PrP - Adding Universal Countdown Leader

You will require exactly a full 'Countdown' positioned at the tail of the Ident Slate clip and immediately before the start of your program.

MCCA Leader

In industry a program leader is added at the head of every program to give Bars & Tone for screening adjustments, identify the program and provide a countdown for accurate program start.

The MCCA leader consist of three items with a total running length of 21 seconds:

  1. Bars & Tone - running length 00:00:05:00 (5 seconds)

  2. Ident Slate - running length 00:00:05:00 (5 seconds)

  3. Universal Counting Leader - running length 00:00:11:00 (11 seconds)

The MCCA leader will start at 00:59:39:00, allowing a total of 21 seconds lead information, resulting in your program starting on the hour mark.

Locate your Graphics Bin.

Right - click and choose New Item > Universal Counting Leader...

A New Universal Counting Leader window will pop up.


Ensure the Width and Height in the Video Settings match your project.


Click OK.


The next window will allow you to make some creative colour changes to the leader, if you wish.

Otherwise, just select OK.

This will generate a Universal Counting Leader clip in the Graphics Bin.

Please note that the PrP Universal Counting leader is by default 11 seconds.

On the timeline use the Up and Down arrow keys to place the timeline cursor at the tail end of the Ident Slate.

Next, select the Universal Counting Leader clip in your bin and press the comma key (,) to Insert the clip into your timeline.

OR

Press the Insert Button at the bottom of the Source window

OR

Click and drag the Universal Counting Leader clip from the Source window and into the Program window.

Press and hold the Command key (⌘) to change to Insert and drop the Ident slate screenshot between the Bars & Tone and start of program


Once the clip is on your timeline, you can check it's running length by right clicking on it and looking at the Speed/Duration section of the drop-down menu.

The first frame of your program (project/film) should start immediately after the Universal Counting Leader and on the 01:00:00:00 count (on the hour mark).

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