[Jonathan Wing]

Thanks Mark, those are good points. Yes we have a SAN with endless terabytes and new Mac Pros so we are definitely suited to handle the task. So far I’ve done one song and I had no big issues apart from mentally getting lost when a director came in and asked for a certain camera, so I’m trying to re-think my approach. The syncs were actually given to me as stacks by our AE so it was indeed my starting point. Which that said, it’s already beyond the ingest and logging stage– we’re already in the edit unfortunately. Oh well.

I’m also thinking of distilling this down into separate sequences ordered by camera type, at least that way if the director asks to see a wide, I can have a sequence with only wides to pull from. Mainly this is to help facilitate working with others and to know where I can find other options.

But I agree maybe I’m overdoing it with such a large timeline and I can have that to refer to for backup, but in approaching my edit I should start simple/clean and work from there. And then if a director wants to use a side CU from Berlin, I can track it down hopefully quickly. Oh boy…

Just for kicks I’ll give you a glimpse of what my world has been looking like (this is the master sync with splices and color coding for good moments)

[Jonathan Wing]

A lot of redundancy is right– but it’s good to see it all because magic will happen in the places you least expect. 🙂

Thanks for your tips. Metadata is a good call. I’m currently working this project in premiere (that’s what the company has me on) so I don’t know if it can tag metadata but I know I can do color labels, so I might just use that to create my own coding system.

The 100-layer thing– I may have misrepresented what I mean by that. I don’t at all mean any sort of PiP type of visual. The only reason they would be layered is for the simple utility of keeping it all in sync. Each layer is a camera from each night, and basically I only solo one layer at a time so at a moment in the song, I can go layer by layer to see what happened and then I drag down any moments I like to V1-V5, which is are my top choice tracks and audition them against each other until I find my favorite moment. But meanwhile all the other shots are still available to grab in case a director comes in and says “what do we have for a wide shot from the London show?”… even if I didn’t select it, I can still go to that moment in the song and find it on a higher layer and unmute it to see what it looks like. I mean, it makes sense logically, but my big problem is I can never remember which camera is which or what moment is what… it just becomes a big mess of confusion as far as which is which.

Maybe I should start a new sequence and only copy into it the moments I like, and then I can return to my 100-layer master sync sequence if a director needs to see another shot. But curious to hear if anyone has another approach? I guess most normal concert films are cut from one night so maybe I’m attempting a crazy first… yikes.

[Jonathan Wing]

I always find that the fast-forward scrub speed to slow down is with JKL is really wonky and sluggish in FCP. So if I see something I like while going fast, and then hit to go back in reverse, and then back forward, it is just not nearly as precise as using the little shuttle wheel in the canvas/viewer windows. The shuttle wheel there works better for what I want, but then I constantly have to mouse back and forth.

Minor problem to have, but a wheel would be a lot smoother. I have the Euphonix MC Control at home which I love, but is large and requires drivers…

[Jonathan Wing]

Ah yes, I often forget you can use that little thing. Good point. Wish there was a keystroke but what the hell, that’ll do! Thanks.

[Jonathan Wing]

I will second the need for this. I’ve been having to switch these settings constantly on a project and in my opinion, more important than creating a keystroke for this specific thing, would be to give us an editable shortcut menu where we could define our own. Will also submit a feature request!

[Jonathan Wing]

Yes, Avid is well built for sharing/moving projects across various systems. As long as you transfer the project folder and the Avid Mediafiles folder that the footage (and presumably renders) resides in it will work very smoothly and you’ll be up and running in no time.

[Jonathan Wing]

Paul, I appreciate your response, but yes, that isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. Also I’m trying to keep it in Avid and as simple as possible. A film burn effect could work with an ADD transfer mode over two clips dissolving together, but I’m not really going for obvious film burn or colorized film looks so much as blooming highlights / overexposure kind of thing. Thank you though!

[Jonathan Wing]

I’m not totally sure about that shortcut, but here are a few perhaps helpful resources:

Comprehensive shortcut list: https://hershleder.com/content/keyboard-shortcuts-keyboard-shortcuts-avid-media-composer

Some info on bin shortcuts: https://community.avid.com/forums/t/91333.aspx

Also, remember that your keyboard is highly customizable. I kept the most essential things from the default layout but there are a number of things I customized in the keyboard settings that suit my workflow. I’d recommend opening the keyboard in your settings panel and then hit cmd+3 for the command palette and with ‘button-to-button reassignment’ selected choose the tools that make sense for you. Other AVID users might find some of my layout confusing but it suits what I need and do on a daily basis. Maybe you’ll find more bin and navigational things in there.

[Jonathan Wing]

Honestly, I think your friend’s advice might be the best. But if you created an effect template (resize/3d warp for rotate) you could have that in a bin ready to drag onto future clips, and when you’re done, just select all clips and remove effect. I can’t think of any other way… It’s a little tedious, but once you have the template it shouldn’t be so bad.

I could be wrong, but it might actually be easier in FCP, because you could just go into the motion tab for one clip, and select rotate at 90 degrees and resize so that it all fits the window, and then you can save the motion settings to a “favorite” by hitting control+F and it will automatically assign a shortcut to this favorite which you can see under Effects > Motion Favorites > Name of clip [shortcut]. Then, as you open ever clip, simply hit this shortcut and there you go. When you finish the project, simply remove the motion settings from one clip, copy, and paste the motion attributes to all the other clips in one go.

I can’t think of an easier way in Avid, unfortunately.

[Jonathan Wing]

Bill, thank you for your response. Good questions.

So, the final master will be delivered for broadcast on HDCAM SR. Is that strictly 1080p or 1080i? I know it may sound amateur, but I come from a more directing and creative editorial background, so my technical knowledge here is still somewhat limited. If the final master is for broadcast, does that mean that everything should be converted to 1080i from the start?

My concern with going up to 1080 from 720 rather than the other way around was I was thinking the footage shot on the HVX at 720 would suffer. Would the up-res be a noticeable degradation? In theory, wouldn’t the quality be better overall if the footage shot at 1080 was down-res’ed to 720? Also, on this note, I thought some broadcasters still broadcast in 720, and others in 1080; are most projects still delivered at 1080i regardless?

Also, this is my first project where I’ve mixed media and resolutions–I’ve mostly done either/or. So if the final project needs to be at, say 1080, do you recommend that I convert the 720 footage from the start? I guess ultimately then I would want that footage to be the same codec as the 1080 footage as well, so for offline example, DNxHD 36. Since this is not an option for the transcode menu with 720 footage, would I need to convert that footage first with an outside program, such as mpegstreamclip or what have you? That seems complicated, as I believe I would have to first import and then export with Avid and then re-import, mainly because it’s from P2. Is that correct?

Again, sorry for these kind of questions. Like I said, I’ve never really had to do this because previous projects have all stayed within the format they were shot in, and I’ve also only done smaller projects for primarily digital delivery. Thanks again.