Final Cut Pro Workflow Ideas

A couple of colleagues recently discussed with me problems using Final Cut Pro. One is a feature editor. The other does documentaries. I’ve most recently used FCP on an episodic series. Three different types of productions, but I think there are some common solutions. Solutions we’re planning on using on the second season of Warehouse 13 for the SyFy channel.

Project Organization:

Instead of one project for each episode, a common organization on Avid MC, we will have several separate projects for each episode: a master editing project, dailies project, backup project.  FCP works poorly when projects get too large. On the other hand, it is easy to have several projects open at once.

And instead of adding music and sound effects into a master project, we will have a master sound effects project, and composer / score music project. We may also create a needle drop separate project. And we will have a project for stock footage. Each editor or assistant can access (read) any of these projects, just can’t write to them without drive writing access.

Storage Organization:  

We will have several terabytes of storage that the four editors and three assistants will all need access to. Each of us need read access. But we only need limited write access, basically just to the project we are editing. The networking storage we’re using is not Avid’s Unity, which allows for changing partitions at any time. We will have to partition all the storage before we start work.

Our plan is to format the shared storage so there multiple partitions. As we will have 13 episodes, each episode will have its own partition. Additionally, each assistant will have a partition, as well as partitions for sound effects, music, stock footage and visual effects. About 20 partitions. The assistant or editor will gain write access only to that partition as needed. This scheme will depend on how well the storage software works.

One suggestion from Apple techs is to limit the use of subfolders, as they make drive access slower for FCP. We will likely keep all sound effects in one large folder, have all the composer’s music in one folder, and all needle drop in one folder. This may mean renaming some files to have a complete reference to their origin.

One advantage to having each episode have its own partition is rendering. In this scheme, each episode renders to its own partition, which should reduce render files from becoming unlinked. So anyone that needs to work on that project will know where to find all render files.

Work in Standard Definition:

We considered Pro-res, but the render times (a substantial problem in SD) are unworkable in HD. It is likely we will get Quicktime files for dailies – last season we worked with DVCPro-50. And mostly ACE editors are creating off-line edits. On-line editing involves very different considerations and tasks.

Titles:

If you make a title with the Boris title tool rather than the standard FCP tool, it does not need rendering (unless a drop shadow or other effect is added). Anything that reduces rendering is good.

Boris Continuum

Finally, we’ve requested Boris Continuum Complete to be added to each system, and to our on-line editor’s system. Using BCC on my current (Avid MC) project has been a revelation. It has a function called Pixel Chooser, which is available in most of its plug-ins. Pixel Chooser is very much like Animatte in Media Composer. Creating simple or complex mattes for effects is now very simple (Four and Eight Point Garbage mattes are terrible to work with). And Boris has greatly increased the usability of its plug-ins, to where I’d rather have it over Sapphire.

Another reason you should be using Quickeys

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

I've used Quickeys on every editing system since Avid MC 7, and FCP 5. It allows you to record a series of keystrokes, mouse clicks, etc., that can be triggered by a single keystroke. One standard macro I use has the following steps

1 - key 'i' for Mark In
2 - F6, which I've set in Avid to move the cursor to the next edit
3 - Left Arrow, moving back one frame
4 - key 'o' for Mark Out.

This marks a clip for deletion, overwrite, or replacement. I've assigned this marco to F12. I may hit F12 50 times a day, meaning I've saved my self 50 x 3 keystrokes, or 150 keystrokes a day on that one macro.


Quickeys is currently up to version 4, which is the cleanest design and easiest to use of any previous version. 

Now I've learned from assistant Carmelo Casalenuovo that Quickeys works with the external key pads made by X-keys. These are connected though USB, and add different arrangements of additional keys. Now, Quickeys can assign macros to X-key external devices.

The problem this solves is there are only so many keys within Avid or FCP that can be programmed.  An X-keys device expands that considerably - up to an including a foot pedal.

I've currently programmed my X-keys device to do the following on single keystrokes: go back two seconds and hit Play; toggle V1, A1 and A2; Quad split the MC's display. I will be finding more and more functions to add to my X-keys with Quickeys.   

Now, what to program the foot pedal for...?

2008 Equipment Survey - Full Results

Here are the full results from the 2008 ACE Equipment Survey. There were 100 returned surveys. (click on an image to enlarge)

2008 ACE Equipment Survey

Reprinted from Cinema Editor Magazine
by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Nothing is a bigger block to the creative process than a tool that fails: a pencil breaks, a pen is dry, a splicer blade is dull. The worst for the modern film editor is the computer system that crashes. That was one of the common themes from ACE editors who responded to the latest survey.

The annual equipment survey of ACE members showed there weren’t many big changes in our editing rooms this past year. There were 100 responses, slightly up from the past. The types of shows (doc, feature, episodic) remained nearly the same. This time, however, there were zero reported mini-series. The Camera Original remained nearly the same, even though it seems we hear about more shows shooting digital instead of film. Storage remained about the same, with Unity having a 64% share, external 23%, and XServe 5%. (click on the image to enlarge)

The biggest change here is the introduction of the new Avid DX hardware. It seems to be directly replacing Adrenaline. Final Cut is slightly up. There were no Lightworks shows reported.

An interesting added breakdown was that Final Cut was evenly split between scripted and non-scripted shows (11 to 10), while Avid was solidly scripted (73 to 5). Although anecdotal, reality shows (not well represented in ACE) are very solidly Avid. (click on the image to enlarge)

In Delivery Format, there has been a definite trend away from finishing on film and finishing in standard definition tape. High resolution digital finishing is clearly taking over. (click on the image to enlarge)

The results here are always disappointing. I don’t know how, but editors need to at least try to assert their influence over what machines we use. I’m not sure crying will work, but may at some point give it a try.

This is a new question in the survey, and it was surprising to me how many people used HD during their edit.

Many people responded to the additional questions in the survey. Here is a sampling. A more complete list will be posted on the ACE Tech Blog.

What is needed

Avid: internal search engine, 5.1 mixing, ability to set the sound levels for a whole sequence, ability to import ScriptE files (electronic script supervisor notes), networking ProTools and Avid along with the ability to ‘round trip’ audio, copy and paste Audio keyframes, stereo tracks linked as one track, more real time effects, live timeline, multiple plugins on an audio clip, subframe sound editing, simple camera shake (handheld effect)

Final Cut: better trim mode, better multiuser environment, a script function, a simpler way to retrieve cuts after a crash, locators that remain in position, color track assignments, ability to make specific undos

And finally “a great assistant” and “a button that makes all my creative decisions for me.”

Frustrations

Frequent crashes tops the list here, on all systems, followed by system speed. I recently worked on an episodic series that used Meridiens. Although frustrated by the lack of modern features, it is remarkable what a solid performer the Meridien platform is. Almost no crashes, and a robust performance even though it was on an older Mac G4 tower.

What Feature Would You Like Implemented

These include: a link between titles (subtitles) and a text document or database, programmable macros like Quickeys, real DPX material, streaming to broadband.

Tutorials

Not many reported using tutorials, but there are some out there. The web sites Creative Cow, You Tube, Video Co-Pilot, and Avid (ALEX) were listed by some.

Message to ACE 

The following are a sample of messages to ACE (edited for space):

 “Avid MC  2.7 worked great without any crashes so far. (T)his compared to working on FCP with as many as 10 crashes a day.” Edgar Burksen, A.C.E.

“Remember to pass on your GOOD habits to your assistants - we teach by example!” Peter Basinski, A.C.E.

 “Love the Nitris DX. Get off of Meridien and help facilitate using new MC and especially the HD platform Nitris DX.” Martin Nicholson, A.C.E.

“Meredien worked just fine. Isn’t it about time that Avid was shamed into providing a useful and reliable product” Peter Boyle, A.C.E.

“prefer Moviola” Anonymous

“Technological advances are like your Mother-In-Law: often intrusive, but they’re not going away. You’ll be happier if you learn to embrace them.”  Stephen Semel, A.C.E.

“This is my third episodic series on FCP and I still find it amateurish and disruptive to the creative process - its a toy! Prefer my Avid.” Bonnie Kohler, A.C.E.

“Learn FPC. Its coming. And campaign for an affordable Avid editing system or a software-improved FCP.” Lori J. Coleman, A.C.E.

“This was the first time we attempted to use the ScriptSync and I found it totally unreliable.” Nancy Morrison, A.C.E.

“The Avid software only system is very good.” Anita Brandt Burgoyne, A.C.E.

“I love ACE.” Richard Halsey, A.C.E.

Message to

Finally, a survey question was “What message do you want to send to Apple / Avid / Lightworks?”.

First of all, there was no need to send any messages to Lightworks, as none were directed to them. 

Both Avid and Apple were sent email messages, with an attached document that had all responses to the above question. Each company was asked to respond in any way they’d like. The caveat was this magazine article had a deadline.

In just over a week, Avid sent two letters by Kirk Arnold, President of Avid’s Video division. The first was a reply to the general themes in the comments. The second was a specific answer / response to each comment from an ACE member.

The response from Avid was impressive by its detail, its breadth, and its timeliness. The ACE Board of Directors was impressed enough to send copies to each ACE member by mail and email. The letters are also posted on the ACE Tech Blog.

The essence of the reply was that Avid is listening to its customers, especially ACE, and is changing its products to meet the needs expressed by the comments they read.

From Apple? After two and a half weeks, the exchange of several emails with a senior products manager and their PR department, Apple had not responded to the ACE comments before this magazine’s deadline. If they do respond, it will be posted on the ACE Tech Blog. If….

Avid Responds to ACE Comments

One question from the ACE 2008 Equipment survey is "What message do you want to send to Avid / Apple / Lightworks ?" The responses were compiled in one Word document. It was sent to Avid's CEO Gary Greefield and President Kirk Arnold, and to contacts at Apple (the Senior Product Manager for Final Cut and a representative in their PR department). Sadly, no member reported using Lightworks, so there were no messages sent to them.

Avid and Apple were asked to respond in any way they chose to our comments. Avid sent two documents; 1) a general letter to ACE members addressing the theme of the comments and 2) a specific answer to each comment addressed to Avid.

The ACE Board feels these responses from Avid are impressive and important. The ACE comments and the Avid response can be downloaded here.  Apple has acknowledged the request and has not issued a response.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Post Part 2 /2

As the film is mixed, the mixed stems come from the stage at Sony and are dropped into the working master sequence. The same is true of VFX in progress. Each iteration of a VFX is layered on top of the last in the timeline.

Dailies were telecined at Company 3 to HD, then encoded into Avid’s DNxHD 36. Initially the post crew wondered if they should work at the higher quality compression, 115. But the need to accommodate a laptop meant they would work with the smaller file size.

Audio is encoded at 48k, 24 bit, and is sunk during telecine. Only one channel is transferred to the dailies, but the full production audio from Diva is loaded into the system if needed. Very little MC color correction of the original dailies is done. Dailies are moved to the cutting room via hard drive, giving them a tapeless workflow.

One oddity is although they are working in MFX media, the assistants are converting the audio to OMF media for the sound department. Calvin reported AAF exports having caused the Avid to crash, so OMF was chosen.

MFX media has created a fair amount of confusion in the industry. Some sound departments say they can’t work with it. Picture departments aren’t especially aware of the advantages (if any) of MXF, and an AAF transfer.

The system has 16 terrabytes of storage, holding about 1.25 million feet of film. The director carries a Micronet raid array as a portable hard drive for media.

As the picture has gotten closer to its final form, the assistants have been ordering scans of the picture for the final DI. Three types of film are being used, 4 perf 35mm, 8 perf 35 mm, and 15 perf 65mm, and each are scanned at a different resolution.

Although the framing of the movie is 2.40, Cinemascope wide screen, the 65mm film is being integrated to give a full frame Imax experience. Some scenes wil show entirely in Imax. Some scenes have a mix. After going to a theater to screen a mixture of 2.40 and Imax, it was decided that mixing the two didn’t hurt the visual experience.

Calvin Wimmer’s previous Avid show with editor Roger Barton was Speedracer, which he called the ‘worst case scenario. The software was super crashy.’ Transformers has had only a small degree of problems. Paul Rubell reports there is slowness in opening some windows (dissolve tool) in his MC, but the software has been very reliable, crashing only one time he could remember.

The biggest change for Paul was moving from 14:1 compression to HD. “The first hour is amazing” to watch, but “then it feels normal.”

Editors Roger Barton and Joel Negron use a few of Avid’s effects, but the director is very keen that they not change the images he shot. They’ve composited temp greenscreens, split screens, and animates. None of the editors were aware of the new Avid software, Avid FX.

One frustration expressed by the crew is that the audio levels in their tracks didn’t translate properly to the sound editorial department. Key frames went across, but audio gain changes in clips could clip or distort. It was also frustrating for Calvin that colored clips, a great way of keeping a timeline organized, would not translate to sound.

A more common complaint in editorial departments is why Media Composer and Pro Tools, owned by the same company, and the defacto standard in feature film post, don’t work together better.

To work on the extensive VFX, a highspeed T3 line was installed in the cutting room. It runs at 44.7 Mb/s, or what Calvin calls “the foo foo lingo for ‘really fast internet’”. It allows direct, instant, and secure communication between ILM and the cutting room. A two way conference is set up. Each side can see the other. And ILM can show the latest shots in part of the screen for evaluation.

Another interesting technology in the workflow is iChat. Editorial is using it for all types of purposes: sending updated cuts, getting sound effects from sound editorial, or music from music editorial, or to update the director’s laptop.

But the most impressive piece of technology in the whole post facility was for Cal Wimmer: a work bench with a motorized height adjustment. At the flip of a switch, he can work sitting down or standing up with the bench height adjusted to his liking.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Post Crew:
Editors Roger Barton, Joel Negron, Paul Rubell., A.C.E., Glen Scantlebury, Tom Muldoon
Co-First Assistants Calvin Wimmer, Todd Zongker
Apprentice Editor Kevin Stermer
Post Assistant Tommy Aagaard

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Post Production Part 1

Every new movie or television production goes through the process of deciding about what technology to employ. Long ago it was a simple as “KEM, Moviola, or Steenbeck.” Now of course it is a lot more complicated. And every show is breaking new ground in some fashion.

Case in point: Transformers 2 (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen). It is still possible to edit major feature film releases with Meridien systems, but using the latest hardware and software from Avid provides several new benefits.

One of the important new abilities was to allow the director, Michael Bay, to have a full working Media Composer on his laptop. Editorial provides him with an up to date portable drive with all media and a current project which allows him to comment on scenes, and to clip favorite takes for the editors to work with.

Paul Rubell is one of five editors on the project. He was brought on during post, after he had finished Public Enemies for Michael Mann - editing on Meridien systems. Paul was re-editing several scenes but had difficulty getting the very busy director to view and comment on them. Finally, the director was given these new cuts on his laptop, and Paul was soon given the notes he needed to proceed.

The editorial set up for Transformers 2 is as follows: there are eight Avid Media Composers, each with 3.x software, each with Nitris DX hardware. Nitris was choosen to allow each system to output eight channels, instead of two with the Mojo. All systems, including the director’s, are Apple computers running OS X. Not every system, however, has the same MC software version.

According to first assistant editor Calvin Wimmer, the different versions of the 3.x software can’t do certain important things. His system, 3.0.6, can do a consolidation for sound editorial… but can’t do an EDL. So co-first assistant Todd Zongker has a later version which can do EDL’s… but not consolidations.

Each system has two large Cinema displays, outputs through an analog Mackie mixer.

The editors pull sub-clips from the larger movie to work on. Once the work is completed, that section is re-integrated in the movie. The editors are working on all parts of the movie as needed. One potential problem is by the time a sub-clip is ready to go back into the movie, someone has made a change in that section (update a VFX, make a picture change for the director). It takes communication to keep from blowing away each others work.

 Paul Rubell had gotten used to working with audio in three channels: a center mono channel for dialogue and effects, and a stereo pair for music and backgrounds. He set the first four channels of his timeline to be center mono, and the next 4 to be stereo left and right. This is how he edited Public Enemies. It allowed for a better representation of a mixed movie. On Transformers, the director needed to work with only two channels for his laptop, so the editors all worked in two output channels.

To be continued....

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Post Crew:
Editors Roger Barton, Joel Negron, Paul Rubell., A.C.E., Glen Scantlebury, Tom Muldoon
Co-First Assistants Calvin Wimmer, Todd Zongker
Apprentice Editor Kevin Stermer
Post Assistant Tommy Aagaard

A Very Nice New Feature - Avid 3.5

The Avid Media Composer 3.5 release isn't a huge leap forward for series television and feature film editors. The new AMA (Avid Media Access) technology is big for some sectors of post, but it relates mostly to new ingest formats (P2, Sony's XDCam). Nice, but not something I need every day.

The stereoscopic editing at first glance isn't a big step either. But after having seeing a demonstration, it is a unique tool for editing 3D. Combined with Avid's HD capability, it can be a great benifit to post as one can screen 3D cuts without having to conform both eyes. I've edited many 3D projects: this will be a pretty excellent addition.

But the best new feature has hardly been mentioned in any press release. The Effects Editor will now allow one to edit every layer of a VFX on one panel.

As the above image show, this clip has the following VFX plug-ins: Flop, SpectraMatte, BCC_Rays_Streaky,  and Color Correction. In previous version of Media Composer, you had to step into each effect and edit the parameters on their own page. You no longer need to step into a clip's effects. All can be edited from this one panel. And with increasing numbers of off line VFX work, this is a huge feature addition.

As of yet the individual plug-ins cannot be re-ordered or deleted on this page. Perhaps that will come in the future.

New Editor Site

 A student at Video Symphony, the post production education facility, has started a new web site for editors.

www.PostEditors.com

According to Noel Albornoz  " The site, www.posteditors.com,  is a
social networking site similar to Facebook and LinkedIn but caters to
post-production editors.  Members of the site can create their profile,
network with others, join discussions in the forums, and upload their demo
reels where they can get feedback from their peers."


I'm curious what others think.

Editor Comments from the 2008 Equipment Survey

Two surveys were returned with extended comments.

From John Gilbert, A.C.E.

The EDL program needs to be updated. John and his crew kept getting a 'buffer' error when attempting to make an EDL, and the program would crash. As there was no other explanations of why, they kept dividing the sequence in half, to see which half had the problem. "So after 3 hours of working the problem we did discover that this version of the EDL manager won't let us make an EDL when there's a speed change in the sequence.  After so many years you can't make an EDL with a speed change in it?"

John continues: "Also, you still can't make an EDL with over 999 items in it." This of course is completely inadequate for today's work.

The ScriptSync program has come a long way, but still needs work: "When there's a re-write or an ad-lib on set, you can't add or delete text within Script Sync.  The script sync document NEEDS to be fully editable. We tried to amend a script outside of the program like we were told to do, and the script would never come back in with the proper format.  After several hours we abandoned the effort."

Secondly, the little tabs that appear on takes need to be more editable.   (W)e would need to remove the tab and add another and the change wouldn't happen.  We could slide the tab but Script Sync would keep the original reference in the take.  For example we had a line where the character said, "Cup..." and Script Sync thought the line was "Cut" and marked it at the end of the take. Since I couldn't add the additional tabs that I needed, I couldn't use it for that scene.

Also, when the clip is playing in Script Sync, there should be a "play bar" to indicate where the clip is being played.  The verticle line that's already there is perfect, it just needs to become in different color inside the line to indicate where it's playing.

(Finally) there needs to be an easier way to type text at the top of the clip.
_______________________________________________________________

Kate Sanford, A.C.E., responded about what feature Avid needs:

"Mappable audio keyframes!  Copy/paste audio keyframes from one track to another.  This would be especially useful when replacing music.  In fact, it would be wonderful if option+replace would preserve all keyframe info while replacing the underlying track on PICTURE or SOUND!  (In video the workaround is to save the effect, then paste it back onto the desired shot.)

The other feature I need is dupe detection on ALL video tracks!  Why isn't this available on V2?   Dupe detection should find common frames within and among all video tracks."

