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Work Flow
Hey,
I’m a student studying editing and am very confused about file types..and the wording of the questions I have been given! Perhaps if I understood them I would be better equipped to answer them!
How is the footage moved between departments? – I doubt this means by hard drive or a shared school network (or you put it on a flash disk and walk to the next room!!)
What other media will you be using, and in what format? (Eg. Video, still images and audio in Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Motion, After Effects, Maya, Sound Editing programmes, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, etc.) (15) – I will use FCP, mpeg streamclip and DVD pro…do you think she means for the entire process ie vfx and sound ect?
In what final broadcast format will your film be delivered? – Mov?
How will you achieve maximum quality playback and most efficient post-production time? Include estimated time for the following steps: log and capture, edit, other departmental work, final edit, export. (10) – think I’ve got this one
Workflow design – I know this sounds stupid…does she mean a diagram with arrows?
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3 Replies
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[hannah goldie] “Workflow design – I know this sounds stupid…does she mean a diagram with arrows?”
To me this means how you get from your raw footage to your final distributable, and the steps you will take to get there. While making sure every step is optimized in both terms of use of budget and resources.
So for example shooting in DV-SD if your distribution is going to be theatrical is a bad workflow.
Does your final product include a lot of mographs, or FX? If it does figure using AE, Motion or what ever. If it doesn’t then don’t waste the effort. Will you need out of house sound sweetening? Custom music? Narration? Color correction? DVD authoring? Film transfer?Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comI have a system, it has stuff in it, and stuff hooked to it. I have a camera, it can record stuff. I read the manuals, and know how to use this stuff and lots of other stuff too.
You should be suitably impressed… -
Actually there are a number of possible answers to those questions and sometimes the best choice at each step only becomes clear in the context of the entire job.
Files have a wrapper (e.g. Quicktime, AVI, etc) and a codec (e.g., ProRes, H.264, etc). Data compression is handled by the codec and can be lossy or non-lossy, i.e., it keeps or loses picture (or sound)information. Delivery/transmission uses lossy compression, where the losses are cleverly engineered not to show too much on screen. Converting between codecs causes a loss of quality (called concatenation errors) so each stage before final delivery should be at the best quality available, non-lossy (or nearly non-lossy) compression being the preferred choice (e.g., ProRes in FCP or 2:1 in Avid).
Sometimes file transfer between departments does indeed happen by walking down the corridor (or across town) with a hard drive or memory stick. Stills and audio tracks are more often sent over a network or internet, but video files at high quality are BIG (so often the “sneakernet” is more efficient unless the media is stored on a shared network).
Final broadcast format depends upon the company it’s going to. Some still prefer tape delivery, some will give you a particular set of requirements for file delivery (I did some last year and the broadcaster accepted MPEG IMX files with particular settings).
Whether it’s what’s required, I’m not certain, but I think a diagram with arrows is a very good way of showing a workflow.
I hope that’s helpful and not too patronising.
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Patronising? I had to read the first paragraph three times to grasp it! Thank you for your help.
Hannah
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