[Tom Vaughan-mountford]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the input, it’s been tremendously helpful.

We’ve put together an estimate for the client which is in the region of a year’s residency in our suites – and we’ve saved the grade and mix for a whole other discussion! Suffice to say, I think they’ll be taking another look at their budget for the ‘days’ of editing before they head off on their search for funding for the series. I wish them the best of luck as I’ve long wanted to break into long-form cutting.

Cheers,

Tom Mountford
Senior Editor
JMS Group Ltd

[Tom Vaughan-mountford]

Indeed! I think the schedule for progressing the project will largely be decided by the access to funding and broadcaster commitment, but I have a feeling late-2017 will creep considerably further back – and I’m pretty confident in telling them that, from a post-production perspective, they’re going to need to allow more time!

Yes, non-linear editing = more time for clients to agonize for hours over decisions you used to make on their behalf in a split second! 🙂

Tom Mountford
Senior Editor
JMS Group Ltd

[Tom Vaughan-mountford]

Hi Walter – I learned Apple Color with your tutorial discs many moons ago!

I definitely think the client may have underestimated the amount of material they will accumulate between now and late 2017 (their anticipated delivery deadline) especially in consideration of interviews – from my experience in corporate video I’ve got accustomed to viewing twenty-minute takes of a stumbling speaker, trying to extract just a couple of decent soundbites out of them!

It’s very interesting to understand how much more work is going to be required with regards notes and transcriptions – the transcription alone is something I’d definitely consider outsourcing to another agency. I’m usually just given a thirty-second guide-track and a single sheet of instructions to work with!

Tom Mountford
Senior Editor
JMS Group Ltd

[Tom Vaughan-mountford]

Hi Shane, Hi Jon –

Thanks for the input, it’s very helpful indeed. The guys pitching the idea to me are (thankfully) both very experienced in directing and financing large projects, but haven’t had much day-to-day experience of post-production for perhaps twenty years or more. I rather look forward to the mutual learning experience as some of their past projects are rather enviable!

I work with two other editors, and also know a couple of good freelancers – so it’s handy knowing how to break into pods/scenes. Getting a better idea now of how this could work.

Tom Mountford
Senior Editor
JMS Group Ltd

[Tom Vaughan-mountford]

Hi Brian – I spent hours trying to figure out this annoying glitch, I had assumed it was something to do with the codec clipping the video levels, so I eased-off my colour correction and used the broadcast-safe filters to keep it all within safe parameters – and checked on the scopes. Sometimes it would sort it, other times it wouldn’t and the green blocks would just turn to smaller white ones. In the end I found that turning off ‘Use Maximum Render Quality’ at the bottom right of the Export Settings box removed the problem – as well as drastically cutting the time that it takes to export a file.

Hope it works for you!

Tom

[Tom Vaughan-mountford]

Cheers for the info David – I’ll bear that in mind regarding HQ over SQ, I’ve found it’s a great codec visually but come to think of it my previously rock-solid system HAS been doing numerous very bizarre things since I started using it on a regular basis. I’m a heavy user of XDCAM-EX but most apps take forever to render graphics etc in that codec so ProRes seemed a pretty good intermediate… but I might reconsider using HQ!

Anyway, I did find a cause and the workaround – the timing reference of the ProRes sequence was being messed around by importing an externally sourced WAV file onto the timeline… sure they were both 48KHz – but creating the soundtrack on another machine brought along with it something buried deep in the data that conflicted with ProRes… the solution was to put the WAV file through Compressor and create a new 48KHz AIFF file… and tah-dah!!! After a sleepless night all my non-sync sound nightmares were solved!

Tom Mountford
Senior Editor
The JMS Group Ltd