Editor Stories

Here are a couple of editors writing about their experiences, from the upcoming 2008 ACE Equipment survey.

A story from Stuart Bass on the perils of the editor having too many tools:

"This was the first time I cut a pilot and was offered no post-production support. As an editor I was responsible for CC, ADR, music editing and tracking, sound effects, the mix and many of the blue screen visual effects.

With some discussion I eventually got a music editor and supervisor and someone to help me with color correction. However, after I locked the director’s cut, my assistant and I undertook a week of work that is usually reserved for specialists. As a result I worked over the technical aspects of the show so deeply that I no longer could make “objective” creative decisions as we progressed through the studio / network notes. At times I felt I let down the producers and director because I could no longer make aesthetic choices. The act of going through the show frame by frame working audio levels and color for days at a time takes one’s head out of the story."

Tim Squyres on working remotely:

I did the (feature) assembly at home with software only Composer on a Macbook Pro with external FW  800 drives, while my assistant digitized in New York on a Nitris system. Every afternoon a runner would come out to my house on the train and we'd swap hard drives, and I'd give them any DVD's I'd made to be sent to the director. Occasionally, if time was tight, I'd have my assistant make the DVD from bins that I'd sent via iChat. It takes a little extra effort to be sure everyone has the right media and bins, but it's nice to skip the commute.

I have and older SD Mojo, so I could have down-converted to DX and worked on my larger client monitor, but I chose to work in full screen on my computer monitor in HD, without the Mojo. I down-converted only to make the DVD's. For the first part of the job, the Mojo was unsupported anyway, due to the Leopard Firewire problem that we discovered beta-testing last spring on a job that I'll send a different survey about. In early January, the director wanted to go skiiing, so we rented a Mojo DX, update my Firewire drives, and I took my home system to Lake Placid for a week. No problems.

Interview with Chris Dickens

From Larry Jordan, at HDFilmtools.com


"I am currently running a 5 part series with ACE, BAFTA and Oscar winning film editor Chris Dickens. You are welcome to link or post on your site if you would like.

You can access it via my front page at http://www.hdfilmtools.com"

Media Composer Tutorials

The Avid PC forum features a post that links to 90+ tutorials. Most are simple, but seem to clearly show many basic Avid editing concepts. These aren’t, of course, nearly as interesting as the tutorials here, but an excellent reference nevertheless.

Roku: the future of Video

My Christmas present (to myself) this year was a Roku digital video player.
It is about the size of a five-pack of CDs. And it connects my TV to a huge library of movies and television shows.

The initial attraction to the device is it can stream movies from Netflix. As I have a standard Netflix account, the streaming service is free. The second very attractive feature is the device is wireless. There are no connections to figure out to make it link to my home wireless network. The overall setup was very easy. It supports standard definition and HD.

A recently added advantage is it can now tap into Amazon’s video streaming service, which has (Amazon says) over 40,000 videos. This service is not free, however, and works similar to iTunes: you can purchase, or you can rent for 24 hours.

I’ve watched several movies, and all looked and sounded very good. I can pause, rewind, fast forward like a DVD.

There are downsides. The Netflix library of streaming titles isn’t huge (12,000 videos), and is oddly eclectic - which means it doesn’t have a lot of things I’ve looked for. And if your internet connection is flakey (as Time Warner has been recently in Southern California), you can’t stream.

I can see why Blockbuster might be looking to file for bankruptcy. My Roku makes it unnecessary to every visit another video store - presuming Netflix and Amazon can keep up with the latest video release schedules. And this streaming ability is also available in Xbox 360, some BluRay players, Tivo DVRs, and a Sony Bravia Internet video link.

DVD Burning in Windows

Burning a DVD on a Mac from an Avid sequence is easy. Toast is by far the easiest and best program. It takes a Quicktime reference file made from an Avid exported sequence, encodes, and burns it to disk.

Doing the same in Windows isn’t nearly as easy. Sorensen Squeeze is excellent for compression, but is very complicated. Avid DVD by Sonic is reasonably straightforward. But I’ve experienced several failures with it, and it isn’t designed well for what should be a simple operation.

I’ve experimented with several burning software programs. Recently I needed to burn a quite different DVD, and really struggled to find something that worked.

The problem was taking a DVD that had been encoded 4 x 3 anamorphic. What was on screen was a full frame with very thin and tall people. What was needed was normal sized people, in a 16 x 9 frame with black bars on the top and bottom.

It doesn’t help that every modern HD television seems to display video in unpredictable ways, and their terminology is very fuzzy (Wide, Zoom, etc). Incidentally, how does anyone know what the image on screen is supposed to look like? I've seen televisions set up with a completely wrong aspect ratio, simply because the owner didn't want to see any black bars on the side or top.

I used Cinematize to rip the DVD (non-commercial DVD, mind you, so not illegal). It created a very large Quicktime movie. After failing to resize the image in Quicktime and Toast, I then tried Sorensen Squeeze. The reformat was a simple software switch. But, when I chose to Burn-Large_DVD, my results were unexpected. First, it never actually started the DVD burner - a confusing problem. It did however create two files, video (.m4v) and audio (.m4a). I tried dropping these into Avid DVD. The video file came in: the audio file didn’t. Avid DVD didn’t recognize the file type (neither did I, but I thought that was just me).

Needless to day, I spent hours and many blank DVDs trying to reformat this video and burn a copy, with no luck. Even Adobe Premiere Elements 7, which seemed to have much promise, didn’t have an easy resize and the resultant DVD was fuzzy and way out of sync.

Then I tried TMPGEnc Authoring 4 - a suggestion from Michael Phillips at Avid. I downloaded a trial version, which I had reviewed earlier in version 3. The latest was the simplest and best solution.

TMPGEnc imported the Quicktime file. It had several preset frame sizes / formats. I could immediately see that it was making the correct frame size. I set it to burn to a 4.7 gig DVD, another menu option which constrains the final size of the burned files. I could watch it encode, which happened mostly in real time. And after burning, it retained the encoded file,  allowing me to burn additional copies without re-encoding (which Toast doesn’t do).

As a separate test, I took a Quicktime reference from an Avid sequence. It encoded that properly and burned it as well.

There are additional options for editing and adding menus. I almost never want or need this functionality, but its nice to have. The simplicity of the program is its real strength. You aren’t forced to make menus. It will calculate the proper data rate automatically when you tell it what size DVD you have. I could actually see the correct frame size to burn, which is handy if you have anamorphic media. And it retains the encoded files, so you don’t have to re-encode if you need another copy.

- Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Who Knew? Command-X

- a continuing series of tips. 

It can take several keystrokes to delete a region in an Avid timeline. In Segment Mode (the red arrow), you highlight a clip then hit delete. If there are effects and keyframes, those get removed one at a time, so it can take as many as 6 keystrokes to delete a region.








Shortcut: highlight the region in Segment Mode then hit Command-X (on a Mac; Control-X on a PC).

Voila: the region and all effects are gone. Best of all, the deleted clip (with all effects) is now in the Clipboard, and can be inserted into the timeline at a new spot, with effects, keyframes, and dissolves in tact. Command-V to paste in, or open the Clipboard and 'B' to overwrite.

 

Thanks to Frank Capria and Avid for the tip. 

Who knew?

Editing Red Camera on FCP

Here is a view on a short project edited by Paul Trejo and assisted by Ian Kezsbom, shot on the Red Camera at 4K, and edited on FCP.

Ian Kezsbom:

We were working off two systems. We primarily transferred the footage on a G5 Mac OS X system. As a secondary machine we used my laptop, which is a 17" hi-def Macbook Pro, with a 2.6ghz processor and 4 megs of RAM.

We went to the Red Camera site - and downloaded the Red Log and Transfer Plugin.

This was an add-on that allowed us to log and transfer the Red footage to the Final Cut ProRes footage. This did take a long time - for a little less than 2 hours of footage it was more than half the work day. But it wasn't terribly surprising since we were taking high-def footage and down converting it - not much different than making a compressed Quicktime of 2 hours of footage, I suppose.

The advantage of course was that the Red camera logged each take as it printed them to a drive and we were able to start viewing some of the takes once they had been loaded since the main machine was a multi-processor unit.

This method ended up being the best result for us, since we knew that we were not going to be finishing in anything of higher quality than the ProRes

We had originally prepped to either upconvert to 4K or cut with the 2K footage. We downloaded the Red Quicktime codec, which in theory allows real time playback of the reference movies the camera creates. We ended up not going this route since the research I did suggest that the 2K footage would either not play smoothly or at all on the laptop. We went the conversion to ProRes route.

The outputs for the web were of no problem (one version of the edited project was for broadcast, another for posting on the web). In fact, once the footage was all converted to ProRes files, it was no different than working with any Final Cut project. Essentially, we had created new media - which still retained a fairly high quality (though not high enough for a film output.

Multiple Source Monitors

WOW!   

I’ve tested this just a little, but it seems to be a pretty interesting and crazy Avid editing capability.

Option+double click (Mac, or Alt+double PC) a clip in a bin opens that clip in a pop-up monitor. What is interesting is when this window is active, it works as a source monitor: hit an insert or overwrite key and the material from the pop up window is spliced into your timeline. Or, you can drag and drop from that pop up monitor into the timeline. Segment Mode determines if it is an insert or overwrite, and can be switched by clicking on the yellow or red arrow.

But what if you opened more than one pop-up window? Two? I opened five in MC 3.0, and used each to be the source for editing into my timeline. See this image from the HITTING THE CYCLE promo.

What makes this interesting is how easy it can make accessing your dailies. Rather than double clicking each shot in a bin to open it in the regular source window, or using the source window’s pulldown list, one could have an entire scene of dailies (?) instantly available.

This needs more testing. But it may be a 'hand saver' for episodic television, saving a few hundred mouse clicks a day in accessing dailies.

Thanks to Michael Phillips from Avid for this tip. And kudos to Avid: they are proving to be very attentive to customer questions and needs. They really seem to be listening.

Burning to DVD on a PC

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Outputting a sequence and burning it to DVD on a Mac is easy. Export a Quicktime reference from the Media Composer, drop the created .mov file on to Toast, hit Burn. Toast will encode the entire movie, and burn it as a playable DVD. And it works in the background, as you continue to work on other things on your computer. It isn’t fast; the encoding and burning takes longer than a real time play out. But it works. Easy and simple.

My Avid system is on a PC, however, with the XP Professional OS. I wanted to find a workflow to burn a DVD of a sequence that was as easy as on the Mac OS. I experimented with the following products.

Roxio’s Easy Media Creator (Roxio also sells Toast)
AVS Video Converter
TMPGEnc DVD Author 3
DVD Flick (freeware)
Adobe Premiere Elements 4

Roxio’s EMC isn’t so good. The Mac version (Toast) is great, but the PC version wants to be everything to everyone, and doesn’t do anything well. $99. It will compress a reference movie, but the results had some stutter. And the interface was complicated. When you choose “Video” as the major category, you then get a menu of 10 different programs that are poorly named and described. Once you make the selection (and you still don’t know if it is the right selection for the job), there isn’t much guidance on the best way to proceed.

AVS Video Converter is cheap ($60), easy, fast, and it just worked. Choose the file to convert, choose what to convert to (DVD), Convert, then Burn. All the settings are clearly labeled so making the correct choices was clear. Chapter markers, if desired, were brainlessly simple to add. The only drawback is it couldn’t compress a Quicktime reference file. That can be done with Quicktime Pro or Sorenson.

TMPGEnc DVD Author 3: $90. Good. A simple interface where you drag-n-drop clips into a list to burn. There is some editing ability, and you can create menus (if you want). It encodes and burns. The best part of this program is it leads you step by step through the process, but it allows you to easily skip a step you don’t want or move back to make a change. Interestingly it allows the input and output of DivX movies. As far as I’ve seen, DivX movies are the smallest and best looking of any compression.

DVD Flick: free, but not as simple or reliable. And it couldn’t convert a QT reference.

Adobe Premiere Elements 4. $99. Good. The interface was clear: Get Media from one of five sources, drop the sequence / clip into the timeline, Share (burn to DVD, upload to a web site, etc.), then Burn. It transcoded the entire movie, and burned it to disc easily. Adobe is releasing Elements 7 soon, which will include Premiere and Photoshop for $150. That looks like a great deal.

At some point perhaps Avid will build in a simple, drag-n-drop burn sequence to DVD. Until then, Toast on Mac and the above for PC are viable options.

On another note: Elgato makes a USB stick called the Turbo H.264, Mac only, that accelerates encoding of Quicktimes. The software displays the speed of the encoding. Although it has limited output codecs, it can compress up to twice real time. With some of the fastest PC’s and Mac’s ever available, why can’t our compression software work as fast as the Elgato?

How To Use ScriptSync

by Harry B. Miller III

I collected a series of interviews with several ACE members and their assistants on how they use ScriptSync. The full article was long, so it is posted as a PDF on the ACE website, on the Downloads page . In addition, Robert Bramwell, A.C.E., has written an article published in the Editors Guild Magazine on the same subject.

Avid FX

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Opening up Avid FX, the added module to the Media Composer 3 which was until recently available only in Express Pro, one is faced with an intimidating palette of screens. But, how do I make a title? How do I make a transition? What is all this stuff?

There aren't many sources of information on how to use Avid FX. The Help file is a start. I wanted to read it on my Mac laptop, so I copied the file 'AvidFxHelp.chm' from the Avid FX Documentation folder. Mac's can't natively read a '.chm' file, but I was able to find CHMOX (chmox.sourceforge.net/), a program that enables a Mac to open a .chm file.

But reading a Help file to learn how to use a program is like reading an encyclopedia from page one to learn how to make beer. There is a lot of information, but not very well organized for a beginning user. And all you really are after is a beer.

Amazon sells the book 'Instant Boris Effects' by Chris Vadnais (also available as a Kindle Book). Howard Smith, A.C.E. found this to be a good primer on FX, as it is adapted from Boris' Red program.

Another excellent resource is on an Avid UK page, http://www.avid.co.uk/uk/video/fx/transitions.shtml. Available here are some outstanding tutorials. Very informative.

Finally, Boris offers tutorials on many of its plugins at http://www.borisfx.com/tutorials/.

This looks to be a great program, that seems to have tight integration with the MC. I was really impressed with it after seeing the 3D modeling and titling tutorials on the Avid site. I won't be able to use all of it, but it looks to be a fun learning experience.

Cutting in HD on Avid MC 3

Jay Cassidy, A.C.E. is editing a feature film using HD media, which is an anomaly now, but which will certainly become commonplace.

What is truly remarkable, though, is his editing system consists of an off-the-shelf Apple Mac G5, an external Firewire hard drive, two monitors, an audio interface, Avid Media Composer 3 software… and no other hardware. No Adrenaline box, no Mojo, no Matrox / Blackmagic / Kona etc., no special cards. No nothing.

Until recently, you had to have some sort of added hardware to even work in standard definition. But now that he’s worked in HD Jay says “I’m never going back.” And with the simplicity of his system and the picture quality, it is easy to see why.

BROTHERS, directed by Jim Sheridan, was shot on 3 perf film, telecined to HDCam with one track of production audio, then digitized at Deluxe Digital in Avid’s DNxHD 36 codec. Portable hard drives were used to transfer the media to the cutting rooms. As the film will ultimately be scanned for a DI, the higher resolution HDCam SR wasn’t used. Multitrack audio was sunk to picture in the editing room.

According to Jay “the virtue of HD is image quality.  Since the advent of digital editing, we’ve been bemoaning the loss of picture quality of the electronic image vs. workprint.   With DNxHD36, the moaning is over, the image quality is only limited by the display method - monitor, projector, whatever.”

The Editing System

Jay has 3 Avid systems, all on Mac platforms. In another unusual arrangement he is using no shared media (Unity / Xserve). Each system has independent, mirrored storage, and bins are shared over Apple’s Bonjour chat client.

The storage is G Tech firewire drives, connected via the FW 800. The G Tech drives are designed for media play-out, unlike consumer drives. “We've gone through nearly 25 G Tech drives, G Raid, G Raid2, SATA, mini's, etc.   When a film's done, the drives go on the shelf, (as there’s) usually no point in recycling them. Partially because unpredictable future requests always occur.”

As Jay notes, all drives eventually fail - two drives have failed in two years. Therefore he has redundant media, often in several cities, as mobility has also been important on his last few projects. 

Two of the systems are Apple OS 10.4 (Tiger), while Jay’s system is 10.5 (Leopard), and all are running Media Composer 3.0. Jay points out that Avid released its latest software specifically for Leopard, but found there was a serious flaw in the OS with Firewire. Apple has not been fast to solve the problem, so Avid released a update that would run on Tiger (OS 10.4). Jay is using 3.0, while the two other systems are on 3.0.1.

The biggest change with MC 3.0 is in overall performance. Everything is faster. Specifically now MC can use all available processors for complex tasks such as rendering or exporting / compressing. This in terms of the application is called ‘multi-threaded’. Previous versions could only use single processors. Now that up to 8 processors can be in one system, this offers a nice performance boost.

HD Image Quality

The picture quality with DNxHD 36 is excellent. Jay has two 24” Dell monitors. The one on the right serves as a client / playback monitor connected to the DVI port. The left monitor is for the Avid project, timeline, and ScriptSync.

“It is possible to install a second graphic card in the computer and work with three DVI screens, retaining the screen real estate of "two computer monitors and a client monitor."   With the introduction of the MojoDX, this solution may not be necessary.”

Because he doesn’t have a Mojo or Adrenaline box Jay isn’t connected to a separate HD TV monitor. And he isn’t digitizing in his editing room, so again no external hardware is needed. To screen edits, Jay has a Microtek DLP projector, which displays on the nearest white wall. The projector is connected to the DVI output of the computer, and displays at 1024 x 786,

“(T)he hardware helps, but the software-only image "full screen" on a good-sized DVI monitor is so far beyond the best SD image on the best SD monitor, that HD software-only editing is a viable option.”

“Working without hardware also means the threshold of pain is lowered when considering HD over SD.   It was not an easy sell to get this production to work in HD and the fact that we could keep the equipment so simple worked in our favor.” 

Other Features

Audio comes from the Apple optical port into a Apogee Digital to Analogue converter, which has a headphone out and powers two speakers for projection. "A happy unintended consequence of getting this device was the discovery that, if the audio output of the computer was optical instead of USB or the minijack, the "mute" button in the Composer software actually worked!”

One feature of MC 3 Jay hasn’t experimented with is the new title module, Avid FX. Titles for his shows are created in After Effects, so he is staying with the familiar here.

The most useful new feature in MC 3 for the editing team is the timecode overlay, which for Jay is “completely great” and “really well designed.” With no rendering involved, a timeline can now carry a great deal of information burned in the screen, with a great deal of control over size, font, placement, color, and text.

For outputs to sound and music BROTHERS is exporting Quicktime movies at half rez (965x540) using the Photo JPEG codec. The later was found to work best by trial and error - part of the nightmare of QT codecs.

Another important feature of this workflow is that everyone is working at the same speed, 23.976. The audio was recorded at 48.048 at 24 fps on a Diva, which when imported into the Avid played at the correct speed for sync.

ScriptSync

The Avid ScriptSync module is essential to Jay’s workflow, and has been for years. He and his assistants have learned how to update and line the shooting script in such a way that Jay never bothers opening a scene bin, but edits exclusively working from the Avid script.

Early in post a laptop was setup for the director in Dublin, where he screened dailies using ScriptSync.

(Using Avid’s ScriptSync will be the subject of a future post)

Screenings

For screenings, two methods have been used. As Jay writes…

“1.  Output from Avid via Adrenaline or Nitris hardware to HDCAM tape.   This method for important screenings and previews.  On a 2K or 4K projector, the picture is in proper color space, etc. and the DNxHD 36 image is impeccable on a 40+ screen.    Image quality is no different than a finished film projected via  DCinema.

