can be applied to multiple surfaces. Any cropping, blurring, or colour correcting that you apply to one instance of media is applied to all the surfaces for that media. For example, if you blur media, all of the surfaces using that media are blurred.
Note: If you access Action from the timeline, you are limited to one front/matte media. Therefore, some Media menu settings are not available.

Working With Media in the Media Menu

When you open Action, you load the front and matte clips for the first media. You can then load any additional media.

Note: In Batch or Batch FX, you can add direct or indirect media to an Action node. See Adding Media to an Action Node

The clips you load for each media appear in the Media list. The back clip you selected to access Action appears in the first row of the Media list and is assigned the letter B in the # column. The second row in the Media list contains the first front and matte clips you selected when accessing Action. The length of each clip appears in parentheses beside the clip name. A new line is added to the Media list each time you add media. For stereoscopic projects, you can apply media to the left and right eye.

You can sort the Media list by list number, front clip name, or matte clip name. As you view clips, you can look at the original front, back, or matte clip individually, as well as the results of colour correcting and keying a matte.

To access the Media menu, click Media in the Action menu. To help identify media, Alt+click a surface in the schematic, result, or camera view to automatically select the media in the Media list. If the Media menu is not selected, press Alt and double-click the surface to switch to the Media menu, and automatically select the media in the Media list. Also, when you select multiple surfaces, you can press Alt to select all associated media in the Media list. In this case, the first item selected is framed in yellow in the Media list as the current selection.

If the media is read from a socket other than a Result socket, that socket's name is appended to the media's name in the Media list. And in the following cases, the Media list can display even more information.

• If the source is an Action or GMask Tracer node, the output socket and render pass names are appended.
• If the source is a multi-channel clip node, the name of the channel is appended.

Media Menu Tips

Use these tips when working with clips and media in the Media menu.

• Different colours and shades are used as visual cues within the Media menu. The current media is outlined in yellow, and the selected media is highlighted in light grey. Selected fields of the media are highlighted in grey.
• Ctrl-click fields or media to add to a selection, or Shift-click to add a range to a selection. If you Ctrl-click a field that is already selected, all selected fields of this type in other selected media become deselected. However, if you continue to press Ctrl, you can then click any field, and all fields of the same type in other selected media become selected.
• Click a numeric field to display the calculator, or click and drag to increase or decrease the value in a field.
• Ctrl+Alt-click a field to reset the field (and all other selected fields).
• Double-click the Divide or Crop field to toggle the effect on or off.
• Double-click the MK, CC, CW, or Blur field to enter its menu.
• Click a front or matte media to select all the displayed fields.
• Use the F keyboard shortcut to toggle the matte media display in the Media list on or off. You can also set this behaviour with the Show Front Only button in the Action Setup menu.
• Resize the column widths in the Media menu by dragging the column dividers.
• Ctrl-click to multiselect media for applying to the left or right eye of a stereo object. The media that you select first (odd numbers) are applied to the left eye. Even numbered media apply to the right eye.