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Boris Continuum Complete - Who knew?

by Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E.  - reprinted from CinemaEditor Magazine

I’m always amazed at what I don’t know, but learn through some experimentation.

My Avid Media Composer software has for years come with the visual effects plug-ins from Boris FX, the suite called Boris Continuum Complete (BCC). Boris is a software plug-in for Media Composer (and other platforms such as After Effects). It enables an editor to add effects such as colors, glows, distortions, lights, textures, keys, and mattes to any shot. Every once in a while I’d dabble with different effects, a blur, a glow, etc. It all seemed fun enough, but often too complicated to completely understand.

Then one day I found out what I really didn’t know: an function within Boris called PixelChooser. When did that happen?

I know this might be way too geeky for a magazine like CinemaEditor that is about the art and craft of editing, but technology is forever more a part of that art and craft. These types of effects have become essential to story telling. For example, when Dexter Morgan has imaginary conversations with his dead father in the series DEXTER, the audience is instantly clued in by the glow effect on the image that this is Dexter’s imagination.

And PixelChooser is one amazing addition to Boris I’d never seen before.

It is all fine to have a palette of visual effect plug-ins to help tell your story. Avid comes with a good variety: 3D Warp to make multiple changes to size and orientation of an image, SpectraMatte for greenscreen work, Animatte for matting shapes in images, Flips, Flops, Resizes, Motion Tracking, etc.. Sapphire, a visual effect plug-in package by GenArts, is thought by many editors to be the best software of this type. It features a wide variety of blurs, glows, sparkles, etc..

But what has elevated Boris in my eyes is that, in addition to having similar effects offered by Sapphire, is Boris’ ability to draw shapes within each Boris effect, and to apply the effect within or without of that shape. An not just single shapes, but multiple ones. It enables the editor to fine tune the visuals of a movie enormously.

Lets for example say I wanted to add a glow to a shot.

 

In the Effects Palette, under BCC Effects, you can find the BCC Glow effect.

 

Drop that icon on the shot in the timeline. It affects the entire image. But very often you don’t want an effect on the full image, but just a part. Let’s say just the sky, in this example.

By activating the Effect Editor, you can go down the screen to the button ‘Pixel Chooser: Off’. By switching that to ‘PixelChooser: On’, 

a new set of options appears. The default selection is ‘PC Region Shape: All’. That can be switched to a number of shapes, where the effect happens on the inside or outside of that shape.

The last shape is ‘Custom’. Here is where the power shows. By choosing ‘Custom’,

then highlighting the Custom Spline UI  (why is this stuff so complicated and confusing?), you can click on the image to create a custom shape. Once having completed a shape, you can easily move the points around to more finely draw the shape.

This power can be expanded: you can draw multiple shapes on a shot, and animate each point.

 

This is much like having the Avid’s Animatte effect available for every Boris plug-in. (Yes, this is awfully geeky, but its a terrific tool)

Once learning about this, I read deeper into the Boris manual (my wife hates manuals. So she has me read the manuals about her software for her work). I found several more gems.

Generators: you can add clouds, fire, sparks, rain, etc. to a shot.

Correct Selected, in Colors and Blurs: this is essentially secondary color correction, which is not available in Media Composer effects. Secondary CC is used when you only want to effect one small range of colors in an image. It is how an image can look black and white, but only the red rose shows color.

Optical Flow, in BCC Time: speed change a shot, with smoothing like Fluid Motion.

Optical Stabilizer, in BCC Time: to stabilize a handheld shot.

Lens Flare, in BCC Open GL: add optical lens flare, to make a shot more interesting, or as a transition.

Pan and Zoom, in BCC Distortion and Perspective: another way of panning and zooming in a shot.

Some of these filters are similar to what is available in the Media Composer. It is a toss up which is better. But discovering some of the secrets of BCC is really worth the time to explore.

The tide of technology keeps rising. Some editors have the notion that knowing about advanced tools is too difficult, and tends to make VFX work more a part of their job. I look upon it as job security. The more I know and am able to do (and do well), the less likely my job is going to disappear. Or go to another editor that knows those tools.

Boris is also available for Final Cut Pro, which is why I’m going to recommend any FCP show add this.

Who knew?

(images courtesy of HittingThe Cycle production)

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.