2.  On a few occasions, we've projected directly from the computer via the second DVI port, treating the 2K projector as a second screen.  This method requires no Avid hardware and the rate-limiting-step is the graphics card in the computer.   As well, the color space is not correct so the image is a brighter and the black is less black.   Image-wise, it's not out of the ball park and we've used it when we wanted to see the film on a large screen without going through the gymnastics of an output to tape.

We've very interested in the MojoDX because we could eliminate #2.   As we've done in Standard Def, computer to projector via SDI Mojo - HD SDI  to Projector via the MojoDX would eliminate the "output to tape" step for screenings.   That's if you want to live dangerously - playing out directly from the Avid live in front of an audience!”

Finishing


The final stage of the edit will be the DI. As Jay points out, an editor does one of these maybe once a year and every time it is completely different, so what you did last time isn’t necessarily relevant. Each facility has its own system, many of which are proprietary and unique.


BROTHERS directed by Jim Sheridan
Editor Jay Cassidy, A.C.E.
Assistant Editor Tommy Park
VFX Editor/Associate Editor/Assistant is Geraud Brisson

Systems: G5 Quad Core (editor), G5 Dual Core (assistant), G4 laptop, MacBookPro laptop

IRON MAN Update #2

Here is the final update on the post of IRON MAN, with editor Dan Lebental. Thanks to Dan and the assistant Dawn King for the excellent information.

1. Was having up to 8 channels of production audio ultimately a positive... or a pain? Were you working at 24 bit audio, and did this create any problems?

It was a positive when they were used especially with iso mics. We didn't work in 24 bit as we were going to because the lab made a mistake and we didn't find out until it was to late.

2. Post Sound: were there any surprises when you moved to the dubbing stage (nothing was in sync, the sound quality was surprisingly good / bad)? You mixed at Skywalker. Who supervised and cut sound? How did you get picture to the stage? Did post sound hook Pro Tools into your Unity?

Frank Eulner was our Sound Superviser and Chris Boyse was our Sound Designer and FX Mixer. We gave the stage quicktimes. We didn't hook Pro Tools with the Unity.

3. Your plan had been to color grade in a mobile facility near the mix. How did that work out? Were you dropping VFX shots into the DI as you were grading? What system was used for the digital assembly and grading?

We did set up a station for color timing at the ranch (Skywalker Ranch). Steve Scott from Efilm did the job and it went very smoothly.

4. Was a lot of progress made in fixing problems with the Avid software? Or did you have to come up with work-arounds for most issues?

We did have to use some workarounds and got used to the Avid not doing certain basic things like doing a matchback without the target bin open. One nasty problem was that out of nowhere the Avid would completely eliminate a bin. We would have to go to the attic or archives to recover bins.

5. You made this workflow work with a big budget. What advice could you offer for small budget films that want to work in HD?

I think cutting HD for smaller budgets only makes things easier. You are at a true 24fps without having to get rid of false frames and it all relates to film better. Also, a tapeless work flow would be great for a film with one editor and one assistant. And you can screen dailies and have previews directly from the avid media which can save a lot of money.

6. Did you continue to have sync issues with your client monitor?

No. It was never an issue for me. I think it effected people who use there playback monitor to edit and like to stop on a frame and mark it. When you stopped the monitor would jump back to an earlier frame. This isn't how I work so it didn't effect me.

7. Were there Effects plugins that were missing, or needed improvement? If you resized a shot did it retain its sharpness? Did you use any Timewarp effects, and did they translate to your DI? Did they take five hours to render? Were there issues with rendering?

I thought the effects plug-ins worked well an rendered quickly. I did plenty of resizes and repos and they help their sharpness. I used time-warp to great success but had an VFX house replicate my moves before it went to DI. The highest quality renders seemed to take 10 or 15 minutes. I really relied on the very effective SpectraMatte plugin along with AniMatte for my temp compositing.

8. What audio plugin is missing, or needs improvement?

The audio plug-ins are still a weak link. I really only used Dverb in the end. Well, also pitch shift sometimes.

9. What could Avid do to make your next project easier and more efficient?

I think that making bins open and close and change ownership faster would be the one thing that would take my frustration level down. Also, we should not have to save bins that aren't going to be altered in editing.

2007 Equipment Survey Results

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Significant trends can be spotted in the 2007 Equipment Survey of ACE members: Final Cut Pro (FCP) is on the rise, the mini-series has all but disappeared, DI’s (Digital Intermediate: printing film for release from digital files) are taking over, and editing tools have a long way to go in reliability and speed.

The participation in this year’s survey has been the highest of any. ACE thanks all who returned surveys. Although it would be best if everyone had sent in one, we at least have a large enough sample from ACE members to make some reasonable assumptions about what our members are doing.

The value of this survey, perhaps, is to show trends in the Hollywood feature and television industry, amongst the highest skilled and creative editors in that industry.

Additionally, each member can utilize this information to inform their own careers - which technologies are becoming important, which areas do we need more training, etc..

One caveat: a number of the questions were poorly phrased, misunderstood, and thus the results need to be taken with some skepticism. Like all surveys, how the question is written is just as important as the answer, but some misunderstanding does not invalidate all the results.

The Numbers

105 surveys were returned. We have about 350 active members, so that is a pretty good response. Apple computers have only about 6% of the US PC market, but they represent 73% of the ACE editors market. Avid’s attempt to dump Apple has been a dismal mis-step.

Avid continues to dominate the offline world (79% to 21%). The other trend of note is the increase in Final Cut: up to 18%. Expect that trend to increase.
This is a difficult category to glean a trend, other than MOW’s and mini-series are going away.
Digital formats have risen from 10% in 2004 to around 32% in ’07. In 2007 for the first time recording to drives appears. The numbers do include shows that shoot multiple camera formats.

If 47% of the responses are from features and 46% of the responses in Delivery Format are DI’s, it seems that DI’s are dominating the feature film area.

Why? It is much more expensive to make a DI. Are the benefits monetary? Unlikely. Much like the change from editing with film to electronic editing: the creative and practical benefits are enormous, while the cost is much higher. Is it the director who is making this happen?

The push to use Final Cut Pro is to some extent economic. Universal Studios has been making a strong push for FCP in its television post. Fox Features seems to be making a push toward a FCP workflow.
This is always the most problematic area of the survey each year. Less than half of the editors choose the editing system they work on. The editor is the one person who should choose. Whomever is pushing the studios toward DI’s needs to help the editor choose the system he / she prefers.

Nearly 10% of the post was cut in HD. Look for this trend to grow.
33% of respondents categorize themselves as competent, or less than. As much as it may be comfortable to ignore the technical aspects of the editing room, those who do so will find employment opportunities shrinking as the world gets more technical rather than less. It is possible to be both a good editor and an expert in the software and hardware you work with. Knowing the technical side will never lessen as a desirable quality.

A new section of questions was added this year, to see what editors felt about different modules within the software.

Basic Titles: 63 respondents like the basic title tool. 18 don’t. 15 are neutral or have no opinion. That seems to be a rather positive overall view.

Color Correction: Not all versions of software have a color correction module. 28 respondents liked theirs. 33 didn’t. 34 were neutral or didn’t have an opinion.

Advanced Titles: 21 liked Marquee or Motion (or Live Type). 37 didn’t. 9 were neutral. 25 didn’t respond. The Advanced title tools are not well liked.

ScriptSync: only Avid has this, and only the newer systems. 10 respondents liked it. 33 did not. 5 were neutral. ScriptSync seems to have a very long way to go to be broadly useful. Those who like it are, in general, passionate supporters. It is probable others don’t understand it well, or have not been able to usefully apply it to their own situation.

Effects: 60 respondents liked the Effects module. Only 13 did not. Pretty favorable for Effects.

Other Software

Members reported using the following software in their workflow: Quickeys, X Keys, Photoshop, iTunes, Filemaker, Boris, Cinematize, Quicktime Pro, Toast, CuteFTP, Final Draft, ProTools, Elgato Turbo, After Effects, DVD Studio Pro, and Stage Tools.

Frustrations

In order of greatest mention, the following things caused the most frustration: system crashes, system speed, interface design, director / producer interference, and lack of knowledge of the editing tools. (Our lives would be soooo much easier without those pesky directors.)

Feature Improvements

There were a lot of suggestions for improvements in the editing systems. They include, in order of importance, simple mobility, macro ability, a more intuitive interface, and more / better audio tools. (It is surprising to see how many editors want to take their work home.)

New Technology

The ideas for integrating new technology include voice activation, touch screens, an easier help system, inexpensive media sharing, and transcriptions.

The complete survey and some additional detail will be published on our ACE Tech web site.

Is Anyone Listening?

Hopefully, the annual survey’s results will have some impact with those who make the tools that our editors use. Avid? Apple? Adobe? (Is anyone still making) Lightworks? Will they simply keep adding features, or will they make the editor’s world more creative, convenient, and friendly.

One feature an editor mentioned was to be able to update title text in an easy way other than opening and changing each title. On a subtitled movie, this would be a great help. Will any edit system add this function?

With any luck, editors will start having more say in the tools they use, just as other production crewmembers now have. DP’s always have a big say in the camera and light equipment to be used because the perception is that they need it to achieve the “look” they have been chosen for. But several times I have been forced to use an editing system I would not have otherwise chosen. An editor is chosen for the same creative reason to do a project and likewise he or she should be able to choose the equipment that best services his or her creative needs.

Red Camera Demo at PlasterCITY Digital Post

About 35 people assembled in the DI theater at PlasterCITY Digital Post in Hollywood on Tuesday, May 13, and were treated to a fantastic presentation on using the Red Camera and its RD3 media in post production. The guests included ACE members, editors, assistants, teachers, and a couple of directors.

Michael Cioni, Chief Knowledge Officer at PlasterCITY, and Stephen Beres, Chief Technology Officer, were the presenters. They used a Mac laptop to project a Powerpoint slideshow, and for 90 minutes delivered an expert guide on the Red Camera and how to get it in and out of Avid and Final Cut Pro.

It was overwhelming, and very exciting. Michael and Stephen are very good presenters, both at clearly explaining and entertaining. The Red camera can shoot at 4K. It is possible to edit in 4K, but Michael and Stephen showed how the media is captured on a drive or flash drive, brought into Avid or FCP and edited at ProRes or DNxHD36. There was so much information my head started spinning.

The great aspect of the workflow is the people at Red Digital Cinema Camera Company have not only developed an inexpensive, full res HD camera with lenses and convenient attached storage, but they’ve created tools to move and manipulate that media into post production. They are the only digital camera company I know that has devoted time to anything past shooting. The tools, Red Alert! and Redcine, are used to apply color correction and export to any number of file specs. These, and the Final Cut Pro plugins they offer, are downloadable off their website for FREE.

In the demonstration, we saw a Red drive attached to the laptop on stage, the media dragged and dropped into a FCP timeline. We were treated to a short demo reel with quite stunning imagery (compressed to 2K). And best of all, the Red representative, Ted Shilowitz, joined the question and answer session by asking the audience questions.

For more information, you can visit the PlasterCITY website at www.plastercitypost.com and view the Red Lab page which shows several post workflows. The audio from the demonstration will be posted on the ACE website as soon as it is available.

You can also listen to the presentation, broken up into 12 topics, on the ACE Audio Download page.

Thanks to PlasterCITY Digital, Michael Cioni, Stephen Beres, and Ted Shilowitz for a fantastic presentation.

Avid Serves Up New Thinking - and some New Execs

- by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Avid sponsored an event at Universal’s Globe Theater for what looked to be around 500 post production specialists last week.

There were two items on the agenda, presided by the new Executive VP and GM of Avid Video, Kirk Arnold. The first was to introduce the “New Thinking” campaign. This is Avid’s new customer-centric program. The four pillars of which are Improve Value, Support, Community, and Dialogue.

The second item was the introduction of new hardware, the ‘DX’ line of boxes (Nitris DX and Mojo DX) that is the next generation of hardware in the line from AVBV, Meridien, and Adrenaline. The DX line enables editing in standard and high definition. This is a big plus over Adrenaline, which suffered from the 'what is the point' problem: it worked worse than Meridien, and came standard with no real needed features.

The line up of Avid personnel was impressive. At the presentation were Avid’s new CEO Gary Greenfield, old Senior Product Specialist Matt Feury, and old Solutions Manager Content Production Michael Phillips.

It is easy to be cynical about the “New Thinking” campaign. Some nice graphics and a few speeches don’t make a real change. Avid says they are listening, and want a ‘dialogue’ with their customers. We should take them at their word… until proven otherwise. Nothing besides friendly talk and free drinks showed any real change.

The disappointment in the evening to me was a demonstration at the end, that in actuality showed Avid is stuck in the “Old” thinking. Michael Phillips showed new software that allowed for editing films in 3D. Left and right eyes could be combined in groups. The editor could see one eye, both (in over / under), and simultaneously project a 3D image.

The 3D images were great. The way it is accomplished is daunting but interesting. Here’s the problem: who needs it.

Its unfortunate Avid spends time and resources on very niche solutions. ScriptSync is the same thing. A very cool technology, but how many editors can’t live without it? I’ve edited several 3D movies, mostly large format, but have never suffered for not being able to see 3D in my cutting room. It would be nice, but we never lock anything without screening everything in 3D many times.

Personally, I’d rather see a number of other things in the Media Composer: a ‘live’ interface where you can do other things while the timeline plays, background saves, simple burning to DVD, easy integration with Pro Tools, and the end of the “Bus Thread” errors.

Maybe when Avid addresses these issues instead of 3D editing, we’ll start to see some “New” thinking.

2007 Equipment Survey Comments

The results of the 2007 ACE Equipment Survey (along with my cogent observations) will be published in the next Cinema Editor Magazine. Here are some comments submitted by the respondents, which were too lengthy to put in the article. They have been edited for brevity.

“Please send your feedback to our avid rep in burbank: Bill_Admans@avid.com”

“I cut this entire movie on my laptop with MC 2.7 in a condo in Vancouver. It went really well.”

“We digitized from HDCam masters into FC, synced up video w/ prod audio in the cutting room, and then on-lined in the cutting room.”

“Using the Avid script to compare alternate takes when working with directors and producers makes your editing life much easier.”

“I experienced some major difficulties going back to standard definition for sound and music delivery, especially with subtitles. It was a nightmare (in a pal version of media composer).”

“My biggest concern with respect to editing feature films is the lack of concern regarding the “projecting” of dailies either on film or in an HD environment. The importance of projecting dailies on a larger format than a TV monitor should not be an issue that has to be explained or justified. I find this trend most disturbing.“

“I hate FCP, and I’ve had to turn down editing work all year because the media has been digitized for FCP. If I could have used the media with Avid software I’d have been very happy. Compatibility between the two would be great as more and more ‘filmmakers’ are coming to us pros to fix their work after they’ve ‘cut’ it themselves on FCP.”

“really prefer Avid”

“FCP is fine for the editor and one can be very creative, but it is a lot of extra work for the assistant editor particularly on a feature. Processes which would be simple on Avid take a lot longer on FCP, such as playouts, EDLs, digitizing dailies.”

“FCP IS going to take over. Almost all the people coming out of film school are FCP folks and its 1/3 the cost of Avid.”

“Miss Final Cut features on Avid - picking up all tracks & moving them easily, and sound interface.”

“Would like to use it (AudioSuite), but it defeats me.”

“Using Adrenaline w /HD dailies for the first time, speed & crashes have been an enormous, and I mean that, headache.”

“To have trim mode be more flexible, i.e., be able to open up cuts where I would like to as opposed to the inflexible rigid way trim mode is set up. Making the process more flexible & plastic. It’s pretty great as it is, but could be improved.

“Would like the FX (video and audio) work in real time better.”

“The audio editing / mixing in Avid remains clunky and non-intuitive. Avid is a ‘legacy’ system, I don’t anticipate these issues to be tackled by the good folks at Tewksbury any time soon.”

“This film was subtitled, and we had to keep lists of subtitles as Excel documents. It would have been great to have the subtitles in the sequences linked to the spreadsheet.”

“I hate when the system gets really slow for no explainable reason, or when it crashes again and again. It’s only recently that I’ve been frustrated because of my own lack of knowledge… specifically the Sapphire FX. I want to know how to learn the new, advanced editing techniques & VFX, but I’m not sure how to do that.”

“Touch screens would be great - my hands always hurt.”

“System speed is very slow on Adrenaline!!!”

“Some basic editing functions aren’t intuitive in the software.”

And finally….

“Adapt or die”

Editing WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB

As the tools get better and systems get faster, why does everything seem slower?

I’m one of three editors cutting WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB (WMC). Being first on, the assistant and I, CJ Liao, chose Macintosh Media Composer Adrenalines as the first two systems. The next two editors chose Meridiens, on OS X. The storage is Avid Unity.

After several weeks of dealing with crashes and incompatibilities, we’ve managed to reach an equilibrium where everything seems to be working pretty well. We’ve found the version of Sapphire that works on all systems. And we’ve gotten the equipment vendor to upgrade the CPU’s and software of the Adrenalines, and to upgrade the software on the Unity system. I still get the occasional “Bus error in Main thread” crash, but not very often.

Yet having the state of the art systems doesn’t mean I don’t go crazy waiting for bins to be created, for bins to open, for the Capture Tool to open, for saves to complete, for renders to complete, for the operating system to switch from any other program to the Media Composer. These are very fast machines, and the software has been working 95% of the time without a crash. Yet it seems my time twiddling has increased. If it isn’t just my own impatience, I can only guess that the cause of this slowness is the interaction with Unity.

Other thoughts about the current Media Composer, 2.7.5

- pre-set workspaces are great (Capture, Editing, Color Correction), yet no one but me seems to use them.

- pre-sets are imperfect: Capture never remembers that I opened the Waveform Monitor and the Vectorscope. I can set the Audio pre-set to record temp ADR. But it won't remember what bin I always record to, nor will it set the Audio Tool to Input.

- ScriptSync is a really cool tool. And not that useful. The major flaw is you can’t change the script pages to match new colored pages (who works with a script that never changes? - I mean, except when the writers are on strike). You must work with the script as imported, or import a whole new script and lose all the setup you’ve done. Plus, much of the time a camera take is just a series of re-starts by the camera and actors. To make ScriptSync useful it also needs a way to easily indicate re-starts in a take, when digitizing. It is a great technology and is a shame to not be used.

- the Audio Suite is wonderful. I’m hoping Avid continues to integrate more Digidesign audio plugins. The current D-Verb is okay, but could certainly be improved.

- I would love to integrate other Audio Suite plugins from other vendors (Sony, Waves), but I’m told Avid no longer supports those. A shame.

- my brain and fingers work faster than the Avid. I’ll make a deletion, then hit MarkIn… and the Avid doesn’t register it. Aren’t computers supposed to work faster than humans?

- I constantly save (Apple+S), but the system is slow and saves do not happen in the background, which makes saving a pain. And the Avid saves bins that are open but haven’t changed. Also, it gives you a message that it can’t saved locked bins. It would be nice to turn that off.

- MC is now fast enough to keep a waveform display in the timeline. Very nice.

- MC allows an external mixer, which for me is fantastic. I've never seen anyone else use one.

- I’ve layed out my editing screen with a palette of buttons, so I always have most commands I need easily available. Yet, every time I re-start the MC, the the shape of the palette is different from where I left it.

- the MC never remembers my render drive on start up. That’s just stupid. And it has always been that way.

- the MC never remembers the bin where I just saved a title to. Never has. Stupid.

- the Avid web site has some excellent tutorials where I’ve learned about SpectraMatte, Tracking, and Marquee. They need more.

- try as I might, I still can’t get a camera bump to smooth correctly using the tracking tool.

- an image blowup of any amount looks awful, so I have to avoid them. That isn’t helpful.

- the Marquee title tool isn’t very useful. It is quite complicated, so why bother.

- I keep my audio outputs in direct, and each track goes to a separate mix channel. But when I try to do a Quicktime Reference output, I get the error message that it can’t output the audio in Direct. This drives me crazy.

- Superbin: somebody needs to rethink how this works. I’ve tried, but can’t find much use for it.

