Webspace of Eric Brodeur

Conforming two sets of production sound

Eric — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 03:34:17 +0000

A situation we experienced on Hotel Noir was the use of two four-track field recorders to capture production sound. Ideally, one recorder should be used with enough tracks to handle the required microphone inputs.

As we processed dailies in the Avid, we selected a mixed-down audio track for our guide during the offline edit. A conventional audio turnover would consist of an EDL which is used to re-link all of the production sound tracks.

In our case we had two sets of production sound which cannot be represented in a single EDL. Also, there is no way to merge the A and B sets so we had to find another method of combining them.

What follows is a brief description of how we got both sets of audio turned over to the sound department.

Your sound team must be using an auto-conform tool such as Synchro Arts’ Titan. It ingests the EDL and builds a Pro Tools project using audio guide in the picture cut and the original production sound. If your sound team doesn’t implement this workflow you are looking at a mountain of time-consuming labor.

From the Avid, export an EDL of your sequence. In our case it referenced our A set of audio. The EDL contained a list of clips looking like this:

A0001
A0004
A0011
A0004
A0012
…and so on

When this is processed through Titan the four tracks of audio from set A are brought into Pro Tools.

Next, make a copy of your EDL and open it with a text editor. Replace the references to “A” with “B”. This assumes your location sound team used a consistent naming convention. In our case, set A contained tracks 1-4 and set B contained 5-8 and the filenames corresponded such as A0024 and B0024. Timecode matched as well.

Process this new EDL with Titan and the Pro Tools session will be populated with the second set of audio tracks. After some clean up work by the sound editor, the Pro Tools session will contain all of your production tracks.

Many thanks to Dan Snow at Anarchy Post for helping me find this solution.

Onlining RED with Avid Media Composer

Eric — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:21:09 +0000

If you’re shooting with RED and don’t need/want a traditional conform to the 4K RAW files, you can follow Oliver Peters’ excellent tutorial found here. He explains best practices for importing RED media for the offline edit and how to re-import and create a high-quality DNxHD 175X output.

I’m in the middle of doing this for Hotel Noir and wanted to mention a few things related to Oliver’s post.

As described in Step 8 we had to relink the sequence clips, not just the sequence. Change the bin display to show all clips/elements and relink from there. In some cases you may need to relink by repeating the Link to AMA command.

It’s best that you change the Source Settings for every clip to achieve the flat color space of the RAW footage. The quickest method is selecting all of the RECCODE clips then change Source Settings. Yes, you can select groups of clips and the settings will be applied to all of them. It’s recommended to select the Default color settings then change RED color science (ie: REDcolor, REDlog) as needed.

Although you’ve changed the color settings for all clips used in the sequence, you must force Avid to update the clips in the timeline. Select your sequence then Clip > Refresh Sequence > Source Settings. You may be tempted to choose “All” but we experienced undesired changes to the clips by doing so.

Without a RED Rocket, our 3.2 GHz 8-core Mac Pro performed the conversion to 175X – for each reel – in about 5-7 hours. This equates to approximately 36 hours of render time for six reels and six hours per. This excludes any prep time.

You are your NLE

Eric — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:40:25 +0000

The release of Final Cut Pro X has brought to light a certain distinction amongst picture editors.

When Apple removed key features and changed the user interface, they received a wicked backlash. The biggest complaints weren’t with the UI but lack of OMF, XML, and EDL support. Without these it’s impossible to use FCPX in a professional environment such as network television and features films.

Despite this a number of editors I follow jumped into FCPX and praised it. But how are these professional editors using FCPX if it can’t turnover a show?

That’s when I realized my definition of “professional” isn’t the same as everyone else. We can debate this all day and not have a single answer. There probably should be a common understanding of the word “professional” as it relates to post-production but I think there’s another way to tell the difference.

You are your NLE.

The system you use is indicative of who you work for and the types of projects you engage. This is an observation, not a judgment.

