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FCPWorks sessions from NAB posted.
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[Oliver Peters] “But I’ve also had the other experience, where in spite of my requests, I didn’t get the ideal out of the sound team. Editors can only ask and suggest. “
That is the sad truth in many cases. Producers trying to save a buck, understaffed crews, operator error and good old fashioned murphy’s law.
The big problem I see is that by the time the line producer comes in on a low budget film they use a ‘paint by numbers’ approach. “This is a low budget indie, no need to spend money renting a device when an unpaid intern can sync everything for free.”
It’s maddening.
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[Darren Roark] “The big problem I see is that by the time the line producer comes in on a low budget film they use a ‘paint by numbers’ approach.”
I tend to find it’s often more unintentional. Everything was agreed up front, but then a mistake was made or something changed or forgotten. The editorial team was never consulted regarding the ramifications of a workaround decision made in the heat of the production on set. Oh well.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “I tend to find it’s often more unintentional. “
Again agreed, but it’s usually unintentional as a result of being unaware of the impending wasted resources.
It’s especially bad with commercials as the production company usually has nothing to do with post, the ad agencies usually handle that portion.
I think it takes a long time for new realities to sink in and become normal. I was working at one of the studios last month and a multicam horror film being cut across the hall had three assistants manually syncing dailies which took them 14+ hour days usually. I asked why they didn’t have a convenient jam sync situation on set, the editor replied “I never trust timecode to be in sync.”
I had to just change the subject after that.
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[Darren Roark] ” I asked why they didn’t have a convenient jam sync situation on set, the editor replied “I never trust timecode to be in sync.””
ACK!!!
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Things like that are always frustrating. Of course, FWIW, Sync N Link was first developed for “legacy” and Avid Media Composer has had that ability for years. In the case of Avid, there was also the ability to slip sync with 1/4-frame accuracy. So it’s not really a new technology. OTOH, maybe this editor was burned by drifting code somewhere in the past.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Just to echo Noah, we had imagined that all I’d need to do was ingest and backup the Hyperdeck media. Top and tail the files and add the open and credits and export to upload. Simple. The wake up call came day one when I prepped the first session – set it to transcode out for YouTube and got into a 20 minute conversation. I expected the file to be mostly done when I glanced at the screen. Instead it was at 2% processed! Like the wags say, the battle plan holds right up until the first shot is fired. Noah figured out that not only should we dump the MacMini in favor of A MacPro, but the source of the problem was actually the 14 tracks of embedded audio on every file. Adding the simple workflow step of opening each card file in a Timeline and dumping the 14 unnecessary audio tracks increased my throughput by orders of magnitude. Imagine my chuckle when I watched the TED piece and saw they’d faced the exact same glitch – times a zillion cameras! Live and learn. It was a good lession since in the end, not trying to push things out instantly gave me a bit of freedom to at least double time scan the files and cover a few egregious digital dropouts and fix minor audio and switching issues. And we still got a LOT of content out pretty dang fast. Lessons learned – the real value in doing stuff like this!
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] ” Noah figured out that not only should we dump the MacMini in favor of A MacPro, but the source of the problem was actually the 14 tracks of embedded audio on every file. Adding the simple workflow step of opening each card file in a Timeline and dumping the 14 unnecessary audio tracks increased my throughput by orders of magnitude”
Out of curiosity, wouldn’t most of those tracks be silent? Couldn’t you set FCP X’s import dialogue to ignore silent audio channels? If so, that would have helped. Right?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Oliver,
I didn’t have time to test very much but it appears that the Teradeck system is configured to carry all 16 tracks muxed in every file by default. Some of the folks on the FCPWorks team who are far closer to The FCPX dev folks than I indicated that FCPX 10.2 has much better audio waveform crunching, but it was released on Day 2 and I have a pathological aversion to swapping software when in the midst of a live event. You would THINK BM has a way to output master files in stereo – but since the whole production camera ATEM system is basically a Multicam design – it wouldn’t shock me if the design was to protect not just the mix, but also various camera ISO audio stems.
After figuring out the workflow, it only took me about 3 minutes to kill the extra tracks on a 50 minute recording, so it was a minor annoyance at best – at least after we figured out what was going on.
Live and learn.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “Some of the folks on the FCPWorks team who are far closer to The FCPX dev folks than I indicated that FCPX 10.2 has much better audio waveform crunching, but it was released on Day 2 and I have a pathological aversion to swapping software when in the midst of a live event. You would THINK BM has a way to output master files in stereo”
I think you misunderstood. FCP X has had the ability since the beginning to import media and ignore any audio tracks that are silent. I had presumed that this function would have worked with the ProRes files that the Hyperdeck records. So your imported file would only have whichever tracks actually had audio.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
For whatever reason, Oliver, the recording format the Hyperdeck uses to doesn’t seem to allow this.
Even with “ignore silent tracks” checked, the files STILL showed up in X as 16 discrete tracks.
I suspect that because X prioritizes letting the editor get to work fast, it simply pulls in the file in AS IS first than tries to parse whatever components they include later. Maybe if I’d had the patience to allows X to fully prep the files, those extra tracks would have eventually disappeared when X was sure they were, in fact, blank. But the files came in and immediately cause all rendering and processing to slow to a crawl.
BTW, now that I’ve updated to FCP X 10.2 – which is said to allow faster audio waveform processing – I re-ran one of the files and found little difference. So it’s not that.
Also, I never had time in my workflow to take the Camera Cartridges and make Camera Archives or Sparse Disk Bundles out of them. That “might” have enabled me to pre-top and tail the sessions by setting import in and out points. Never tried that – and the cartridges are back with FCPWorks – so there’s no way to test it.
To manually open the Hyperdeck masters and remove the extra tracks still appears to be the only workflow allowing fast turnaround with the BlackMagic Hyperdeck based Production Camera System.
FWIW.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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