- Color Correction is nice, but secondary CC would be even nicer.

- when I’m editing I keep several bins always open, to store titles, motion effects, and effect plugins. But many times, I will re-open a project and all bins are closed. I can find no reason why this happens.

- I would love to be able to attach a external keypad where I could assign Avid functions. A regular keyboard just doesn’t have enough keys.

- I haven’t figured out how to put my settings on the server so I can open them from any work station. It is hell sitting down to someone elses Avid and to not only not have your own keyboard shortcuts, but now you have to contend with how they have changed every keystroke.

- I wish Avid had a system of reporting problems, or would send a report to Avid after any crash.

All for now.

IRON MAN update

An updated conversation with the editing crew on IRON MAN. Thanks to Dawn King for responding to my questions.

1. Where are you in the post process?

We have just had our first friends and family screening, which went great, and we are getting ready for some reshoots.

2. What have been the positives of working in DNxHD36? What have been the negatives?

Positives are the amazing picture quality, including the ability to screen an Avid HD output on a big screen in a theater and have it look super.

The negative is that the HD Adrenalines still have a lot of bugs that
Avid has been unable to fix.

3. With the amount of storage you have and the number of systems attached (how many at this time?) have there been performance issues? What version of Media Composer are you on now? What software changes would make life better?

The systems are a bit slower than the Meridiens were. We have 8 Avids working at present. We just updated the software to 2.7.5. It's too soon to tell which bugs have been fixed. It does seem to have addressed the issue of crashes being caused by external firewire
drives and jump drives being mounted and unmounted.

The only software improvement really needed is to fix the bugs!

4. If you have moved to the DI process yet, what has been the workflow for outputting to a DI, and what could be improved?

We have not started our DI process, but Sandra has been doing some tests with EFilm, and it looks like we will be using HD QTs for EFilm to use as a guide, instead of HD tapes. We will give them traditional cut lists. The VFX will come over as Hi Res digital files.

5. How are you outputting and communicating with sound?

We turn over AAF compositions and HD QTs to sound, which has been working well. We have a Final Cut Pro on a side car system which we utilize for making our QTs so that the Avids aren't tied up for long periods.

6. What will you do different next project?

We are weighing the pros and cons of using the MXF file format for audio. We used AIFF on this show and encountered a lot of problems with the database files rebuilding properly. Avid's preferred format is MXF. However, on the desk top level you cannot differentiate between MXF audio and MXF video files, which means you would have to be very meticulous in putting media on separate sound and picture drives if you are turning over all your audio media to the sound dept. (which we did). The other potential drawback is that most sound departments aren't using MXF, so they would have to convert all the Avid media, or they will need to start working with MXF also.

I would also discuss with the sound recordist the option of recording production audio at 23.98 instead of 30, to avoid that conversion in telecine and post. We also encountered a very nasty Avid bug that caused our audio TC to drop out towards the end of every shot in the movie (in the database). Avid was unable to determine the cause of that problem, but they suspected it may have been a pulldown issue. Now that we are working in 23.98 on the Avid there doesn't seem to be any reason to record sound at 30.

IRON MAN Editing with Dan Lebental

By Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

IRON MAN is a Marvel comic character who is moving to the movie screen - well, aren't they all?

Edited by Dan Lebental, A.C.E., for Marvel Entertainment, IRON MAN incorporates the latest in film editing technology. I sat with Dan and his two first assistants, Dawn King and Sandra Granovsky, to learn about how they've set up the show, and how the technology is working.

Walking into their offices on Olympic Blvd. in L.A. one is impressed with the complexity of IRON MAN's post production. The show has six Avid Adrenaline Media Composers, plus a seventh software-only that Dan keeps on the side. He uses it mostly for sound work. They are editing in the new Avid HD codec, DNxHD 36, in order to edit in high definition for the picture quality, while keeping the media file size manageable. Still, they have 16 terabytes of storage on-line (8 of it is mirrored storage).

In addition to the editors, the post crew includes two visual effects editors. IRON MAN is budgeted for 500 visual effects, but like all visual effect plans, that number is likely to expand. (Have you ever worked with a director who wants to cut effect shots to stay in budget? (HAH!).

They will soon be adding two additional Avids when a second editor with assistant joins the crew.

The computer systems are all quad core G5 Macintoshs, running Media Composer 2.7 software. Although there had been reported performance issues using Macs and Unity, no problems have arisen thus far on IRON MAN, and the production is nearly wrapped.

They also have a Final Cut Pro system, which will be used to record play-outs of the film. More on this later.

Initially the director, Jon Favreau (ZATHURA, SWINGERS), wanted to shoot with the Genesis camera, after having shot a pilot in HD. But after doing tests, the strobing of aerial footage was unacceptable so the decision was made to shoot 35mm film. The exception is 65mm greenscreen footage used to shoot inside the IRON MAN's suit, as it was the best way to avoid lens distortion they got from 35mm.

Dailies were played out of an Avid at the set, with a 2k projector. After trying the software only Avid, they found the Adrenaline hardware was needed to get full HD.

Production sound is recorded on a Diva 5, and delivered on a DVD Ram to post. Each mic has a channel, and the recordist provides a mixed track. All tracks are sunk in the HD telecine at Fotokem. The media is transferred to drives and delivered to editorial. When importing, the assistants have as many as 8 channels of audio with each take. This gets extremely complicated with the editor cutting with grouped clips and multiple channels of audio. The assistants turn off the channels that aren't the primary audio channels. But all channels are available for the editor if needed.

Every scene number of the script has been printed on a 4x5 card and posted on a large board on one wall in script order. As the film was shot, the assitants take screen grabs of the shot scenes, print that with its scene number, and replace that card on the board. That way Dan can see what has been shot and what is missing. Photoshop was used to print the cards.

Most of the visual effect sequences have been boarded and 'pre-vised'. As plates have been shot, Dan makes his choices and the VFX editors incorporate live action with the pre-vis. The majority of the VFX are being done at ILM.

Dan's has a terrific set of picture screens to work with. His two computer monitors are 24 inch Dell's. These displays look excellent, and give a lot of working real estate. He has a 32 inch HD client monitor, and a large screen plasma monitor for the director. One problem has been the large plasma monitor can sometimes start playing slightly out of sync, while the editor monitors are in sync. And the only solution so far is to re-start the system.

Several issues are still being worked out. The assistants have yet to figure out the best way to do a digital cut. A tape-less workflow is nice in theory, but at some point you have to send the show out for others to work on. While they can play out to an NTSC recorder (a ‘free run’), this version of the Media Composer will not do a digital cut to an NTSC deck. And they don’t have an HD deck on hand. A ‘free run’ is another way of saying “variable speed” output: not something you want to use as an accurate reference. Avid tech support wasn’t very clear whether this odd inconsistency is a fix they are working on.

Another issue is you cannot input material at a lesser resolution. Any non-HD must be sent to the lab for transfer. Or, it can be digitized into a NTSC project, exported to Quick Time, and imported into the HD project.

Also an issue is how to output picture for sound. The current thinking is to record out to the Final Cut Pro system. They are working with Skywalker sound to come up with the best way of outputting sound. Avid has a new “export to pro-tools” selection they will try. They have had problems outputting to OMF, but are planning on transcoding the media in each sequence to WAV, and OMF those.

As assistant Dawn King points out "Its a learning process for all of us. I have to relearn the job very project."

Ever project has a new gink, doesn't it?

Initial takes of VFX will be reviewed with Quick Time files. For final approval they will be output to film. The final Quick Times will be cut into the Avid sequences, an aux ink number will be added, then high-res files will go to E-Film and conformed into the digital cut.

E-Film will be scanning and assembling the final film in 2k for a DI. They will take an Avid film cut list to make the scans and assembly. The negative won't be reassembled into cut rolls, as had been a past practice.

As color timing a DI is more complicated and takes longer than conventional film printing, DP's aren't always available to finish a show. It is more being left to the director to work on the color timing while the editor supervises the sound mix. For IRON MAN, E-Film is moving a portable color timing suite to Skywalker Ranch to complete the color timing while the sound mix is in process.

More will be posted as IRON MAN moves through post production.

Mobile Editing

Raise your hand if you like homework.

Yeah, I thought not.

But sometime you have to take your work home. Don't like it, but that's how it goes.

My wife was out of town for the week, leaving me to supervise our twelve year old son. Unfortunately, I was in dailies on my day job as an editor on DRIVE, a new series for Fox TV. Dailies on a new episode, and on re-shoots for an earlier episode. This is a series that shoots a first unit with two cameras, a second unit for cars on the weekend (closing down the 210 Freeway), and a 'splinter' unit. One day I got about seven hours of film for two episodes. But I couldn't stay at work late, because of my son.

I was able to go home rather early (7 PM) by taking home dailies each day on a new Apple MacBook Pro, featuring the pre-release Avid 2.7 Media Composer software. Its pretty stunning to take what used to involve a KEM, a Moviola, a film table with rewinds, and a rack of film... all contained in a shoulder bag.

The computer I used is a MacBook Pro, 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4 megs of L2 cache, 3 GB of RAM, running OS 10.4.8. The internal hard drive is a very spacious 90 gigs (I’ve cut features with 50), which I believe was upgraded to a faster 7200 rpm. Before Avid released version 2.5, outboard hardware was always required to run Media Composer. Now a simple dongle, carrying your license information, is all that is needed. But don't (do not) lose the dongle.

In a previous test I cut three sample scenes on this system. I first went to the Settings menu to customize my work area. You need a two button mouse with the MacBook, as there is no apparent way to ‘right-click’ using the track pad, and you must disable the Mac from using the function keys so that Avid can use them. It is also helpful to dim down all the display features, as the bright screen background can become distracting.

I opened the project that was copied from my desktop (PC) Media Composer. The project opened up without a hitch. Opening a dailies bin, I was able to re-link to the media stored on the internal drive. The media between PC and Mac is completely compatible. My original sequence played all the media I had copied. And played it instantly, with no lag time, no stutter, no slowness at all.

I own an Avid 7.2 AVBV system, with dedicated CPU and hardware. It ran much lower than this laptop. This MacIntel machine in fact played faster and better than the desktop PC’s I’ve been working with.

My next test was for stress - Avid’s, not mine. I turned on every feature that would slow the system down, stress its ability to play. I turned on the waveform display in the timeline, and set the timeline to scroll while playing - things generally guaranteed to slow down an edit system. The timeline played without a problem, and the eight channels of waveforms immediately displayed correctly (they didn’t re-draw constantly and as slowly as with past systems).

Wow.

Media Composer 2.7 has some substantive changes.

- Media Composer 2.7 now runs natively on the latest Intel processor Macintosh systems. When Apple moved to the Intel chipset for its computers, every software package had to be re-coded to run without a translation (read: slower) software. Now the Media Composer can take full advantage of the Core 2 Duo processor for the Mac. Apple is coming out with a Quad Core.

- DNxHD 36: this is, I’m told, the new 14 to 1 compression, but in the HD world. It saves space at a 42:1 ratio from the highest resolution of HD. With time, more projects will be working in HD, as standard definition becomes the qualitative version of the VHS tape.

- An interesting added feature is called ScriptSync.

ScriptSync is integrated into the MC’s Script menu. You can use the script function as follows: obtain a text copy of the projects script (Final Draft has an export-for-Avid feature), open it in Avid, then drop a dailies take on the section it covers in the script. You essentially re-create the lined script from the set. If you have a lot of 'back to one' takes, where the director has the actors go back in the scene's dialogue, you can mark these during capture with function keys.

ScriptSync combines voice recognition with print recognition to mark each line of dialogue in every take on your Avid lined script. It is a jaw dropping capability.

I simply highlighted an area of my DRIVE script, dropped a set-up (4 or 5 takes, two cameras) from the scene bin on to the script, chose ScriptSync from the menu, and watched as the Avid analyzed the spoken word against the written word, and placed markers on each line of the script. I could now double click on that marker, the take would load in the source bin and park exactly on top of the line I clicked on.

The Script and ScriptSync functions aren't for everyone. It is labor intensive, requiring an assistant to match each take with each scene shot. And if the scene is performed more than once in a take, that take has to be broken up into sub-clips to accurately reflect the dailies. But I know other editors who can’t live without the Script function. And ScriptSync will make it more useful.

I sure wish I had ScriptSync on the day I got seven hours of dailies. Lots of 'back to one's. Lot's of flotsam to wade through.

Also on the way are Universal binary versions of Boris Continuum, Sorensen, and Sonic DVD - essential cutting room applications and a big bonus from Avid.

When the Media Composer became software only, it freed editors from desktop computers, double monitors, a viewing monitor, breakout-boxes full of digital conversion cards, and from the lockable editing room. MC 2.7 lets editors carry their work anywhere. It is faster, cheaper, with no apparent performance hit from the full blown Adrenaline system. It is now possible to get dailies as files, import them into a Mac laptop, cut a movie, and output it to a DVD for the director with nothing but a dongle attached.

The blessings and curses of mobile editing are upon us. Homework anyone?

- This article originated as a review for Post Magazine.

2006 Equipment Survey Results

There weren’t many surprises in this year's Equipment Survey of ACE members. The biggest complaint (Added Dislikes) were consistent with past surveys: sound, music, and VFX work. Some of the “Added Likes” oddly enough were: sound, music, and VFX work.

Specific technologies added to the workflow were digital multitrack audio, in-house on-line edits, scripting software, an HD projector attached to the Avid, the ability to work on a laptop, video conferencing, and digital dailies,

So, here are the numbers for 2006:

Number of responses: 60. 2005 had 65 responses. 2004 had 80.
___________________________

Show Type: Feature 30, Episodic 17, Documentary 4, Reality 0, MOW/Mini 7, Commercial 0, Other 2. When the balance of type of shows changes, it changes some of the other results.







_____________________________

Systems Used: Avid Composer 29, Final Cut 8, Adrenaline 16, Express Pro 3. And one lone Avid 7.2 AVBV system. In percentages, notice the jump in Adrenaline use. Lightworks continues to be zero.





__________________________________

Finishing System: Avid Symphony / DS 15, Film 22, Final Cut 4. A variety of systems finished the rest. I’ve combined all Avid systems. Fewer Episodic shows reported, which may explain the larger number of film finishes.










___________________________

Camera Original: 35mm 34, 16mm 5, HD 24p 16, DV-HD 3, P2 1 (a first), and 70mm 1.
___________________________

Storage: Unity 40, Not Shared 12, and a combination of Lanshare, Xserve, and FibreNet 6. Media Share was 9.
________________________________

Venue: Network 17, Theatrical 32, Cable 10, Direct to Video 0, Other 1.





________________________________

Delivery Format: HD on-line 27, DI 20, DigiBeta 3, Film 10. DI continues to rise.





________________________________

Who Chose the System: Me 32, Producer 14, Studio 7, Director 2.







It is still distressing that only half of us get to choose the editing system.
________________________________

More comments from the individual responses later.

Avid 2.6.3 on MUMMIES

The latest version of the Avid Media Composer is a nice treat. It has been stable in the four weeks I’ve been cutting on it - mostly, but not completely. And the latest features add both convenience and the ‘cool toy’ factor.

The project I’m editing is a large format film about mummies, shot in 15 perf 70mm, printed down to 35mm, telecined, and digitized at DV25 resolution. For the first time since 310 at USC Cinema, there is no sync sound shot at all (apologies for the USC insider reference). My schedule for delivering a first cut and a trailer has been extremely tight. The directors cut and trailer were screened for the producers three days after the last dailies were delivered.

All the basic editing has been, well… basic. Avid hasn’t radically changed the interface, so it mostly operates the same as version 7.2 (on the Mac 9600). Input dailies, cut picture, add tracks, dissolves, music,sfx, change audio levels, comp a temp green screen shot. All about the same as before.

In the middle of my director’s cut I had a major equipment failure. All my audio became corrupted; every piece of media was full of digital snaps and pops. This was non-timecoded material, such as narration, music, and sound effects. Fortunately there is a feature called Batch Import: you can highlight a piece of corrupted media and then point to its original source - an external drive in my case - choose Batch Import and the old Avid media is replaced, and every cut in the project is updated with the new media.

Whew! This saved me hours of re-cutting.

The best feature of all has been the audio components: Audio Suite, Audio Mixer, etc. Balancing audio has never been simple in Media Composer. You can adjust the overall loudness of a clip with mouse click-and-drags, or you can adjust levels key framed audio.

I installed an 8 channel flying fader mixer on my Avid - a JL Cooper model 3000. It communicates to the Avid Audio Mixer. Now instead of having to mouse click and move a fader, I can simply move the fader on my mixer to raise or lower the level of a clip. Or, I can activate the Audio Mix mode. Then the JL Cooper becomes a true mixer. As you change the faders, key frames are added in your timeline, and the audio is rebalanced. Don’t like the results? You can trash can that mix pass and do it again. Or you can move individual key frames. This is a cool beyond belief.

I like experimenting with all the VFX plug-ins, and Avid comes with a version of Boris Continuum. One shot of a pyramid was a time-lapse as the sun went down. When the sun was gone, so was the light. but I wanted to hold a bit to the shot. In the Effects Palette I was able to generate stars over the black background, to fade in as the picture faded out. Also available are generators for sparks, lightning, clouds, and various textures. I'm never going to replace a goodVFX artist, but this is quite fun to create and experiment with.

The SpectraMatte was a good green-screen keyer. The keying is much less ragged than earlier Avids. Again, I'm no VFX artist, but this made the project look much better than earlier versions would.

Then there is the occassional wierdness: for no apparent reason the font for a dailies bin changes to some odd, and often unreadable, font. And so far its been a font that started with the letter 's' - 'Stop' and 'Samarkan'.

Avid Adrenaline 2.6.3,
HP xw8000 PC workstation with
1 terabyte of internal storage
4 gigs of Ram

Media Composer 2.5 Review Part 3

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Of course now you might be wondering what went wrong during this shake down cruise of the Media Composer. Quite a number of things, actually. But in fairness to Avid, this computer system used for the test was setup specifically to run Final Cut Pro, with a fibre network and Blackmagic card. Any number of things previously installed could create problems with an Avid. What installing all this by myself shows is how important it is to have very solid technical people set up and support any high end editing system. All editing rooms need competent technical support. These are high-end systems, not tinker toys, that need to be set up right. Any of the problems I found could easily been because of my poor setup, not because of the Avid software or hardware.

That said, here are some problems I had.

Harkening back to a previous version of the software, it is now possible to have your work window (source, record, timeline) on one monitor then push a button to play full screen in the same monitor. The promise is you can play HD in this monitor - assuming the material and monitor are high enough resolution. The first few times I tried this the system hung up, and I had to force quit. Turns out there is a setting for configuring the correct monitor. So, my bad.

The video that I imported as Quicktime and the video I digitized through firewire never looked that great. The Quicktime seemed dark. Images looked the same no matter what resolution I used to digitize. And it had a digital tearing / smearing from the firewire imported material on occasion that didn’t look good. This might be improved with the correct setup.

I never managed to get the Mojo SDI box to work connected digitally, i.e. through firewire only. I spent a day adjusting plugs and settings. Avid tech support was very helpful in trying to get it to work, and even sent me a new Mojo box from Massachusetts by 9 AM the next morning. It still didn’t work. Ed Mangini in tech support at that point suggested there was something conflicting in the Mac OS because of the previous installation of FCP and its peripheral cards. I could only go so far with this test, as it wasn’t my system, and I really didn’t want to spend any more time on it.

However, Harry Jierjian, another editor on Eureka and much more technically savvy than me, managed to connect the Mojo with the analog component cables and an RS-422 serial controller. He digitized and displayed very high resolution video. So again, the correct setup is essential.

Although this Avid is capable for running software only, there are some hardware minimums depending on your work situation. If the assistant set up has the Avid and a Mojo box for digitizing in and out, then the editor on another system is going to need either a Mojo or a DV deck in order to play back through a client monitor (i.e. analog TV) - which most editors need to do. But it is certainly possible for an editor to work in the office, then take some material to cut on a laptop with no other hardware.

