File under ‘I didn’t know that’: for historical reasons, Avid editing software doesn’t use QuickTime formats. Thus, it’s normally impossible to move media between Avid and, say, Final Cut Pro without using something like Automatic Duck‘s convertors. However, Avid do offer a freely-downloadable QuickTime component for their Meridien uncompressed and barely-compressed format.
Install it, restart Final Cut, and you’re good to go. OK, so it’s a bit weird in that you can’t always preview the footage without error dialogs, but the clips will render if you stick them in a sequence.
Our brilliant graphics chappie was outputting Meridien 2:1-compressed renders from After Effects, which were fine for the Symphony online but naff all use for the ancient Media Composer 7 offline. So… I installed the filters on my PowerBook, rendered the graphics to DV, and spat them out to tape, which the offline could then read. All a bit belt-and-braces, but it does work.
I note this here because I had to scoot off and find the codec download page again, as I’m trying to use the graphics masters to make menu backgrounds for the DVDs.