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Am I Out of Line? (slightly OT)
Very complicated background story. Basically, my company in LA paid another company in NY to produce a show. But one aspect of that show fell in my hands to edit. The part that I cut was a mess. DV, DV50, and DVCProHD Varicam all in a multi-cam live event. Everything was 23.98 with pull-down added.
The final product is DVD, so I never even dreamed I’d have to finish in HD. They captured all the footage and sent it on a firewire drive. They captured it as 29.97. Later I find out they want an HD master just in case. So I told them I can rent a D5 and do that. Then I had to manually go through every clip and run it through Cinema Tools to get rid of the pulldown and make it 23.98 (I edit on Final Cut with a Decklink HD Plus BTW). There were also some inadvertant Varicam “undercrank” effects – so I had to use the plugin and remove duplicate frames to make it 23.98. Huge pain in the ass since the show was already edited.
So basically they’re using parts of my show to include in their larger show (that we hired them to produce). They have an offline DVCam of what I cut but they need a high def master to conform everything – my stuff and theirs. To do an online and conform everything to HD, they’re going to spend considerable time in an Avid DS HD facility they work with frequently. This facility has a DVCPro HD VTR but no D5 or HDCam.
Keep in mind, we’ve paid them. They are not clients.
So I said, screw this, I’m not spending an entire day and over $1000 to rent a D5 deck to make a master if you’re just going to dub it to DVCProHD anyways. Furthermore, why should I even rent a DVCPro HD deck? Why don’t I just send a self contained Quicktime on an NTFS formatted Firewire drive and include the universal Blackmagic codec for Windows? The file is a 120 gigs. The online editor can install the codec, import the show, and make a DVCPro HD master himself. Start the show at the hour mark and it will match the offline they’ve been working with.
Sounds simple enough right? Anyone smart enough to work on an Avid could figure this out in a heartbeat, right? Wrong. I’m catching hell for it. Somehow I’m just making everyone’s life complicated with crazy ideas that won’t work. It’s like I’m some kind of hack who uses Final Cut. It’s really driving me nuts so I had to vent. Isn’t this 2005? Are Avid editors really stuck in the 90’s that badly? I occasionally had to import large Animation-codec Quicktimes on my Media 100. That was back in the 90’s. So what the heck is wrong with these people? Or am I just out of line?
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6 Replies
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You could ask them, meybe they want an u-matic compy as well 😉
I have seen similliar problems here (Eastern Europe), sometimes people just don’t understand the 1000000 US hardware is worthless withoud quilified person to work on it (qualified means a person who knows what s/he is doing)-Kaspar
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you have to understand avid editors are just and only editors. they know how to cut and cut very well. but just try and get them to work out of their regular workflow and all hell breaks loose. you also have to understand that they have asistant editors to log and capture their footage as well, so many of them tend to be “idiot savants”. a good friend of mine is a top feature film trailer editor and he barely knows how to empty the trash (on his mac desktop). i’m not kidding. so what seems to be obvious alternate ways of solving problems are greeted with a blank stare – “just give me what i’m used to working with” is what you’re likely to hear. these guys tend to be real prima donnas and thus intimidated by new technology. they also bristle at the thought of “amatures” cutting and god forbid finishing projects. well, times change!
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A lot of people giggle when you say you are using Final Cut Pro, especially if they have an Avid. The perception is that Avid is the be-all-end-all of high end nonlinear and that Final Cut Pro is an amateur tool for wedding videos and home movies.
It all goes to show that people who have AVID have more money than brains! 😉
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Final Cut editors tend to be much more advanced and adaptable in these situations. Most Avid editors can’t think outside the box (ha ha ha….sorry). If I were you, I’d say something like “Oh, you don’t know how to do that?” act surprised at their lack of abilities. Leave it at that.
We still have Avids in house, and have been converting our clients to Final Cut. They say “Oh, you’re using Final Cut?” To which we reply “Yeah, it’s really a much more versatile and effective system than our Avids. I’d rather edit with Final Cut any day.” We switched 4 bays over when Avid offered to upgrade our Media Composer 7.1s to Meredian for $30K a piece. 30,000 dollars a piece!!!!! See ya later suckers.
I do sometimes think Apple markets FCP more like a prosumer app than a industrial pro app. And some of the features and effects are really better for wedding videos than pro grade work.
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Thanks for the encouragement guys! Me and my co-workers used to be just like these Avid guys, only with Media 100 instead of Avid. $2000 a pop just to be able to use OSX instead of OS9 is what caused us to switch.
The story has a happy ending though. The online editor (geez, I hope they don’t read this:)) did a 180 and suddenly became engaged in the idea of trying something new. He worked up the courage to install the BMD codec and imported a sample clip I put on our FTP. He said it came in quickly and worked perfectly. So it looks like it’s all gonna work out.
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The anxiety level of screwing up a $100k system is a bit higher than screwing up a $25k system 🙂
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