Workflow of a professional post-production studio, experiences?

[Mark Hollis]

That really depends on what you are doing.

I worked at NBC at 30-Rock as well as at ABC. Both facilities may be doing a lot more than what you would be interested in doing in Trinidad and Tobago. Both rely extensively on Avid editors for cutting and Avid’s servers for capture and for distribution. Both NBC and ABC have ISIS servers running in tandem — in other words, they have redundant servers that record everything that comes in from their brueaus as well as from the Associated Press Television Network and Reuters (to the extent that they purchase that material) as well as their own affiliates.

Feeds from APTN and other sources happen 24 hours daily, 7 days weekly, 365 days yearly. There’s no break for Carnival, no halt during Christmas and so on.

Both companies are using Avid’s Capture Manager, Media Manager, Interplay and iMews systems extensively for their work. Avid’s tools are not used for playback to air at NBC, I don’t know about how ABC plays back to air.

Where I work now, we’re on a much smaller scale. While Avid’s Media Composer software (a special version called Newscutter is used for news) is a major standard here in the US, many people graduate from university here knowing Final Cut Pro.

At CT-N, we’re headed in that direction. We have identified a server product which can also do playback. Final Cut Pro workstations will be doing a lot of heavy lifting, from just conforming shows to editing a newsmagazine that is a wrap-up of the week’s events.

I think that, from the standpoint of providing a television service to your country, you’re looking at something along the lines of what CT-N plans to do. What we’re doing will scale to high-definition, should there be any such mandate in your country. It will also work with legacy television formats.

A certain amount of our ingest is live, into a production switcher. We also must record clean feeds without graphics for later editing and production. We also put out a live stream to internet. We also shoot remotes with P2 cameras, using Panasonic cameras that can shoot both standard definition and high definition.

One workflow that you might consider is along the lines of what NBC does with their news divisions: They make graphics (and graphic elements) seperate from their standard news and show editing and then integrate that material into the edit. That way graphics, which are time consuming, can be done by people trained to that task and there is a division of labor. Many hands make light work and you get on the air better when you have multiple people contributing to a common goal.

We would make graphics for news production in one area and send the graphic to the editors in another area as a Quicktime file that they could just drop into their packages. The same technique was done for the in-show promo for NBC’s nightly news program.

At NBC, material was then sent to Grass Valley playback systems and rolled live into a news show through a switcher with a Director. There were generally 12 editors available for the news show, six playback people, an audio engineer, a Technical Director, Director, ten graphics people working in everything from Photoshop to After Effects and on the Avid DS about 20 producers, 5 or 6 production assistants, four executive producers and an anchorperson. Lots of reporters, too.

So if you can describe what you are intending to do, I can probably nail down how you can do it.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mikkell Khan]

What we will be doing is essentially commercial work, from 30 second ads to the 30 minute training video. Features are not planned as of yet but will be something considered in the near future (by May 2010).

As of now I was considering a workflow of 3 systems, each with a specific purpose. One for the main edit, one for the special effects of the pieces required and one for the sound and music. The linkage right now would be based on a draft version of the edit would be done and uploaded to a network hard drive, from there, the computers for special effects and sound would take this draft piece (be it in a playable file format such as an avi or mov) and do their work based on this whilst the editing system continues to add the final touches to the piece.

In the end, the editing system will access the content of the music and graphics from the network drive and create the final piece to be distributed.

Right now we will be using the Adobe CS4 and all of its applications for this process. However, I don’t know how sustainable the dynamic link feature in this program would be for this method. (network storage)

Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Or even greater, your insight into an already existing and successful system in the field of work I am describing.

Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago)

[Mark Hollis]

Please pardon me. I have had nose to the grindstone the last several days and haven’t had the chance to reply.

I have a very good friend who works up in New Hampshire and is using CS4 for exactly what you are doing. The real advantage with his workflow is the interplay between Adobe’s After Effects and Premiere Pro. His biggest problems have to do with ingest — especially where he has to work with legacy tape formats.