I was not very successful at playing video through firewire to a DV deck and to a client monitor. When I finally got it operating, I would get Flamethrower errors.

There were several other software packages bundled with this release, which also seemed very cool: Avid DVD by Sonic (authoring), Sorenson Squeeze (compression), Boris Continuum (VFX plugins), Noise Factory Tools (oddly named VFX plugins), and SonicFire Pro music creation software.

But additional software didn’t work out as I hoped. The Boris software is PC only - it is supposed to have a Mac version at some point. The Sorenson and Sonic software is also PC only. Finally, the SonicFire Pro disc would never boot. None of this, of course, is Avid’s fault. Just it wasn’t the bonus I thought. Boris working on the Mac would be a huge bonus. It is a $2,000 stand alone package.

The SpectraMatte wasn’t a feature that I could spend any time on. And it looks to need some time to learn. But any improvement on the Avid keying would be terrific, as I’ve always hated the raggedness of the keys I’ve tried in the past.

Perhaps this is the area where you’d want to digitize at a high resolution, just for key effects, to improve their look. That’s a test for another day. (Finally I’ve come up with a reason to have multiple resolutions in the same time line!)

The Avid Help system opens you into a browser. A known bug is that Safari will do one word search, but then fail to find anything on subsequent searches. The Safari cache has to be emptied to solve this. Not a huge problem. Use Firefox as your browser to eliminate the issue.

Avid documentation continues to be terrible at explaining what error messages mean. Several times I got the message “Exception: AND_DIO_ERROR_Occurred, DIOerr: Flamethrower timeout. Transmit request timed out 200.024000 milliseconds.” And that means what?

Avid simply has no documentation that lists what error messages mean. And searches through the Knowledgebase is extremely hit and miss - mostly miss. One is left to search through the Forums, which means wading through many irrelevant messages, many from disgruntled users ragging on their system or software or other forum members. It does seem the Forums have gotten somewhat better, with more moderators and Avid techs contributing real technical answers.

One More Test

The final Media Composer test was done with the help of Harry Jiejrian. After he had digitized into a project on the assistant workstation, with the dailies on a partition of the fibre / shared storage, I was able to open up and edit from a bin in his project on an editor workstation, using his digitized footage. In other words, a shared working environment without Avid Unity. Very nice.

A Conversation with Avid

I had a long phone conversation with Matt Feury, Avid’s Senior Product Marketing Manager for Advanced Post. Avid, he said, is moving in the direction of the software only system, while external boxes will be needed only as I/O and real time acceleration. It has been the radical leap in technology that allows the computer CPU’s to handle what in the past has been done with added hardware. And now more video formats are firewire or file based, which cuts down on the need for analog connections and conversion of media. The Media Composer is designed to be a single platform that is in a sense scalable to the project, media, and available hardware.

Confirming my experience trying to connect the Mojo, Matt said that the computer firewire buss can be tricky, especially when other hardware may be installed. The Mojo is required to connect to analog devices, such as a TV monitor or to an analog video deck. Interestingly, the analog serial control can be more frame accurate used with firewire connections on the Mojo.

And for using HD, the addition of an Avid DNxcel card is required to capture real time HD. Otherwise firewire can be used to import HD media.

The quality of the media I was viewing is subject to the graphics drivers, cards, and monitor settings. As I suspected, there were more things involved in setting up my system correctly.

A function I’ve never tested is exporting a sequence to the AAF composition format. Most of the time my shows have output to OMFI for sound. The AAF allows for audio and video export. The audio will carry the audiosuite plugin information, and the video can be opened in Pro Tools and include each picture cut.

Purchase of the Media Composer software comes with ninety days of phone support and software updates (called CPR for customer patch release). Although no longer required, the purchase of Avid Assurance provides more support and a year of software updates.

The Next Release

Coming in November / December, the next release of the MC software has more intriguing changes. It will be compatible with the Mac Intel platform. With the additional processor speed and multiple processor capability, the speed increase could be astonishing. More of the Digidesign graphical audio plugins (a la 7-Band EQ) will be included (yippee). A new DNxHD codec will be available to allow projects to work in an off line HD format. And, most intriguing, Avid is integrating technology from Nexidia into the Script module. Nexidia will enable Media composer to read the audio waveform of your dailies, and attach that information to an imported shooting script.

Now, if I only had 4 computer screens to work with all this new stuff….

Finally

Some of the features in the Avid version 2.5 existed in previous Media Composer releases. But this package as a whole is a big evolutionary step above any off-line system, Avid or Final Cut Pro, that I’ve cut on. Rather than the ‘feature bloat’ I’ve found troubling in the past, most of this stuff is very useful.

Avid has gotten the message about the FCP being easy and cheap, and has delivered an editing software package that I would choose first. I’ve been cutting a science fiction series on FCP, and it won’t be much fun struggling with its limitations for another season.

Avid will soon have the software able to run on the latest Intel Macintosh G5’s. These machines are testing about 40% faster than the current G5 towers, and will be able to hold up to 8 processors. These systems will be blazingly fast and make Avid’s of the past seem like snails on a cold morning sidewalk.

Wow.

Avid vs. FCP: Another View

This comment was recently submitted:

"I am fascinated by these comments about FCP. Having been editing on FCP for 4 years now, I have just started a project on Avid. I thought it would come back to me right away but it is like working in slow motion. The amount of extra key strokes and/or clicks one has to do to accomplish the smallest of tasks is truly frustrating. I can't believe there is anything in FCP that would actually cause more keystrokes as Mr. Bass has indicated. To me Avid is clunky, slow, and time consuming. FCP is quick, and efficent. This is why I can spend time with my family.

After delivering two featured (sic) on FCP we found no problems with "multiple levels of post in the professional world". I had the most amazing assistant team that knew how to really use the system. Friends have had very difficult experiences with FCP but I have found this is mostly due to the department not really knowing how to fully use the system. I'm also glad there is competition in the industry now. Maybe Avid will start improving their software instead of leaving as is because "everyone" uses it. As for me, after this show, having to use Avid will be a deal breaker for me. It's not worth the pain of the inefficient system. "

Competition is good. But, to each his own.

Take Two Aspirin and Call… Avid

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

After posting a review here of the Avid Interplay presentation at Keycode Media, I got a call from Avid wondering if they could explain it better. And after an hour on the phone with Lesley Glorioso (senior product manager) and Michael Phillips (principle product designer), Interplay made more sense.

What seems most important conceptually is that Interplay can be scaled / configured to many different post production scenarios. One can pick and choose the pieces that work in a specific production. And as was pointed out in my discussion with Avid, it takes discipline to use it well. Not everyone can have access to everything, for example.

Interplay is a combination of hardware and software. The hardware is a computer server, which is connected to your media storage. The software allows you to 1) manage media between many connected workstations, including editors, assistants, producers, VFX, and sound, 2) automate different workflows, e.g. transcode media in the background, export OMF or MXF files, and 3) add secure access to media.

One possible post scenario for Interplay would be a reality TV show. As the editors cut, producers can be given viewing access to the media, as assistants continue logging and organizing new material, and while graphics people construct title sequences to be integrated into a picture cut.

Interplay offers some features that could work well in our cutting rooms. As an editor on a TV series, I could for example have immediate access to every bin on the entire system, for every show and every season. I could search across the entire system for stock shots or sound effects. Or, I can hide specific folders so that no one can see it.

If a post facility had Interplay, they could digitize dailies in HD, transcode them to a smaller file type, and move those clips over the internet to the cutting room. And once a show is locked, the sequence could be instantly linked back to the original HD media.

Or, a large VFX company could manage several shows with Interplay. And edit rooms could log on and download the latest effects for that particular show.

One large problem with Interplay I felt was this: who is in charge. Who has the ‘keys’. If it is picture media it should be the picture assistants. But if it is managing additional graphics, VFX, sound, budgets, memos, etc., what assistant would want the added burden? This gets back to discipline: it would be possible to have a main administrator who simply assigns appropriate access or rights to certain material, while a ‘sub-administrator’ has complete access to specific areas. So a picture assistant could be assigned the full control over the traditional editing room material, while someone else could fully administer office communications.

Interplay has some fascinating features. I’m one inclined to embrace new technology. And it could work in situations with massive amounts of media to manage. But it strikes me that this sort of inter-connectivity could turn our workplace on its head. Certainly our industry labor agreements are unlikely to keep up. What past ACE Equipment Surveys tell me is that we aren’t always able to choose the tools we want.

Avid stressed to me that what is important is how you configure Interplay for your workflow. I stressed to Avid that what is important in describing Interplay is knowing who your audience is… and what might induce a coronary.

Wanting a Mac, Having a PC

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

I hear editors complain they just don’t like working on a PC, that it isn’t as ‘easy’ or as ‘good’ as a Mac. I’ve always thought this was nonsense. After years of hearing this complaint, what I really think is the problem is the keyboard.

And I’ll refine the complaint even further. Most editors get tripped up by the fact that the Apple key (⌘) doesn’t exist on a PC. The keystroke combination of most consequence on a computer is the ⌘ + something-else. It is how we cut, copy, paste, save, and quit. But on the PC running Windows, the same events are triggered by the Control Key. That the Control key is in a completely different spot from the Apple key creates a nightmare for people who are comfortable with their work flow and don’t want to think about changing that keystroke.

I’ve found two solutions for those who have to work on Windows PC’s and hate the keyboard arrangement.

The first is KeyTweak. This utility allows you to remap any keys on your keyboard. I have not tried this in a work situation, but Keytweak would allow you to change the Alt key (located where the ⌘ key should be) and remap it with the Control key. While at it, you could remap the Windows key to something useful.

The other solution is the line of Avant keyboards. I purchased the Avant Stellar keyboard for use on a PC Adrenaline. It not only has two sets of function keys, but every key can be remapped. Avant also has ergonomic keyboards, and programmable keypads for added functionality.

Media Composer 2.5 Review Part 2

Part 2 of this review of the latest Avid Media Composer software involves a chart comparing features to Final Cut Pro - which was the point of the original review idea. I'm unable to display a chart on this page, but the PDF file can be downloaded by clicking here

Evolutionary: Avid Media Composer version 2.5

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

The Short Review
Wow.

Background
After seeing a couple of pre-release demos of Avid’s latest software, I was intrigued enough by promised new capabilities that I contacted Avid about doing a review for ACE. I’m glad I got this chance, because this software is very cool. I like it.

My testing was on a Macintosh G5, Dual 2.3 gig processors, 2.5 gigs of RAM, attached to a Fibreshare network. One monitor was a standard 19” flat panel, the other monitor was a 23” Cinema display. It thought it would be interesting to take the scenes I had cut for a TV series in Final Cut Pro 5, and cut them on the same system with Avid MC 2.5.

The program looked and felt like a standard Avid. Same arrangement of windows and screens. But it worked with NO OUTBOARD HARDWARE. No Mojo. No Adrenaline. No cards. Nothing.

Wow.

The Longer Review
To do a complete software review the smart thing would be to take an organized, meticulous approach to dissecting the software’s operation. Blowing that off, I instead opted for the easy, ‘open the cool features’ approach.

Here’s what I found….

- FluidMotion: when editors create a 50% speed clip it normally prints each frame twice, as was always done with film. FluidMotion calculates the difference between frame 1 and frame 2 and mathematically creates the frame between. The render time for this effect is long - I calculated the ratio as 10:1 - but the result mimics real slow motion. And it includes tools to tweak and improve the effect. Impressive. There is also a ‘fit to fill’ feature, where the speed of a clip is determined by how much you want to use and how big a hole you have for it.

- Audio playback: initially I could only get two tracks of audio to play. But after a re-start, I could hear the music I cut into track 12, with 11 other tracks of dialogue playing. I ultimately got 16 tracks of audio to play. I have always wanted more than 8 tracks of audio. Not because I’m sloppy, but because I try to keep tracks extremely organized and its difficult with only eight.



- Mouse setting preferences. You can remap mouse clicks just as you can remap the keyboard. I use a trackball, so this didn’t help me.





- Open the last project on startup. The Avid has always opened with the ‘choose project / choose user’ screen. This isn’t a big fix to bypass that screen and open the project where you left off, but it sure makes more sense this way (i.e. it was always stupid to have to choose the same project you’ve worked on for the last three months). You can otherwise default to open as before.






- color individual master clips, and have those colored clips show up on the timeline. This is a feature predating this release, but it’s very nice.










- importing audio at different sample rates, being able to cut them into the same timeline, and they play at the correct pitch. Avid touts that it can play different picture resolutions in the same timeline, but that isn’t nearly as useful as being able to mix sound resolutions. This feature is wonderful. When you want to preview a bunch of music with the director you no longer have to convert everything on import with the long processing delay. Also, the importing is extremely fast. And if you want, you can set a preference where import converts the audio to the projects sample rate. Conversion while importing is also very fast. This version also supports 16 and 24 bit audio.

- 1 and 7 Band Audio Eq plugins. Instead of being confronted with obtuse controls, Avid has integrated Digidesign Eq’s with a graphical interface. You can actually mouse click/grab a range of sound frequencies (high end) and move it up or down to Eq the sound. This is soooo much more intuitive than any previous Eq I’ve worked with. You can actually draw the equalization you want.

- An outboard digital audio mixer (in my case a JL Cooper 3000) attached with very little effort and was an excellent interface improvement. Instead of having to mouse click / move to adjust the level of an audio clip, the mixer fader could be used to adjust the level without accessing the on screen mixer. And, it is simple to mix in real time, as the mixer will add keyframes as you adjust the faders. Or you can do a ‘live’ mix, where you can adjust the levels as you play without recording automation. Making any audio adjustments is vastly simplified with an external mixer.

- You can group up to nine clips. I only did seven, but they all played in the source window at the same time. The Avid still can switch between sound sources from each grouped clip, and once cut into the timeline the clip can be changed to another clip in the group by using up and down arrows.

- although it can be a software only Avid, I was surprised to find I could connect a DV deck through firewire to digitize and output. It is a big surprise to find you can cut an entire show without any Mojo or Adrenaline connected. A direct response to Final Cut Pro.

- motion tracking. You can target a specific object on the screen and have the motion tracked for the length of the shot. You can use the tracking to stabilize a shot, layer and move another object with the tracking, or use a motion track to add camera movement. Up to four motion tracks can be created. I didn’t explore this much, but it is potentially a really great feature. More than once I’ve needed to add extensive camera motion, but dreaded adding all the keyframes needed.

There were other, smaller changes in the software.
• The Timecode display window now can be resized by choosing from a list of sizes instead of adjusting the size of the window and hoping the timecode is onscreen and readable.
• Most effects played in real time, and those that needed to be rendered took real time to render (1:1 - the exception being Fluid Motion).
• The Superbin can be used to keep several music sound tracks bins open in one window, for example, while other bins can be kept open independent of the Superbin - making the Superbin actually useful.
• Boris Continuum has the ability to generate several items including fire, rain, snow, sparks, and stars - all of which I could have used in past shows.
• The default user has many default export settings (ProTools with media, Quicktime movie, etc.).
•
Finally, and very useful, you can digitize a 24 frame project at 1 to 1, rather than the previous highest resolution of 14 to 1. I do a lot of small project on-lines, and this is fantastic.

to be continued... (this is part 1 of a several part series)

I Have Seen The Future… And It Gives Me A Headache

- Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Keycode Media hosted a presentation of new software called Avid Interplay. Although impressive in capability, the implications for it in the editing room are very troubling.

What is Interplay? I had no clue, which was why I went. Unfortunately, the presenters from Avid weren’t very good at explaining what it is, although they were good at explaining what it does. Essentially Interplay is a media manager. When added to an editing room, it would work sort of like Avid Media Composer’s Media Tool.

Ahh, but it is much more. And that started my head throbbing.

It was suggested that Interplay could be used to link many / all parts of post production (editors, sound, vfx, producers), and share all media files. A producer, for example, could look at dailies in his office on his computer. The VFX department could update VFX shots and add them to the media system. Editors could send cuts to a director’s computer, all of this being hooked up through local Ethernet.

The problem I have with this idea is 1) who is supposed to be in charge of all this media and 2) who tracks the latest version of a shot, a cut, memo, spreadsheet, schedule, sound effect, or sound mix.

This isn’t Interplay. Its Chaos.

The Avid folks didn’t have very specific ideas about who would take charge of managing the media. It would be an ‘administrator’. Well, if it is the cutting room it should be the picture assistant. But now they are in charge of everyone’s media. Yeow.

I wondered how an editor would know who had updated material needed to be viewed or integrated into the cut. What if a producer looked at a cut on-line, made notes, forgot to let the editor know but presumed he did know? And another producer made conflicting notes? And how many producers / directors care to be that tech savvy? How does anyone know that the editor has all the latest VFX versions in his cut? A producer could see it on-line, then get mad that it wasn’t in the latest picture cut.

And more troubling still, depending on the speed of one’s computer / network connection, it is likely you would need more than one compression of dailies: one for the editor, one for a producer with a slower speed connection. In one step Interplay has double the amount of media files to manage, doubled the assistant’s workload, and increased storage requirements.

Interplay has some cool potential, but if not used in a well thought out manner, it could be a disaster. To paraphrase Firesign Theater, Interplay is a technology that can only be used for good or evil.

I’m off to get some aspirin.

Avid versus FCP

Edgar Burcksen, A.C.E.

FCP (Final Cut Pro) has made huge inroads in the prosumer editing world and seemed also to take the "low end" professional editing world by storm and especially the documentary side of it. A lot of my colleagues bought systems and started working on them enthusiastically. Most of them however have since ditched their system and went back to Avid.

Why? Apart from all kinds of list nightmares assistants had to deal with FCP has one major flaw that many of us have begged Apple to deal with: when you create a select reel in your record monitor and you put it in your source monitor to start editing from (in the old film days this would be called a Kem reel) all your select clips lose their connection with the original clips. There are work arounds or you can saddle up your assistant with reconnecting but it puts a big damper on the work and creative flow. Apple's latest version FCP 5 still hasn't fixed this flaw either.

Having to cut on FCP is a deal breaker for me. A lot of documentaries these days are shot digitally on a plethora of cheaper formats and filmmakers who have dabbled with editing at home think that FCP is pretty awesome and hence assume that we as editors have the same notion. FCP might work okay when you deliver your final product from the machine itself but when you have to go through the multiple levels of post in the professional world it doesn't deliver.

The project I'm currently working on a mockumentary provisionally called American Shopper was completely digitized and ready to go on FCP when I was approached to do the editing. I liked the director and producer and I loved the project even though the money was not plentiful. However when I heard that they had planned to do the editing on FCP I told them plainly that they would have to find someone else to do the editing. Luckily they had set their mind on getting me and we came to a compromise. I edit on the Avid and I use the FCP system for viewing the dailies (180 hours!) and make select reels. My assistant digitizes my selects in the Avid and I can do my work as I'm used to.

The one positive thing FCP has done that made a big difference in postproduction is that it finally put some competition in the marketplace. Avids have come down dramatically in price and Avid also has finally come down to the prosumer market with its Avid Express line of products. For my money I would choose an Avid Express over FCP anytime.

Backup: Protecting Your Project and your Time

by: David Augsburger

A terabyte of hard drive storage costs as little as 89 cents a gigabyte. With the low cost of FireWire drives and the possibility of a drive crashing during a project, it's foolhardy not to backup media on a daily basis.

There are various backup schemes. You definitely have to backup everything that doesn’t originate on time coded video tape: sound effects, music, temp recordings, Quicktime VFX, projects and settings. But it is now possible and easy to do more.

When using AvidUnity multiple drives comprise one group and this group depends on all of its drives to function. If 4-6 drives are set as a partition and a single drive goes down all media on the other drives would probably be unusable as well. Nowadays drives can be 72 gigs, multiply that by 4,5 or 6 and you're talking a huge amount of data.

Considering that such a loss might take 2-3 days to recover from, this is an important item to include in every budget.

Backing up media -- if done daily -- could immediately follow digitizing.