Read an issue of POST magazine and it won’t take long to see that Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro (version 7) are used to edit network television and studio feature films. There is the occasional mention of Adobe Premiere but nothing else. No Vegas. No Edius. No iMovie. No Final Cut Pro X.

Perhaps those NLEs don’t have the necessary features required by Hollywood’s production workflow. Maybe those packages aren’t popular enough with employers and employees in the Hollywood system.

So, then, we’re back to the adage you are your NLE.

Can you name a studio feature edited with Vegas? When is the last time you heard a corporate training video editor going on about Avid?

Despite the disappointment of Final Cut Pro X to network television and feature editors, we may owe Apple a big thank-you for reminding us there are different industries with different needs.

Knowing your NLE is knowing your market.

No related posts.

TinyUmbrella and error 1013 during iPhone firmware upate

Eric — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:44:56 +0000

During the update from iPhone iOS version 4.1 to 4.3 the phone was stuck in Recovery Mode. The update consistently failed with error 1013.

Before the update I did two things:

Backup in iTunes
Saved my SHSH using TinyUmbrella

I ran TinyUmbrella just in case I decided to jailbreak to an earlier iOS version. Since it does nothing more than read data from the iPhone I didn’t think it had broken anything – wrong. The app modifies the hosts file which breaks the firmware update process.

The solution is simple: open Terminal, execute sudo nano /etc/hosts. Remove or comment-out the line containing gs.apple.com. I restarted iTunes, updated to iOS 4.3, and successfully restored my files.

When all else fails, why the iPhone could use an SD slot

Eric — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:50:55 +0000

Our final day of shooting Filly Brown was filled with a variety of last-minute shots, notably an insert which required a prop iPhone playing a video. The clip was exported to H.264 and tested on my personal iPhone 4. I rushed to set knowing I would transfer the clip via Internet.

If only it had been that easy. I understand the argument for having an SD slot on the iPhone.

Problem #1 – Not a prop

Our "prop" iPhone 3G actually belonged to a crew member. This means I couldn't just wipe it as needed.

Problem #2 – iTunes

The computer used to sync the iPhone wasn't available. For this reason I couldn't use my copy of iTunes because this forces you to wipe the device.

Problem #3 – AT&T coverage

Emailing the video clip was terribly slow because of AT&T's poor wireless coverage in the area.

Problem #4 – Virgin Mobile coverage

Our Virgin Mobile Mifi adapter also had poor reception – no improvement here.

Problem #5 – Adobe Flash

Suffering through a slow transfer using Virgin's Mifi I tried WeTransfer.com for a web-to-browser transfer. I discovered that WeTransfer requires Flash on the client to download the file. There is no Flash on the iPhone.

Problem #6 – Wifi transfer

I attempted a MacBook-to-iPhone transfer using wifi. That didn't work either because the Virgin Mifi adapter doesn't support infrastructure/ad-hoc networks – only direct to Internet.

Problem #7 – iOS 3

I used Dropbox and the iPhone app Download Manager Pro Lite to retrieve the clip. After a lengthy upload and download with AT&T Wireless, I opened the clip to discover that iOS 3.13 doesn't play it. Apparently there are limitations with H.264 in iOS 3 compared with my test on iOS 4.1.

The clip was re-exported out of Compressor using an iPhone specific setting and re-transferred via Dropbox.

Finally…success.

What We Learned

The entire process took hours to complete and most of the time was spent waiting for slow transfers. Some/all of the problems could have been avoided with more preparation but that's not always an option during a shoot.

An SD card slot would have been ideal. No wireless transfers over slow broadband, no iTunes limitations, no requirements for Adobe Flash.

Apple's reliance on wireless or iTunes sync works well…in a perfect world. However, the world is not perfect and we sailed into a perfect storm of events that revealed limitations of our technology – particularly the iPhone.

I'll do things differently next time but it won't stop me from searching for a direct method of iPhone transfers, SD slot or not.