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Cinema Tools still in it’s infancy
I am still amazed, and appalled at how lacking in features Cinema Tools is. I’ve been using this app since I shelled out $1000 for Film Logic back in 2000. I’ve been through Cinema Tools 1, Cinema Tools 2 and now Cinema Tools 3 and I still can’t believe it won’t flag a flop or a blow-up as an optical. In order to complete a neg. cut on the latest feature I’m editing both me and my assistant must comb through every edit (all 2000 of them) and check each shot to see if Cinema Tools has missed something. We’ve got about 20 blow-ups, 5 flops, and about 15 dupes. Cinema Tools has errantly tagged about five shots as being dupes, which are NOT, yet can’t tag a single flop or blow-up as an optical. This leaves a lot of room for human error when pulling the list. If either one of us misses a slight blow-up and repo the neg will wind up getting cut and spliced into the picture, therefore making that a permanent splice (head and tail frames are destroyed in the neg cut).
The last picture I cut wound up with two flops getting missed and cost quite a bit to fix. (Self Plug Time: That picture “Death To The Supermodels, is being released by Columbia/TriStar at the end of the November.)
Does anyone know of a way to flag blow-ups or flops as opticals so that Cinema Tools can pull an accurate Cut List? This is such a nuts and bolts BASIC grade 1 feature of any “film” editing program I can’t believe it wasn’t implemented five years ago! Anyone…?
Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc. -
2 Replies
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Michael,
Let me suggest that you or your assistant consider using a pencil and a peice of paper to write a note every time you repo, flop, etc. Careers have been lost over just such stuff, and that’s what assistants are for anyway.
DRW
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Would it work for you to toggle clip keyframes, which reveals blue or green bars under the video track which indicate whether a filter or motion effect has been applied?
Perhaps an examination while zoomed in on the timeline would reveal all the shots that have been flopped or enlarged.
I have also used copy and pasting all the clips from one timeline to another, forcing any effects to unrender (I guess you could clear render files to do the same thing) so that any manipulated shot gets a red render bar over it.
Granted, these are still manual processes, but perhaps they can help.
Another option would be to place all flops and blowups on their own video track when you create them. Then Cinema Tools could at least flag the holes left behind.
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