For that, he’s using an Avid Newscutter and he does not like that. He upgraded to CS4 to be able to read P2 cards in a new camera they purchased and he’s capable of working in both HD and SD formats. Others will tell you that Adobe offered upgrades to CS3 that can deal with P2 media but I think he was interested in the upgrade for the tighter integration between Adobe applications, which was a real win for him.

He’s using CS4 with Windows XP Pro. I don’t think one would need a 64-bit Photoshop (which does work in Vista and, presumably Win 7) for video applications. Premiere and After Effects are not 64-bit in CS4.

Use a regular Windows server to transfer materials from one workstation to another and I’d RAID 5 stripe it, unless I could afford to RAID 1 (complete redundancy) stripe the server. You’ll want Gigabit Ethernet to transfer materials.

I have a Gig-E system but I do not edit material that is on the server. I place media on local storage for editing only. If you need ot edit off of a server, I would recommend 10-Gigabit Ethernet (and the switches for that are kind of expensive).

If you are doing features, I have to say that the Adobe applications may run out of gas for that. I have done feature-length material on Avid and Final Cut. Avid is superior to Final Cut in media management, while Final Cut is supreior to Avid in terms of being able to work with just about any media that is out there. Final Cut also is not tied to proprietary hardware for support — but you have to support yourself or have a VAR or integrater offer you support.

You can get very good centralized servers for either Final Cut or Avid (or a mixture of the two) from third-party vendors. Avid will not support any server that is not made by them (and their servers are very costly) but I have personal experience with Terrablock and my experience is very positive. Terrablock systems mount on your computer (be it an Avid system running Windows or a Final Cut Studio system running on a Mac) as if it were a local hard drive. The “drives” may be expanded or contracted based on the needs of the job by using a Terrablock control panel that runs on both systems. All media may be passed through the Terrablock system and Terrablock arrays may be expanded using off-the-shelf hardware. Terrablock topology uses Fibre Channel, so it scales nicely all the way to HD formats.

The reason why I am pointing you away from a complete Adobe suite of applications for feature work is because Adobe does not yet have the kind of media management and handling that Apple and Avid have put together. And I know very well that you can use After Effects to composite material for use on an Avid or on Final Cut system within a facility. Adobe scales well to :30 or :60 spots and I’m currently cutting a half-hour program on Premiere Pro 1.5, but I would hesitate to take a feature on using the Adobe Suite.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mikkell Khan]

With regards to the Adobe not being able to handle full features, I would have agreed with you pre version 4.1, however, I have edited a piece that was 2 hours broken down into about 12 different sequences loaded with effects and premiere was able to handle it very well since this upgrade. However, I will still take into consideration your suggestion for Final Cut or Avid…but it most likely will have to be Avid as I have invested in Windows base machines.

In terms of hard drives, my considerations were that each system would have its own esata or firewire based external drive to do its main editing and only materials ready to be used as reference material or final distribution would go on the network drive.

Can you recommend some network or server drive that may be best suited for these means as well as at a reasonable price?

I have heard of SAN systems, but I am suspecting that would be in the price range of your ten gigabit servers and especially redundant if I adapt a push-pull style production system.

Thank you for all the information you have provided so far, it is giving me a lot of insight I would not have had before.

Best Regards,

Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago)

[Mark Hollis]

If you go the Avid route, your Avid reseller will sell you new computers (They’re using HP workstations and Mac Pros presently). So you would be buying computers in any case if you went Avid — they do have software only versions of their Media Composer, but you will not be able to do any I/O of any kind, as that is not enabled in the software-only version.

As to a Final Cut Pro system, you should take a look at the workstation costs complete with software and any BoB (breakout box, such as the AJA or Blackmagic Design cards) you may require for your operation as a whole.

Trying to re-use your current PCs for editing and graphics workstations is not recommended for a system upgrade.