It's assumed that all media that has no time code reference are using protected (or mirrored) storage - data stored in two places on the group's drives. This scheme it's generally not practical for material that can easily be re-digitized because it takes twice the storage space.

It's preferable to get a drive which can use both USB as well as FireWire connections. A drive with the capacity of 250 - 500 Gigs would be ideal. Such drives are inexpensive ranging from $205 - $350.

How much time can you afford to lose on a project? Discuss with your post crew whether this type of complete backup provides easy and inexpensive insurance.

PC Adrenaline Plays Well With OS X Meridiens on a Pilot and Series

by David Augsburger

Equipment Description and Project Specs:

Avid Media Composer 12.0.9, OSX 10.2.6
Apple PowerPC G4 (single), 933 MHz, RAM = 1 Gig
(3-5 Machines)

Media Composer Adrenaline HD 2.1.6, Windows XP Pro
HP Workstation xw8000, Xeon CPU 3.06 GHz, RAM = 3 Gigs
(1 Machine)

Work Specs: 23.976 14:1 Video, Serial Digital video, Digital Audio AES/EBU

Storage: Avid Unity

Support equipment: Sony Scan Converter 4:3 or 16:9 viewing and output

Camera Original: 35mm 3 perf and HD transferred to DV Cam

Our equipment supplier was Runway and we were especially happy to have their support team.



The reason for the lone Adrenaline: originally the producers' plan was to create a unique main title sequence for every episode by stitching together HD stills. This idea was dropped before it got off the ground. Another early setup choice was to go 23.976. (Editor: the normal setup would be 24 or 30 fps. HD runs at 23.976). This presumably was a factor in choosing OS X Avids as it is not a choice with OS9 Avids. It was thought that in a pinch we could output our dialogue tracks on OMFs and bring them directly to the mix stage. Of course no editor was in favor of this nor the production sound mixer and it too dropped away before we began finishing.

The Adrenaline was not used by the editors; the only editor who attempted to use it was befuddled the moment a contextual menu popped up when he placed the cursor on the timeline; this was more the result of a 2 button mouse, though. Incidentally, the right button contextual menus are helpful for choosing sort ascending, import, changing group angle and a variety of other commands.

Since the Windows Adrenaline and the OS X Meridiens can create and use the same media (at least all OS X Choices) there was no reason to force Windows Adrenalines on editors who would prefer -- if not insist on -- using the familiar user-friendly Mac Meridiens. It shouldn't be a surprise that the Windows Adrenaline worked fine with the OS X Meridiens, because Apple Meridiens work seamlessly with Windows Unity.

The only frequent Adrenaline-related nuisance for the editors was the tendency for sequence bins in text mode to appear maximized on the edit monitor (although they had previously been a smaller size when last closed on the bin monitor); this even happened on the Adrenaline.

For quite a while the Adrenaline was the only assistant machine while 3 editors were actively cutting. To ease this jam the pilot assistant brought in his laptop PC and was able to do quite a lot with Avid Express. The post producers discussed the idea of adding another assistant machine running Avid Express on a desktop PC, however that idea was thankfully dropped in favor of adding two more Meridiens.

The assistant hired to finish the pilot was able to maximize some other benefits of the Adrenaline. Adept at using the Adrenaline he was able to preview different color timing choices for the producers. He also did many complex digital exports and did these in the background while another assistant digitized. An example of this was after quickly creating a QuickTime Reference he was able to start a background operation that used QuickTime Pro to seek out the media and build an export file simply from the pointers of the QuickTime Reference file.

The Adrenaline was able to digitize at the same time because it includes external hardware with processors. We also could digitize while importing music in iTunes or using a Web browser, etc. (With our particular machine there was an odd screen draw problem which resulted if the machine was digitizing in the background: the digitize tool appeared to lose some of its buttons and functionality upon return to the project. It was necessary to quit the program and re-open the project to get the digitize tool back.) To a limited extent the OS X machines could also run apps in the background, like a web browser.

The Adrenaline can play up to 16 audio tracks (the OS X Meridien limit is 8 tracks); this made laying up tracks for a discrete 4 channel output a cinch and eliminated the need to do audio mixdowns. If there were a single reason why the Adrenaline wasn't exchanged for an OS X Meridien, this was it.

Visual effects were ordinarily done on the OS X Meridiens first and then played back on the Adrenaline. It's a good practice to make sure the effects play the same; sometimes they require tweaking, e.g. picture-in-picture and title effects. Title media could be played back on a different machine platform, but editing the title in the timeline caused problems or was not possible. The Adrenaline has many effects that the Meridiens lack; using any of these would be a problem. Better to start on the Meridien.

Using PC hardware had some shortcomings: the limited number of media workspaces (virtual partitions). 20, I believe. At first this doesn't seem like a problem, but early on the size of media workspaces was assigned mindful of a file limit, as in OS 9. Importantly, we later learned OS X does not have this limitation. Later when new assistants were hired they created a single workspace for their episodes and still later a workspace for the episodes' consolidation. Before long we couldn't mount all of the workspaces on the Adrenaline, even though we could with the OS X Meridiens.

There also was a user interface problem with the PC platform. The system as delivered had an unusually high screen resolution making all type and icons very small; attempts to set a more practical resolution ended in a compromise that wasn't entirely accepted by the platform. Unlike the Mac, you can't adjust 2 monitors separately, you must treat them as one. With the chosen compromise it was necessary to reposition the composer windows every time a project was opened.

The PC hardware also had some advantages. It's possible that CD-ROM and DVD-ROM burning was faster as well as iTunes importing. OS X Meridiens have very slow screen draw; how the editors put up with it is a mystery. OS X Meridiens mounted floppy discs at a ridiculously slow rate.

Although it wasn't a problem with the Adrenaline being used with OS X Meridiens, we at first attributed a problem where sound effects and music disappeared as due to its use. What was really wrong was that you can't safely import files from a flash drive or the internet directly; it is safer to download the file first to the desktop and then import the desktop file (I believe that after this is done you can delete the desktop file). If ever this problem occurs because you haven't copied your file to the desktop, you can restore by copying the file(s) to the desktop afterwards. You might need to do a batch import, but we didn't find that necessary.

In conclusion, the Adrenaline worked well with the Mac OS X Meridiens and also an PC Avid Express.

Avid versus Final Cut

The following is a response to the recommended review of Avid vs FCP (see http://www.fini.tv/articles/)

Re: FCP v Avid

by Stuart Bass A.C.E.

Frank Capria's comparison was not a fair. Mr. Capria was clearly trying to sell Final Cut as a Final Cut Pro advocate. It is one thing to compare Final Cut to Avid Xpress DV. But it is not really balanced to compare Avid's entire line of editing systems to a desktop DV/HD system.

For example, he gives FCP's multi-cam functionality footing with Avids. It doesn't. Though he does admit he has no real experience in this. In multi-cam very often storage is an issue. A 1/2 hour multi-cam comedy may have 20 or more hours of footage to store. Multiply that by 22 episodes, and one can understand why most multi-cam shows use older Avids digitizing at lower resolutions to deal with storage. DV or HD storage would be out of the question. In the future huge storage devices won't be a great burden. But at this date it still is more efficient to work at Avid's lower multicam res.

Mr. Capria calls Avid's timeline "regimented". The way FCP rests in "segment mode" makes for a very frustrating interface. For those of us cutting scripted drama or comedy we prefer not to default in "segment mode". Most of our work requires trims. This oversight by Apple adds several keystrokes to every step of editing. In FCP an editor is constantly dipping into the tool bar to change modes much like Photoshop. Although there are keyboard commands to circumvent this mouse intensive work, it still stalls the process.

A great strength of Avid is the very important scripting feature. This feature was bought from the Ediflex system. This allows the editor to use the lined script to organize dailies. I live by the scripting feature. On a show like "Arrested Development" where the directors would roll endlessly takes and pickups without slates it is the only way to sift through the 4 hours of dailies per day. It is the reason I can be an editor and spend time with my family.The script feature reduces
20% of time off my first cut. It cuts the director's and producers time by
at least 50% (If they're the types that like to compare takes).

Final Cut Pro and Avid Xpress remain excellent reduced cost tools for low budget projects. This is especially true for shows finishing on the system itself. However, the Avid line of professional equipment remains the tool of choice for scripted projects that may finish in a variety of finishing formats. When one has to take into account the costs of peripheral equipment such as HD decks, HD monitors, test scopes, routers, mixers, and the like, the added cost of a top notch computer controller is a small percentage of the total cost of an editing system these days. Why limit ourselves by moving towards desktop editing systems?

2005 ACE Equipment Survey Results

Details and Commentary by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

I worked with an assistant once who, after experiencing a series of Avid crashes, told me: “I don’t need to know how the computers work. That isn’t my job.”

That is one of those jaw dropping statements that completely stops a conversation. I still can’t get over this point of view; you know how to turn the system on, start the computer, spin up the drives and put them on the network, start the software, but that’s it, damnit. You’ll not cross over the information Maginot line in the sand. “I’ll go this far, but THAT I won’t do.”

Huh?

Tech support was called in and cleared up the problem. But if we all knew a bit more about our tools, wouldn’t that make our lives a little easier?

Computers are now undeniably our tools. I’ve edited projects where I only had to know how to operate a Moviola, splicer, and synchronizer. Those skills today are irrelevant. I may never touch film again. Vaya con Dios, friends. I don’t miss the past. Rather, I embrace the future. And I want to know everything there is about it.

To me, every new technology and tool is a challenge and a pleasure, no matter how imperfect. Modern non-linear editing systems offer the options of cutting music and sound effects, mixing the audio, adding audio plug-ins, adding VFX, and even some color correction. Storage will soon become so cheap we will be working with uncompressed images, and we may be essentially doing our own on-lines. We won’t be able to avoid this future.

Not everyone in the ACE is happy about this. A minor theme runs through the 2005 Equipment Survey that I find similar to the above unnamed assistant’s attitude: the technology is changing, thus my job is changing, but I don’t like it and don’t wish to change. Here are some of the comments:

On workflow additions you dislike:

“Cutting music and effects; having to temp score shows. I’m being asked to be a picture editor as well as sound and music editor. One hat is enough.”

“Producers and directors now expect the editor to completely pre-dub a movie with all sound effects and music without allowing time in the schedule!!! A huge burden with many late, late hours spent - we need to schedule the time to create these predubs! There is not enough time allocated in post production to accomplish the growing demands!”

“Having to temp score the entire episode before sending it to the network.“

Then there was the other extreme:

“Editors should stop complaining about their workload or get out of the movie and TV business.”

The complete survey results can be downloaded off the ACE website.

So, here are the numbers:

Number of responses: 65. Down from last year’s 80. As we have close to 400 members, the small number of responses is disappointing.
___________________________

Show Type: Feature 27, Episodic 22, Documentary 7, Reality 5, MOW/Mini 3, Commercial 1.

2005 Results 2004 Results
Documentary 10.8% 5.0%
Episodic 33.8% 20.0%
Feature 41.5% 52.5%
Mini-Series 1.5% 2.5%
MOW 3.1% 11.3%
Reality 7.7% 3.8%

Fewer feature and more episodic responses seems to have shaded some of the other results.
_____________________________

Systems Used: Avid Composer 53, Final Cut 9, Adrenalline 2, Express Pro 1. Avid systems make up a whopping 86% of the total. Final Cut remains a very minor player. And Lightworks has fallen off the list completely.

2005 Results 2004 Results
Adrenaline 3.1% 3.8%
Express Pro 1.5% 6.3%
Avid 81.5% 70.0%
Final Cut 13.8% 12.5%
Lightworks 0.0% 5.0%

Avid is increasing its domination of the off line editing system. When Final Cut is used it is generally for documentary or specialty films.
__________________________________

Finishing System: Avid Symphony 16, Film 15, Avid DS 12. A variety of systems finished the rest. The most disturbing figure here? Didn’t Indicate 7. That means 11% of the respondents didn’t know what was used to finish the show, didn’t care to find out, or didn’t think it important enough to indicate.

2005 Results 2004 Results
Avid DS/Nitris 18.5% 16.3%
Avid Symphony 24.6% 8.8%
Digital Conform 1.5% 2.5%
Film 23.1% 45.0%
Final Cut 1.5% 7.5%
Lustre 1.5% 1.3%
Smoke 1.5% 3.8%
Tape 10.8% 13.8%

Notice the increase in Symphony finishing, and the decrease in film.
___________________________

Camera Original: 35mm 4 perf 29, 35mm 3 perf 9, HD 24p 7. The rest were spread about equally among the formats.
___________________________

Storage: Unity 42, Media Share 8, Not Shared 8.
________________________________

Venue: Network 30, Theatrical 25, Cable 8, Direct to Video 1.

2005 Results 2004 Results
Cable 12.3% 15.0%
Direct to Video 1.5% 3.8%
Network 46.2% 30.0%
Theater 38.5% 48.8%

Fewer feature respondents and more network respondents.
________________________________

Delivery Format: HD on-line 26, DI 16, DigiBeta 11, Film 11, Didn’t Know 1. Film finishes are decreasing. (Glad I’m not a negative cutter.)

2005 Results 2004 Results
35mm Film Neg 16.9% 31.3%
DigiBeta 16.9% 18.8%
DI 24.6% 17.5%
HD on-line 40.0% 26.3%

Notice the increase in DI and HD over film. Part of this can be attributed to fewer feature respondents.
________________________________

Who Chose the System: Me 31, Producer 22, Studio 10.

2005 Results 2004 Results
Me 48.4% 61.3%
Producer 34.4% 22.5%
Studio 15.6% 6.3%

This tells me that at least in television, we are losing power and control over our workplace. Sigh….

The other numbers either didn’t vary significantly, or the difference didn’t seem that important.

Not many respondents offered any tech tips. Those offered are useful.

“Using a Wacom table in place of a mouse eliminated all muscle pain in my right arm.”

“We get about 4 hours of dailies a day. Using the Scripting program in Avid makes the editing manageable - I can easily compare all the performances for a given line with the press of the mouse. Final Draft allows the writer to save a script in Avid format. Then the assistant brings it into the Avid and organized the dailies directly on the script. In these days of 24p “tape is cheap, let it roll!” The scripting feature takes 2 or 3 hours off my daily workload.”

“QuickKeys on top of Avid can automate several routine tasks, saving many keystrokes.”

“When employing bleach bypass in negative development never use a full rack on daytime exterior, especially in high contrast strong sunlight. Also, if bleach bypass makes negative look too contrasty or too B&W, you can re bleach negative for less contrast / more detail in highlights and shadows.”

And the final useful tip:

“By using Avid there is time to drink & have sex with my assistant in the PM.”

The computer-phobic assistant may still be assisting. And for those members who are overworked, deterioration of working conditions is real and is awful. But it isn’t caused by technology. The producer and director who don’t allow enough time for the editorial process would be just as intolerant if we weren’t cutting music / effects / VFX.

The tools are constantly changing, the computers are constantly ‘upgrading’ from version X to version X+1. I suspect those who adapt quickest to the technology will dominate the business, regardless of how artful we think we are.

Now, were exactly does one learn how to Color Correct?

A.C.E., ASC, and Art Directors Guild

The ASC Technology Committee has reorganized one of the sub-committees / working groups as a Workflow Group. The idea is to include interested parties from A.C.E. and the Art Directors to discuss different work flow technologies and ideas that affect all three groups. What is designed for the production can be passed on to the camera department for Look Management input, which can end up in post production for a finished show that meets the original design. If you are interested in working with this group, please contact me at harrymilleriii@earthlink.net.

The Toothpaste Answer

At the annual meeting I related the following story: when I last visited my dentist for a regular check up he asked me what toothpaste I used. I told him the brand name. “Was that the gel or the paste?” he asked? “Um, do I get more fillings if I give the wrong answer?” I responded. No, he explained, but the gel was being discontinued. “Seems that the gel can turn into formaldehyde in your mouth, so they’re not going to make it any longer.” I agreed that that probably wasn’t a good thing. The brand? Crest. Now you know the interesting things you can learn from the Technology Committee.

Final Cut Studio, with Final Cut Pro 5

Demonstrated at Moviola Digital Education Center
6/29/2005

The best that can be said about FCP 5 is it does a lot of things. The worst that can be said is it tries to be everything for everyone, so fails to be really good at any one thing.

Sponsored by Moviola Digital, the demonstration of the latest Final Cut Pro was attended by about 40 people, including some ACE members. It covered the latest suite of applications, which also include Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro 4, and Motion 2. It was an excellent presentation, as it was done by an editor (Andrew Balis) who was not an Apple salesmen. He showed the new features, but didn’t shy away from its flaws.

This isn’t a review of features. That is being done elsewhere. This is my evaluation of the presentation.

As if set up by an Avid salesman, within the first 10 minutes of the demonstration FCP5 did something completely unexpected, which lost all the work to that point. And that to me has always been the essence of Apple’s move into the filmmaking world: add lots of features that sometimes work as expected, where sometimes you can find the answer to a problem… but maybe not. Consistency, as in sync, is the hobgoblin of a small mind.

See the review of FCP 4.5 from earlier in this web log. Many of the consistancy issues are the same. Also the same is the programs complexity and intricacy, which give more options but make it easier to make critical mistakes.


One of the strongest complaints about FCP is that it lacked a multi-cam ability. This seems to be the major new feature of version 5. But it was the demo of the multi-cam function that failed the two times video / audio clips were linked to a master audio (music) clip. It seemed to baffle the editor to the point of dropping that part of the demo.

Improved, we were told, is sharing media and file management. These are areas FCP has been very weak. Experience can only tell if this is workable in a pro film setting.

The Soundtrack Pro module allows you to move a sound clip from FCP to this audio editing platform, where you can add numerous plug-ins (gain, noise reduction, echo, etc.). The same was true for Motion, where a video clip could be effected.

The design problem with this suite is that the more you do within these outboard programs, the more you are stuck within the suite of programs. Nothing in the sound program can translate into ProTools, for example. Nothing in Motion can translate into an EDL for an on-line. You could end up with a timeline of processed sound and VFX that can’t be output as OMF or EDLs.

I’ve come to believe the Apple philosophy on FCP software is “Release it: then fix it”. They are so anxious to add features and compatibility, that nothing seems to be tested in a real setting, and the results are always unpredictable. It didn’t seem to surprise the editor when various commands gave unpredictable results. More than once he had to Force Quit the application. I remain very skeptical that FCP 5 is viable for a high pressure, shared media television show, for example. But there are other projects it would be great.

But one cannot fault Moviola Digital. The presentation was extremely concise and informative. I must say, as I am on their e-mailing list, I’m looking forward to any other future presentations.

Jonny Z Workflow

Workflow On A Television Series (Mid-Season Replacement)

Editors: Marty Nicholson A.C.E., Randy Morgan A.C.E.
Assistants: David Augsburger, Sharidan Williams-Sotelo

Submitted by: David Augsburger

Project: JONNY ZERO, a Warner Bros. Television series produced for Fox TV

Crew: 2 Editors, 2 Assistants (3rd Editor and Assistant brought on for one episode)

Capture: Super 16mm, 2 cameras normal, 8 day shoots (never completed, unfinished scenes shot during following episode(s), along with 2nd Unit and pickups)

Special Film Processing: Bleach Bypass Processing done at Technicolor NYC

The first day went too far, blowing out the background. Although it wasn't necessary, film can be rewashed to lose contrast, but there is a risk in handling the film again.

Telecine: film transferred at Level 3 in Burbank. HD D5 (1080 progressive segmented field). Audio sunk in telecine. Editors Cassette: DV Cam Anamorphic, DVDs for Director, Producers, etc.

The Director/ Exec Producer was unhappy dailies that didn't emphasize the expressive look intended (but which could ultimately be achieved in color timing). Telecine preferred to minimize radical look and provide color timer with more latitude. The Director/ Exec Producer insisted that the network cuts of the first 2 episodes be onlined and color timed to demonstrate the visual look of the show. The Avid mix was married to the online dub.

