[Angelo Lorenzo]

I wouldn’t bother with Time Capsule or an Airport (both are Mac-centric routers). I suppose I should have been more clear: what you could benefit from is a high speed network switch, not a router. Routers connect multiple networks, switches connect and manage traffic within a network.

In your situation, if these two computers can reside in the same room, I would just wire them directly together. Once you add NAS storage or other computers, a switch becomes a good piece of hardware.

At its slowest, gigabit ethernet (~120MBps) should be fine between two computers, you’re not really using any overhead on the line between the computers for much else. I’d account for about 70MBps for a “non optimal” setup. You won’t be able to work on RED or ARRI footage, but that should be decent enough for 5D or a bevvy of ENG camera originating footage. Even if you did deal with Arri or RED, then it may be worth working off of smaller proxy files for throughput gains.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

First idea, and probably the cheapest would be to network the two computers together (wired ethernet, either through a router, or by creating an ad-hoc network and connecting the two computers directly with an ethernet cable). You can make the RAID a shared drive and allow the Macbook Pro access.

There are some performance concerns (a consumer or lowend office router isn’t superfast for instance) and the downside that your Mac Pro would need to be on any time the laptop needed access, otherwise your only real purchase would be an ethernet cable for the laptop.

Just my two cents.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

You may be thinking of “Automatic Speech Alignment”. It’s designed to retime ADR to the on-set track. Not really for dual-system recording like Plural Eyes is; Still no Audition/Premiere functionality to replace that program yet.

From Adobe:
“To quickly align overdubbed dialogue with original production audio, use automatic speech alignment. Audition matches the timing of each word, even if the original audio is noisy or differs in overall length.”

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It is, I don’t know if CS6 is any different, but in CS5.5 go to Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts>Marker>Clip Markers>Set and assign a keyboard shortcut to it for ease of use. In the timeline, it will add the clip marker, but only under two conditions:

1. The CTI is over the clip (obvious)
2. The clip is selected/highlighted by clicking on it (not so obvious)

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It’s hard to say without diving into the particulars.

My big question: is the green screen shot cleanly? Or do you have to do a tweak to every shot?

I would budget two weeks (80 hours) because there are some hidden time sinks: ingest, reviewing footage, transfer to drive, and delivery out.

Beyond editing time, you should bill and consider how long your workstation is tied up start-to-finish.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

So you’re basically using the original file as a status check for bad data.

Premiere will do .XMP sidecar files on some footage like P2 or RED files, I believe, but it isn’t an “always the case” setting.

Alternately, if you turn those original two settings off, then you can still add metadata-like information to each clip that lives exclusively in the Premiere project file. If you’re a lone wolf, it could be sufficient, but if data is going to multiple people, I would still lean towards an embedded metadata solution.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

You know, I can talk to one my friends who develops iOS apps. This seems pretty simple and might be up his alley (He’s an actor and director himself)

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Bob,

I’ve been thinking about an LTO for my own long term storage, but I don’t think it fits in the equation for my client’s needs. I usually DIT on higher end corporate videos or lower budget < $1mil shorts and features. I would deliver LTO, but it never seems to jive with anyone elses workflow. An LTO drive is on my list of acquisitions though.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Well Tony, what is your back-up routine like that you’re shying away from wanting to modify files? Maybe it’s worth moving to program where it does incremental sync/backups instead of re-writing the whole file (it writes what is called a delta, or the part of the file that has changed or been added). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchronization_software anything that has a “Yes” in the delta copying column is worth a look.

Personally, I like to keep metadata settings turned on. I use a lot of metadata in my workflow be it script notes or keywords that help me make a client edit session go more quickly. I hate having them go “do you have the one clip where we…” and taking 5 minutes to find it.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

There are three main ways of re-timing: dropping/repeating frames(dropping in your case), frame blending (simple, kind of messy looking unless you’re trying to speed up footage like 400% then it works well, not so hot for slow motion), and optical flow blending.

NLEs like Premiere allow you to choose between blended or frame dropping.

If you have After Effects, it includes a Time Warp plugin which, if I recall, has some optical flow technology from The Foundry’s Kronos plug-in. You would interpret at 25fps so your footage was in slowmotion, then apply the effect for 200% speed, basically allowing the plugin to take over re-timing from the NLE. This plugin also includes motion blur to reduce the heavier shutter artifacts.

Twixtor is a third party plugin with similar features. Is one better than the other? They’re both tuned to react slightly differently. Twixtor handles deep slow motion better in every case I’ve used it.