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.