Editing Systems: 3 Avid Composers Meridien version 11.2.5 (4th system while 3rd Editor worked)
Machines were Macintosh G4s with single 867 MHz processors
1 Gig of RAM, with 750 Megs assigned to Media Composer
Mac OS 9.2.2
Unity -- 648 Gigs of storage at most -- shared projects
Scan Converter configured to display either 4:3 or 16:9 adjusted by Level 3
(Anamorphic outputs done by bypassing the scan converter)
Screening Monitor -- color adjusted by Level 3 Telecine Operator
DV Cam Deck
1 VHS deck
CD Player
External Floppy Drive
Show-owned FireWire Drive -- 250 Gigs

Additional Software: Toast and Toast Titanium, FileMaker Pro, Vantage Text Editor (to correct Flex Files)

Tech Support: Systems supplied by Runway. Their support was very good and telephone response time nearly immediate.

Of particular value was the codec education provided by Runway prior to e-mailing a QuickTime clip to the main title composer: "animation" most versatile codec but very large, "avid" codec works well and video file is much smaller but remote user requires codec which they aren't likely to have. Runway sent codec via e-mail, (it's also available on Avid website). Also good help with creating OMF2 files and copying to CD-ROM

Avid Projects: 24 fps, 16mm , 48k audio. NDF dailies DF sequences

Input: 14:1 compression, one editor accepting 28:1 when media storage was short
2nd channel audio used only when 2 discrete tracks transferred

Digitizing unsupervised, frequently using 2 systems at once. No one watching for hairs, dirt, scratches, etc. One editor had locators positioned in dailies after clips grouped.

Audio importing of music CDs was extremely slow. Avid needs to scale the 44.1k sampling rate of CDs to 48k

(Editor note: there are useful sound ‘ripping’ programs that can speed up this process. I’ve used Sound Grinder in OS X to convert my music library to 48k Wave files. Gearbox and SoundApp work for OS 9)

Material Organization:

Music database created by Sharidan using FileMaker Pro. All Avids updated at once by simply placing the file in the shared project workspace on our Unity

Common Project for SFX, MX, Stock: In order to have one location where all stock was up-to-date a separate project was created that any editor could draw from, but this proved extremely cumbersome.

Daily Backup -- all projects backed up to individual Avids from Shared Projects folder of Unity Drives. Then Backed-up to firewire drive

Internet Use: Telecine Flex File Correction received via e-mail, music files received from composers via e-mail and forwarded to others, e.g. publicity, via e-mail.

QuickTime title sequence along with "avid" codec sent to composer via e-mail

Music:

The editors were fed music by the production company's music department, whose talents were shared with three other television series. This music was mostly pre-cleared or if not, in a reasonable price range. Some music came from the personal collections of the editors, directors and producers. Special circumstances required music to be composed.

Music used on the set not provided to editorial (not even noted) and was too expensive to consider using, yet established a beat for the scene the editor needed to match. The one time where the track was provided -- a scene with playback -- there was no time code reference for the music. Sharidan devised a trick using auxiliary time code: playback time code entered into auxiliary field of clip, this then grouped with playback track.

The editors cut the music for air. It was not uncommon for music to be replaced after a scene was cut.

Music EDLs were created after the director's cut, indicated what was being used

Music direct from composers. Final music sometimes arrived a day or two before the mix. Time code location noted

Outputs:

VHS output for cuts and insert references (DVD recorder not in budget); DV Cam master recorded from which extra VHS dubs struck. DV Cam audio 48K

Online: single video only Avid Sequence in bin copied to Zip Disk and carried to Level 3 for assembly on Nitris. Re-Edited material done in linear bay with Grass Valley EDL

Anamorphic Chase Reference Tape provided. (this tape also used for sound, music and neg cut; sound would be stripped off this and added to online)

Assistants laid up the sound tracks for 4 channel output:
Ch1 = D1 Ch2 = D2 Ch3 = SFX Ch4 = MX

DV Cam deck 4 channel output at 32K required special tape formatting and configuration; options in deck's menu. Runway customized mixer for 4 channel output using auxiliary send channels for ch 3 and 4.

Dirt list provided by creating a picture only EDL where clip names included telecine notes, e.g. 24A/1 Dirt, 26L/3 Focus, 18G/1 Hair, 45P/4 Scratch

Color Timing: Director/ Exec Producer and Associate Producer, with DP's notes

Sound Editorial:

Early EDL

OMF2 music at unity (without volume control)

Firewire drive supplied by sound department

OMF2 of all 8 channels with volume control intact to sound for use on mix stage

ADR: in NYC and in Los Angeles

Sound Mix: 2 day mix at Warner Bros.

Re-Edit: Online dub of Pilot digitized into Avid

Extremely cumbersome process; sequence comprised of 2 versions besides current cut, sound stems and various musical choices. 9 Video tarcks, 12 audio tracks. And there were numerous versions of this sequence at different phases of the process.

Change notes requested for stage mixer automation of re-conformed pilot online -- thought time code notes would suffice, automation computer really wanted a 16mm or 35mm change list, even if the film wasn't built.

Negative Cutting: 16mm single strand, prepared for telecine ready cutting after the show mixed. Lok-Box created from anamorphic online chase tape. This would show key number burn in.

Workflow On A Studio Pilot

By Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Project: BONES, a pilot for Fox TV and Network.

Capture: Shot on 35mm 3 perf film. 1 VFX shoot day, 14 shoot days, then 2 days of re-shoots. Most principal shoot days were two camera.

Telecine: film was processed at FotoKem and transferred to D5, with audio sunk in telecine. Audio from the source was mono. Outputs to Editorial were to DVCam, DVD for producers, and VHS for the studio.

The producer was not completely happy with the dailies color timing, as instructed by the DP and director. The producer wanted more neutral timing.

Editing systems: two Avid Composers, running Mac OS 9, version 11. Unity storage, with 500 gigs available. Editor system included a 42” Sony client monitor.

Additional software: QuickKeys 5, Toast, Hyperprism (an Audio Suite sound plug in by Arboretum). ProTools with an Mbox was used on an outboard PC to record wild lines.

Tech Support: Systems supplied by New Edit. The systems were well configured with a DVD recorder, DVD and VHS players. No audio decks were provided. The assistant system suffered from memory problems whenever the printer was used.

New Edit was very timely and helpful with support.

Avid Project: 24fps, 3perf project, 48k audio.

Input: Dailies were digitized at 14:1. Only one channel of audio was digitized. Music from CD was imported to 48K. Sound effects from SDII files were 48k.

Audio importing of music CDs was extremely slow, as the Avid had to convert each track from 44.1 to 48k.

VFX: a day of VFX shooting (material to be comped into BG plates) suffered by being transferred without flex files. This lack of 3/2 coherence was a constant problem. Timecode was used to order HD QuickTime files for the VFX vendor. Temp shots were posted on the vendor’s ftp site, and downloaded as low-res QuickTime files for input to the Avid and evaluation.

DVD’s were made for the director for review.

On-line: Avid video-only bins were e-mailed to FotoKem to an Avid DS Nitris, and re-assembled in HD. After the first on-line, the VAM was digitized and cut into V4, along with the mixed audio laid back to the VAM.

Color timing: tape to tape at FotoKem, on a DaVinci.

Sound editorial: production audio media was copied at the Finder level to a firewire drive for sound editorial, which would link to OMF2 files sent from editorial. Sound Editorial was able to link to all subsequent OMF2 files without having to resend media.

ADR: ¾” tapes were made for the stage from DVCam outputs. ADR was shot on ProTools systems, which allowed easy transfer into the Avid for the editor to cut.

Music for the stage was cut by the editor, and output to OMF2 with media for the stage.

Sound Mix: audio was mixed at Todd-AO Burbank, Studio C, on ProTools systems with ProControl mix panels. The mixers worked without cue sheets, seeing the audio on the monitors. Simple fixes, i.e. cutting and pasting or extending dialogue takes, was easily managed by the mixer. This also allowed for easy conforming, as the sound editors could conform the mix and the units in master sessions. Todd-AO has servers that allow quick media transfers between remote stages. Sound was mixed LT-RT.

The ProTools mix setup was extremely efficient. The only problem was a firewire drive with the conformed mix would not mount on the final day of the mix. This was solved by moving the drive to a different mechanism.

Re-Edit: the CTM (Color Timed Master) and VAM (Video Assemble Master) were transferred to DVCam for editorial. Audio was transferred from the mix to four channels: dialogue, effects, and 2 music channels. The picture was cut on to V4 of the master editing sequence, the four channels of audio replacing effects and music channels. The original production track was muted.

Finished: Total running time 42:15 with no head or tail credits.

Editing on Final Cut Pro 4.5

By Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.

Keywords: Final Cut Pro, DVCam, Digital intermediate

Storage: 400 gig Firewire drive

System: Mac G4, OS 10.3


The following are a series of observations from editing A THOUSAND ROADS, a 40 minute dramatic film, shot in Super 35mm (for superior image quality), scanned at 4K on a Spirit (for excellent image quality), assembled on a Lustre at 2K, and projected from a server on to a Texas Instruments 2K projector (to retain the excellent image quality). It was edited on Final Cut Pro… to save money.

It doesn’t take very long to get started editing in Final Cut Pro (FCP). These days non-linear systems are fairly consistent in how work flow is organized. For me it was essential to have an assistant who knew the software that could create and maintain the project. Like other systems, the worst mistakes can occur in setting up the show.

Major FCP Positive Features:

- Extremely stable. Crashed only 2x in 12 weeks. But very dependant on correct set-up.

- Programmable keyboard, so you can mimic keystrokes you are comfortable with. But it doesn’t automatically save the keyboard.

- Very good visual quality. This project was digitized uncompressed, and used about 300 gigs of storage.

Major Negative Features:

- 24 frame projects are not as stable as 30 frame projects in the current version.

- Where you are highlighted in the timeline is extremely important. I once deleted half the edit, and had no idea how it happened. Even with a Mark In / Out it is possible to delete highlighted material somewhere else in the timeline and never know it until you go to that section.

- You have to render every dissolve. On multi-layered, or dissolve heavy sequences, this is very disruptive to the work flow. Rendering in general is the constant roadblock to efficient operation.

- Seems to take more key strokes and mouse clicks than Avid to have any one function work correctly.

- Drop in a shot from a previous sequence, and it doesn’t use the clip names, but the sequence names. And match frame recalls the sequence, not the original clip. This is seriously weird and problematic.

- Ctrl+V overwrites, rather than inserts.

Workflow

This film was shot in its entirety before the editor was hired. LaserPacific did the telecine to Digibeta, and the final scanning and digital assembly. Each camera roll was transferred to a separate DVCam tape with a flex file. This was for the DI, although it means you get well over 100 tapes for a 40 minute film.

My assistant set up the project. We decided to be a 30 frame project, as we’d been told from more than one source that FCP 4.5 isn’t as stable in 24 fps.

There is no ‘user’ settings on startup. So, you can’t store a set of preferences for different users. However, there are preference menus all over the place, with enormous number of options. Most of which I had no clue about. My assistant had to advise me on the right selections.

The following items came up during the off-line cut:

More than once I deleted huge chunks of the timeline unknowingly. If you are highlighting regions in one part of the timeline, but mark in and outs in another area, the highlighted area can be deleted. And you don’t know it, as the timeline doesn’t go to the deleted area.

The attic stores the entire project several times a day, so I was able to find an edit to restore the deleted work. FCP doesn’t attic ‘bins’ but the entire project file. So the attic folder gets huge in a short period of time.

Trim mode – you can drag, you can add frames, but you can’t ‘play’ with a trim (play button extends a cut).

The nomenclature seems silly (‘Viewer’ ‘Canvas’) How about ‘Play’ and ‘Record’.

The picture stutters in reverse

No multicam capability.

Limited image size in bins (thumbnail)

You can match frame a shot. But there is no ‘find bin’ command, to see the original bin where that shot resides.

You can’t change thumbnail images all at the same time.

You cannot view the source (Viewer) window in a timeline.

Copy from one sequence, and paste to another does an overwrite, not an insert.

“Limit on media” - won’t allow you to trim past 1 frame (which would eliminate the frame of media).

Sometimes a double click on a splice would put you in trim mode. Sometimes not. The operation can often be unpredictable.

For some narration, we digitized picture and audio from a non-timecoded DV tape. The audio was a different sample rate, and the sync with the picture drifted once it was cut in the timeline. It was very strange. Over time it went further out of sync.

'Add a selection' (click on an item) has always been with “Shift”. With FCP, to select more in the timeline one uses “Apple”. Another odd function.

No audio gain plug in

No saving the timeline view.

When you move a title it has to “prepare video for display, then you have to render again any effects. Rendering slows the entire FCP process down.

Saving can be very slow (45 seconds) when the project gets large.

FCP doesn’t like the project getting as large as 100 MB. You must open a new projects - you can have more than one open at the same time - and move out unnecessary folders to make the project smaller. And with the backup feature, the attic gets huge by making copies of the complete project.

Audio edits can produce many pops.

After match framing a clip, it isn’t easy to find other information about it, such as tape source, camera roll, sound roll, etc.

Edit to Tape (Digital Cut) is not simple or intuitive.

QT Movie: you can highlight a sequence, but it will only output between the in and out marks.

To output with a matte requires a full real-time render. This is very time consuming.

FCP is not very good at file linking. My assistant mirrored the media drive, as a backup and to create some temp VFX. FCP had a difficult time linking to the correct media, even with a copy of the full project. That also seems to be a problem with networking media. FPC is very usable for a single system edit. But a media share edit would be very problematic.

Finishing

Once the picture was locked, I provided LaserPacific an EDL to start scanning the film. To insure a frame accurate 24 frame list, I re-built the picture cut in an Avid, which was able to create a 24 frame list, with 24 frame timecode.

I output to sound and music departments a Motion JPGA file. The picture quality is excellent, and used about 17 gb of space. Generating this file is slower than real time. I also output OMF audio files, but several times was aborted because of a 2 gb files size limit to the OMF file.

The film was scanned and built from the EDL in the Lustre, in the DI suite at Laser. The film scan, we learned, is framed very differently from the telecine. A lot of things popped into frame we had never before seen.

The film was color graded in the Lustre Theater. The film was re-framed where needed.

The visual effects were delivered as files, so there was no timecode with which to create an EDL. Adding in the effects was the least smooth part of the process.

The film will be screened only on 2K Texas Instruments projectors, played of a computer server. It will open at the National Museum of the American Indian in April of 2005.

Here are the New Downloadable Files

Jan. 1 2005 ACE Survey Results (PDF)

Jan. 1 2005 ACE Survey Results (XLS)

Tech Support (PDF)

Tech Support People

As part of the ACE Equipment Survey, members indicated who they thought provided excellent technical support. Some were vendors, some assistants. This list will be updated occassionally, so any input from you will be included.

Avid Film / Media Composer 11.2 Tips / Notes / Bugs

by David Augsberger 12-22-2004

System: Avid Meridien 11.2.5, Mac OS 9.2.2

Storage: Unity, 648 gigs

Three / four machines, Macintosh G4s with single 867 MHz processors
1 Gig of RAM, with 750 Megs assigned to Media Composer


Keywords: Avid 11.2.5, Unity, EDL Manager, Time code, Bugs, Screen refresh

Supplier: Runway Sales Contact: Rick Lee

Support Staff: David, Shawn, Lupe

While our experience has been mostly positive, here are some things to be aware of:

From the first, before you even launch the application, there’s something different: the project files -- at least if you’re set up for shared projects -- are not on your local computer, they’re on the Unity storage. This means that backups should be done to the local computer, not simply to a Unity workspace. It also means that if you open the Composer up and don’t see any projects in the startup dialog, then you’ll have to use the pull down menu, to first select “shared projects” (or whatever you name the workspace that contains the projects) from the volumes directory, and then find your project there.

INTERFACE CONFUSION:

** Warning: a bin can be opened on multiple machines at the same time.

While running Unity with a shared project, if an editor opens a bin already in use by another editor a cryptic message appears: "This bin has no lock file, changes will not be saved." The editor has the choice to not save their work or to create a new bin and save the changes there.

Another message repeatedly appears at the auto-save interval if the editor continues to work in the bin: “This bin “opened_bin_name” is currently opened on “other_editing_system” changes will not be saved.

If you’re using the bin to access dailies, or to copy a sequence to another bin, you simply ignore this message and choose “Don’t Save.” This won’t affect the other editor’s use of the bin.

Actually, there should be nothing confusing about this; you don't want to have two or more editors making changes to the exact same sequence at the same time. When you are the first to open a bin you will see a green icon of an open padlock at the bottom of the bin, you now have exclusive permission to alter the sequence or material in this bin. If you open a bin already in use, a red icon of a closed padlock appears at the bottom of the bin. (more under bugs)

LOCATION OF SOME TOOLS HAS CHANGED

A side panel of the Audio Tool now has the mono, stereo, direct out setting as well as the channel assignment. These were previously in the audio mix tool.

There is a setting for Media Creation, which is where you can assign a workspace to receive various kinds of renders.

SCREEN RESOLUTION LIMITATION:

If you like to work with larger icons and a more easily readable environment, i.e. with a screen resolution lower than the application's minimum (768 pixels in height) you can do so, but there is a penalty in the speed it takes to redraw the screen; this is a real nuisance with bins which contain large numbers of clips

(On two of our editing systems we were set at 832x624 75 Hz and 800x600 75 Hz, for the bin and editor monitors, respectively.)

SCREEN REDRAW ERRORS

Often the screen will not entirely refresh; you'll lose the scroll bar on the right of the window and/ or you'll lose the tab buttons at the top of the bin. If you have the window shade mode enabled you can simply click on the bin's title bar to close and then open it again; this will correct the problem. (The window shade can be enabled within the Mac software's Appearance setting under the Apple Menu. Apple Menu/Control Panels/Appearance/Options/ select “double click title bar”)

In Capture Mode (digitize) the screen will not refresh to clear a dialog box before beginning to batch digitize, this leaves a gray box, which might coverup your audio tool levels. You can move the dialogue box off its center position before you click to start digitizing.

BUGS

Duration, as displayed in the center window above the source and record picture heads is on occasion way off; maybe even a negative number. Changing momentarily to another mode using the pull down menu, e.g. time code to footage might correct the problem. (Restarting the application does not, however.)

After an assembly the master time code, if displayed above the record picture head, often appears to be incorrect, possibly reading the beginning of the sequence. It can be corrected by moving off the frame and back again.

During import of music or sound effects from CD, the previous target workspace is used, even if a new one is selected. You can begin a single import and cancel using command-period, then resume the import; it will now use the correct target.

Sometimes a bin appears as if it is locked even after it has been closed on the first machine and after quitting the application. When an editor is the first to open a bin an .lck file is created, e.g. Sc 24.lck If these files remain after the editor has closed the bin (not normal), they must be thrown in the trash, to make things normal again.

WINDOWS COMPATIBLE FILE NAME LIMITATIONS

You can no longer use file names for bins that start with empty spaces (which sort to the top), or use "/" or many other special characters. You can however write a date using periods, like 12.13.04

(Note from Harry: be extremely careful how you name files. Since the advent of MS-DOS, I have used the following rules in nameing: use ONLY letters, numbers, and ‘–‘ (dash) and ‘_’ (underscore). No spaces, no other symbols. Avoid ‘.’ (period) except preceeding and extent like ‘.pdf’ or ‘.doc’. This is the only safe system compatible with all platforms)

NEW FLEXIBILITY CAN CONFUSE:

Master time code can be read in several different types, regardless of the sequences true time code. Your sequence might be drop frame, but you can look at your position as if it were ndf or in 24 fps TC. If the master time code is left in another position when you were trying to get a frame accurate timing, you might get a wrong reading. It's best to set the master time code to TC1, the true time code of the sequence.

Bins now have a new display mode "brief," in this mode you lose the pull down menu where you can select different bin views; this is because brief is not customizable. You can of course still select “text” mode to get at the pull down menu.