As to what kind of network you would use, that depends on whether or not you go Avid’s route (and I can recommend the Terrablock or Avid’s own proprietary Unity MediaNetwork for that) or you go Apple’s route.

You can save a lot of money by editing off of a server if you have several edit rooms sharing storage. That is the beauty of a server. In fact, you can cut a feature in one room and cut promos for that feature in another — all using the same material. You can also begin editing in one room while another room is doing your ingest.

So if you do have a SAN, that can really help with your workflow. Local projects are fine but they are local — you cannot take advantage of having multiple workstations and get work done faster that way.

One thing you might also consider is that Apple’s Compresser can run on multiple cores and multiple workstations at the same time. So if you have two edit bays that are not working, you can utilize the power of two computers to compress a show for a DVD (or distribution) at the same time, speeding up your workflow for output.

Apple also sells Final Cut Server, which is designed to aid in workflow and asset management as well as asset searches.

I do realize you are working on a PC base here, but you’re going to buy new computers whether you go with Avid or Final Cut if you choose to upgrade.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Arc Nevada]

Mark Hollis,

You use Adobe Premire Pro 1.5 but do you realize Adobe added the Media Encoder several years ago to the Production Premium? It works like Apple’s Compressor.

Why would your friend with Premiere Pro CS4 use Avid News Cutter when working with legacy tapes? Are you talking about 3/4″ and Beta tapes. You do realize Adobe Premiere will wok with the AJA and Decklink cards not to mention they make DV converter for digitizing older analoge tapes.

https://desktop.grassvalley.com/products/videoconversion.php

Some of these converters even give you full deck control. I see no need to use Avid’s News Cutter when working with legacy tapes but perhaps you could explian it to me. Perhaps there is method to the madness. I can aquire old analogue tape swith ym system. A Decklink Intensity Pro card would also work.

mikkell khan,

Adobe CS4 should work just fine although the Production Premium would be better. The media managment should be just fine.

The Dynamic Link feature allows After Effects to read Premiere Pro porject files and Premiere can read AE project files. That is all the Dynamic Link is for.

If you network your computers together and allow the drives to be acessed by one another you should be fine.

Could you use external Fire Wire drives or hot swappable bays?

Do you have a budget to stay within?

Below is a video about hard drive storage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3faYro5MjQ

If you have a company network your systems together the hard drive (storage) system will probably have swappable hard drive bays.

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[Mikkell Khan]

Thanks for this information.

I am planning to have a networking expert come in and organize the setup for me. I have explained what I need and how I need it to run and I will refer to these posts for notes during that time.

Hot swappable bays sound like a very good solution and I’m trying to keep the budget within a $5000 US range.

Mikkell Khan
Director
Diamond Films Ltd. (Trinidad and Tobago)

[Mark Hollis]

My friend used Avid Newscutters to digitize because, before Adobe released the updates to CS3 and released CS4 Premiere could not use the material he shot for some reason. He would ingest using the Avid, which he hated, and then send the files to his PC with AE and Premiere Pro.

I regularly capture material from Sony J-10SDI VCRs from Betacam SX and from Panasonic AJ-SD255 DVCPro VCRs, and I’m using Premiere Pro 1.5 and capture over Firewire. Aside from having problems with batch capture (which simply does not work well at all), captures work great.

I think my friend’s Avid workflow is due as much to legacy media as anything. I think his station is still shooting on old Betacam-SP cameras. He just got a HD camera that works with P2 cards and CS3 could not read them. I’m aware that Adobe released an update that will work with P2 for CS3, but he updated to CS4, which can definitely read the material. He’s pretty happy with Adobe’s suite and pretty unhappy with Avid.

I have worked with networked drives. I do not recommend that kind of a workflow. A central server tends to be safer if you RAID 5 stripe it and if your neighbor needs to reboot or has a software malfunction you are not affected. And removable hard drives are just fine for backing up old media. Not for storage. Removable drives don’t come in RAID pairs (yet), which makes them pretty useless for HD projects as well as uncompressed NTSC or PAL.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?