The EDL Manager allows you to change the source and record time code after an EDL is generated. Even though the options are set to produce an EDL using sound time code, with sound roll numbers, after generating the EDL you need to check that sound time code is selected; you may find it will be set at LTC, which is the time code of the telecine master. Also, the EDL Manager seems to remember the previous setting of these pull down menus; you might generate an EDL with all sorts of errors because the last setting was for a sound EDL, but now you're making an EDL which doesn't have sound time code. You then must change the pull down selecting your source time code as LTC and the numbers are recalculated.

The Capture Tool and the Digital Cut Tool have a host of new settings; it's best to leave them in their default position.

Digital Cut has a radio-button setting for “local” and “remote” ; if local is enabled the record channels disappear on the tool.

Digital Cut is way too sensitive about what the frame cadence is even for low resolution (non-broadcast) outputs; an error message can easily be overridden if you’re recording the entire sequence, but if you need to do a pickup segment, it is less forgiving. You’ll be adjusting the frames of the start and stop to get it to agree to perform the pickup.

RECOMMENDED CHANGES.

The dialog box messages that appear when an editor opens a bin that is already being used by another editor are confusing, and they need not be. At first they seem like some sort of error has occurred. It would have been more easily understood if the message had been: This bin is in use, save your changes in another bin. Furthermore, it would be better if you were not allowed to start editing a sequence before this new bin was created. There should be nothing confusing about this

Fix the EDL Manager, so the the choice to alter a currently displayed EDL’s time code type (sound, address, drop, non-drop) is a less accessible option and make the EDL generation always default to the settings in the options panel.

Make any time code value displayed above the picture heads, or in the time code window, which isn’t a sequence’s original setting, appear in red characters.

Survey Expanded Comments

The following are the expanded comments from the surveys which were too long to fit on the simple spreadsheet.


9-14-04 Avid MC 11.x, Feature, Theatrical, Unity

I’m very angry that avid seems to be letting support for the mac platform languish, and I don’t support this move toward built-in processor processing v. external, dedicated processing, e.g. meridien... but I’ve used avid for 11 years, and I’d still rather cut on it than anything else.

9-15-04 Avid MC 11, Feature, Theatrical, Unity

Mostly positive. I enjoy manipulating the sound, and mixing it for screenings; and the same with visual effects possibilities. Main negative aspect to computers is (obviously) less assistants, and less possibility for assistants to learn from others. Seems that each time someone has to reinvent the wheel, which isn’t helpful.

9-15-04 Avid MC 11.2 with Express Pro, Feature, Unity

Using Avid Xpress pro along with Film Composer allows me to cut at home when I feel like it, and on location at a moment’s notice when the director feels like it. This is both good and bad, but on balance it’s probably good. And the interchangeability of bins and media works perfectly.


10-1-04 Final Cut Pro 4.0, Theatrical,

I was called in on this project to ‘doctor’ the film, an animated CG film. The film had been edited in HD on Final Cut Pro 4 in China with an American Director and a Chinese crew and so communication was very complex. The files were sent to me sometimes via Fed Ex, sometimes over the internet, but as time went on the complexity of working this was became more and more cumbersome since they did not have a management system in place for the digital files being generated. If communication had been easier they could have downrezzed the files to Photo-jpeg files and I could have cut that way and sent the files back to them to be uprezzed in China, but after working on it for a month and trying to edit and retransform Sorenson files I finally recommended to them that they find a post production supervisor who could help them organize their pipeline and an editor willing to go to China, which I could not do because of my teaching schedule. The experience was interesting and I learned a great deal, primarily that I do not want to work on something that far away unless I have been instrumental in setting up the file sharing process from the beginning.




10-31-04 Avid Media Composer, Episodic, Network, No shared storage

The trend is clear - non linear offline editors are being asked - no, make that demanded - to do more and more, for less and less.

I work on a weekly episodic show and my first cuts are complete with titles, repositioned shots, music, full compliments of sound effects, looped dialogue tracks, and color corrected shots, if necessary.

I build complicated video effects and I have been asked to do an audio mix in my room for an audience test. When I mention the possibility of a mini – online, or a professional temp mix, or anything else I am always told there is no money.

But since I am doing all the video effects work ( well, most of it anyway) 90% of the audio work, all the picture editing and all the assisting (yet, I have no assistant) where is all the money that used to be spend in dialogue editing, ADR work, days in audio mixing, negative cutting and the like? They are certainly not paying us editors two or three times the money.

With digital technology and 48k audio, we are going to be outputting the edited shows right out of our Avid ready for broadcast.


10-31-04 Avid Adrenaline PC, MOW, Cable

Comment on experience: NEGATIVE!

The PC adrenaline is an adjustment for any Avid Macintosh user. But the real problem was that Keycode Media agreed to use old 9 gig AVBV drives that Granada (Television) owned in conjunction with the Adrenaline PC as its primary drives. It never worked and screwed up the Adrenaline for 2 weeks. When an appropriate 180 gig tower was finally brought in for the Adrenaline, Granada persuaded Keycode to try to link their old AVBV Avid to the Adrenaline using a “Lan” line (internet, not Avid LAN share). They actually finally got this to work, but it was not a great advantage since work could only flow in one direction – AVBV to Adrenaline- and only in real time.

One of the real nightmare experiences with technology.

Tech support: Note Keycode Media. Incredibly slow and unknowledgeable from the user point of view.

10-31-04 Avid MC Meridian, Pilot Episodic, Network

Comment on experience: Avid Meridian with a Nitris High Definition using DVCam for dailies is as good as it gets for TV, movie, series, whatever. I think it is still the very best way to go, especially when systems are linked with Unity.

Tech support: Runway is the vendor for pilot and series, Rick Lee is a sales person who bends over backwards for editors. David & Lupe are the tech support. Its been very smooth sailing on this gig. Everything works well or is replaced quickly. Good support. Good attitude.

October 2004 Tech Survey

Keywords: Survey, Final Cut, Avid, Lightworks, media share


Posted on the Tech web log is the initial results of our Technology Survey. This pre-dates the snail mail questionnaires that were sent recently.

The information can be downloaded in two formats: excel spreadsheet and .pdf document. The spreadsheet will allow you to sort the information in various ways.

Although one should be cautious about any sweeping pronouncements, as this represents only 53 responses, the initial results reveal a number of interesting points.

1. Final Cut is at this point a very tiny portion of the responses. (4 of 53)
2. Avid is dominating the editing rooms. (46 of 53)
3. Lightworks is also a small share of the edit systems (3 of 53)
4. Shows designated as “Network” all used Avid, and most used shared storage.
5. There doesn’t seem to be a correlation between the edit system and who chose the system. In other words, editors chose Lightworks or Final cut about equally with producers.

I am curious what others observe from this posting. Also, keep checking. We should have results from the snail mailing in a little while.

- Harry

Tech Survey October 2004 Results

The Tech Survey October 2004 Results are available for download or viewing in two formats:

PDF

Excel

Workflow for: SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

Workflow for:
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
by Sabrina Plisco, A.C.E.

Final Cut Pro v.3
May 2002-July 2004

Keywords: Final Cut Pro, MacIntosh G-4, Kona HD card, Photo Jpeg, Maya, After Effects, DVD Studio Pro, Automatic Duck, NUCODA, Digital Intermediate Suite

1) Preproduction: The World of Tomorrow studio artists (WOT) located in Van Nuys, CA began by creating storyboards like a traditional animated movie. These were cut together in a 24 frame project along with the audio from a table read through with the cast. The director chose to build the studio primarily with MacIntosh computers so editorial was set up with three G-4’s and Final Cut Pro 3. This was state of the art at the time in summer of 2002!
The approach of this movie was to create all the elements in every single shot in the computer except for the actor and the items they touched. So a strong previsualized cut needed to be created to prepare for shooting with the actors.
As the number of artists grew, the WOT studio began to create animatics. These were simple three dimensional Maya animations with look alikes of our actors which we called “puppets”. We used this cut to block scenes and to create a shot list of camera angles which would be used to plan the actual production shoot. Every single shot was given a CG number which would be tracked throughout the entire process. There were over 4000 animatics created but only 2100 shots ended up in the movie.
In some instances, shooting tests were done with actor doubles to test camera lenses. So instead of animatics, we would use these test angles to represent certain shots within a scene. By the time the show went into production, there was a complete edited version of the movie with temp effects and music made up of a combination of storyboards, animatics, and test shots. This was used as a guide for production prep and was also most useful to share with the actors before they shot a scene. The actors were only shot against blue screen so watching the animatic guide of the movie was the only way they could understand was happening around them.

2) Production: (London) The animatics were designed from a computer based 3D set with a “grid pattern” that looked like a topographical map.
Remember the game Battleship? I was told the think of the marking system of the animatic grid like the Battleship game. The actual blue screen stages were then marked with tracking dots which denoted the same marking system. So if an animatic puppet walked from B2 to J7 then the actor on stage would be instructed to walk to those same corresponding dots. Because this was so crucial to the way that this movie was being made, a switcher was used to comp together the live actors over an animatic shot to confirm their accuracy.
To accomplish this, editorial rendered out each animatic shot into an
M-JPEG A file and put them onto a G4 work station for use on the principal photography blue screen stage. The G4 was equipped with an Aurora Igniter card which allowed analog video to be sent to a switcher via QuickTime (QT). On the live action blue screen stage, a camera feed was taken from the HD camera and was converted via AJA down-converter into the switcher that comped the live action over the animatics.
Because this movie was one of the first it’s kind, being shot on HD and being completely digital until the film out, the director chose to shoot in true 24p so there would be no problem in the translation back to film. So on set, the HD camera recorded at true 24P without sound so there would be no hindrance of cables. But there was a second HD backup deck rolling and sound was routed to this deck as well as to a DAT backup. Each was stamped with time of daytime code from the smart slate.

3) Post Production: (Van Nuys, CA) The HD backup tapes with sound were shipped from London to editorial in Van Nuys. We had our own HD deck, so we prepped our own dailies. We were our own post house!
The full length of the HD tapes were captured via a Kona HD card using Standard Definition (SD) Photo JPEG. Each take was cut up and rendered as self-contained QT movie. One of our stumbling blocks was that we found the HD deck and FCP to be buggy when trying to bring in timecode as we captured. So we had to manually assign timecode to each QT take. Using the smart slate on the take, a visual timecode burn in was applied and the clips were then rendered out again and sorted for me to use on my FCP SD workstation. This media was used to create the master off-line cut.
For logging purposes, batch lists of the takes were modified and imported into File Maker Pro.
We had to start locking sections of the movie very quickly after principal photography was completed so that the VFX assembly line could begin. Once a sequence was locked, the SD Photo JPEG material was used
as a guide for upresing the takes in HD. Using the timecode from the SD clips with only 12 frame handles, a batch capture was performed on the HD station. The material was captured at full resolution of 1920x1080 8 Bit using the Kona HD and BlackMagic codec. The HD clips were then ready to deliver to the compositing department along with a line up sheet.
The VFX department took the blue screen HD elements and keyed/comped and created image files mainly using After Effects. But as licenses were obtained for Shake, many artists transitioned to that application.
As the first composited material started to be created, an HD
review station became necessary to study each shot. So the timeline from the master SD offline cut was used to conform an 8 Bit HD version. As shots were completed or updated, they would be added to both the SD and HD versions of the cut. To do this, VFX would deliver both Photo JPEG and
8 Bit HD versions of every comp to editorial.
Essentially this allowed for the director and I to continually work on the creative edit in SD while the HD conformed edit was used for critical technical assessment.

4) Previews and screenings: Our early screenings and previews were done in SD from DVD’s which were burned in DVD Studio Pro. But as more and more of the show was completed in HD, we would output to HD tape stock. If there were shots missing in the HD timeline, we would “bump up” the SD material into 1920x1080 to complete the HD timeline for output.

5) Sound/Music delivery: Since we were a completely digital show which originated in true 24p (not 23.98!) creating the elements for sound and music delivery proved to be a challenge. We had to export our FCP timelines into Photo Jpeg sequences at 24fps splitting audio as requested. We then had to take this sequence into After Effects and create a pulldown 23.976 QT movie. This is the rate that audio must play at to be in sync with film! The 23.976 movies were then rendered out to 29.97 in the
M-JPEG A codec. All this in order to get to videotape speed! So we would take this movie from the G4 workstation via the Aurora Igniter card and output to Beta SP tape for a tape delivery for sound and music.
The only other thing we discovered was that the OMF's were flaky in FCP 3. So we made copies of our FCP timelines from FCP3 and brought them into FCP4 and exported the OMF’s from there.

6) Conforming for film out: As shots were finaled, the vendors created 16 bit SGI files of each composite. Opticals like wipes, dissolves and multi-layering needed to be created into their own single 16 bit SGI file. So Automatic Duck was used to translate the optical counts from Final Cut Pro into After Effects where a 16 bit SGI file could be created.
Once an entire sequence was visually finalized, the sequence was approved to have the 16 bit SGI files of each shot created by the compositing team. Then these files would be conformed to the off-line master cut by the in-house conform team. This process was one of the most painless in our workflow. From Final Cut, a CMX 3600 EDL was created along with a JPEG image sequence and given to the conform team. They imported these into a NUCODA system which is a PC based station that is able to play back and work with 16 bit SGI files. They recreated the offline cut in their timeline and were able to export out entire sequences to be given to EFILM for the color timing in the Digital Intermediate Suite. To double check the process and the edit, they would create a JPEG image sequence that was rendered out via After Effects into a Photo JPEG QT movie, and laid over the offline cut. It was then possible to check the location of cuts and frame ranges that were to be exported to film.
Once the color timing was complete, digital files were converted to
35mm film!




Commentary:
I would have to say I enjoyed working on FCP and would do it again. I know that there have been advances in the networking capabilities since we set up our shop in 2002. This was one of our biggest obstacles. We had a hard time linking up multiple systems to work off the same media and stabilizing them. In the end, we managed but I look forward to a much more reliable networking set up.
I also think some software advances have happened since I began which would only give more power to FCP. But my biggest complaint was the trim mode. It was a bit clunky and limiting and took many more steps than necessary. Hopefully this is improving with the software updates.
I also loved the ease of working in multi levels of video and the fx tools were a tremendous advantage on this show. To me this is where the system shines.

Equipment:
Editor/assistant work stations
(3) 1GHz Dual Mac G4’s with 2 GB of RAM and an internal raid with
200 GB of extra storage along with the 70 GB startup drive.
Network and storage
We set up a linux based file server with 2 TB of storage for the media which 3 machines shared. FCP project files were kept on the main system, as they can’t be saved on a non-Mac formatted drive.
Auxiliary station for DVD burning
Standard Dual 2 GHz Mac G5 with 2 GB RAM. No extra storage.
Used compressor for MPEG 2 compression and Apack for Dolby AC3
Compression for sound DVD Studio Pro.
VFX HD editing stations
2 Ghz Dual G5’s with GB RAM with a fiber card attached to
Apple Xraid--3TB of storage. Included Kona HD cards and a Decklink Pro HD card.

Panavision’s new Genesis Digital Camera

Panavision’s new Genesis Digital Camera

Keywords: HD, digital camera, Genesis

by Harry B. Miller III


Panavision is about to make available a digital camera called Genesis. It looks pretty much like its standard Platinum camera, and uses the same lenses and accessories. It is designed to have the same look and feel as a film camera to give film people a comfort level with a digital camera.

I attended a screening at the Panavision theater where they showed two cut sequences, each about 5 mintues long. Each shot was photographed by the Genesis and a film camera, one after the other. Same action, lighting, lens, stop, and filtration. The both sequences alternated between a digital shot and a film shot. The second sequence reversed the digital / film order. The audience of ASC Technology committee members was left to guess which shots were digital and which were film. Turns out, most of the guesses were wrong.

There was so little apparent difference between the two sets of photographed images, that even the DP’s were fooled. I guessed only one shot correctly. My only clue was it had extraordinary depth of field.

The caveat to the presentation was that they really didn’t ‘stress’ the digital camera. Although it shot bright scenes well, there was no huge contrast range as with explosions or fire scenes. No night scenes either.

The Panavision people told me that several features are interested in using this system, which becomes available in late January.

It has several features of interest. It docks directly to a Sony HDCAM-SR field recorder, so can be independent of cables. This allows for hand held work. Most of the time it would be tethered for recording and monitoring. The recorder has 12 channels of audio recording – which means the chance for 12 channels of bad production audio instead of the usual 2. It has a variable shutter angle and can shoot from 1 to 50 fps.

How the tape can be transferred to a editing work station? There are several options. One option is to clone the tape and downconvert to NTSC. Unfortunately, a straight downconversion leaves an unpredictable 2:3 sequencing. To solve that, the tape is first transferred from 23.976 to 29.97, and then downconverted – meaning each tape has to be transferred twice in real time. Not elegant, but it does carry 24 fps timecode from the original master, as well as other meta-data. The more useful method is where the NTSC signal feeds a hard disc recorder on the fly to Avid format files, which includes scene, take, timecode, audio, etc. Then it is a matter of transferring the files from one drive to an editorial drive.

As of now the first show to use the camera is 8 Simple Rules.

Thanks to Nolan Murdock of Panavision for his help on this article.

For further information, see the Panavision web site at...
http://www.panavision.com/product_detail.php?maincat=1&cat=36&id=338&node=c0,c202,c203

And the Sony HDCam SR ...
http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/markets/production/productsite/hdcamsr/faq.html

Editing Narration with Pro Tools:

Keywords: Pro Tools, M Box, narration.

MYSTIC INDIA is a large format film project that started shooting in March of 2003, and which I’ve been working on since. It was shot entirely on the Indian subcontinent, on 70mm 8 perf film. It was the first film I had worked on where all the dialogue was in Hindi.

It seemed there was no shortage of hurtles to finishing this project. One interesting hurtle was the final English language narration. The director had convinced the Indian financiers that the narrator should be a well known actor to Western audiences. Peter O’Toole had agree to read the part. The Indian producers preferred a well known Hindi actor, but the director convinced them.

Unfortunately, the ADR session with O’Toole did not go well. Although his voice is excellent, he struggled to pronounce the many Hindi words. When I listened to the track, a second problem was evident: whose pronunciation was the correct one? With the director and three Indian producers all giving slightly different pronunciations, O’Toole occasionally prompted them to give him only one version.

After returning from recording in London, the director called for my help. To keep O’Toole as the narrator, he wanted me to edit the narration and to fix as many of the problems as possible. Having cut the picture and several version of temp narration, I was the best candidate.

The Avid wasn’t going to work for this job. Although it has time compression and pitch shift tools in the Audio Suite, it cannot edit audio in the sub-frame level.

The narration was recorded in Pro Tools, at 48k 16 bit. I got a CD-R with the session and audio files (Sound Designer II). A while back I had invested in an audio device, the M Box. It is a outboard box that is the hardware required for Pro Tools in Mac OS X, albeit with limited capabilities. It is packaged with Pro Tools vs. 6, which is OS X native.

The M Box connects to my Power PC G4 laptop via USB. With some headphones, I sat at home and constructed each line of narration from the recorded pieces.

When O’Toole encountered a Hindi word he couldn’t pronounce, the people at the session would give him the correct reading. Although he still couldn’t pronounce the word correctly in a sentence, I was able to copy the best pronunciation and fit it into the right spot. Sometimes a reading needed time correction. Or pitch shifting. Or splitting words in half (or more) to create the correct version. It took two days to create the approximately 27 minutes of final narration. But the results were well worth it.

As a final stage, my assistant input the cut narration into my Avid. Each phrase (and any alternate) was lined up correctly to the picture. We output a OMF file for the sound editors, who were able to open the narration for the stage.

Platform: Power PC G4 laptop, 512 MB memory, 55 GB internal storage, running OS X.
Peripheral: M Box by Digidesign
Software: Pro Tools 6.0

Finally: The M Box is a great tool to edit very specific dialogue, or to do multiple other sound tasks. I also use it to create interesting backgrounds, create special sound effects, or to add effects via the built in audio plug ins.