workflow Archive

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Editshare active at Sumsound

– May 23, 2010Posted in: Thoughts

Since the inception of a plan to build Sumsound, two technologies have always been at the forefront of my mind…

The Satellite technology from Avid Audio foremost, which led me to invest in the video satellite rig, running both Media composer and PTLE with a decklink card. IMHO, any way we can both save time and improve picture quality on the mix screen is a good thing for everyone. It saves having “that discussion” with directors/producers about “pixels/image quality/why???”.

Secondly, I was always aware that the video editing house above my room, Cutting Edge, ran Avid Media Composers and centrally stored all their media on an EditShare system. I’d hoped to collaborate with them once the business started and in turn hoped having a Media Composer video satellite rig might come in handy…Sure enough, on a picture we are about to work together on, the SFX editor will be based in my room and need regular picture updates from editorial upstairs, so this past week, Rob Peru the Tech Manager from Cutting Edge Sydney and myself got the Editshare connection in place and tested it out.

Worked like a charm! They are cutting with the Avid HD video codec DNxHD36 for their offline upstairs, so that’s what I wanted to open on the video satellite rig, and stream via the 1000bT connection from their editshare. It turns out it was a straightforward affair.

Editshare have a snow leopard client, its free to install, as you pay for the storage unit, not for client seats on it, unlike some other companies…So since they had a spare port, it didn’t cost anyone a cent to add my room to their existing network.

The Editshare client software is simple to use, and once you’ve mounted the volumes you want, you can save that as a preset and it loads them automatically next time you log on.

So my vid sat mac pro has two ethernet ports, one is connected full time to the Editshare directly, and the second goes to my 1000bT switch that connects to my PTHD rig, ICON and local network for the audio team.

The one issue we are left with is that the rest of the audio team are not connected to the editshare, so they will need DV Pal QT movies to work to. I’m curious to test if I can open the sequence in MC, export a QT Ref movie for PTLE to open on my deckink card, open THAT, then start rendering the QT movies in the background while running PTLE in the foreground as my video VTR…Hoping to test that this week coming. Hopefully the 8 core Xeon and the bandwidth from the Editshare will cope with the demands of both tasks simulaneously, which would be awesome. I think this will have benefits when it comes to consistency of the materials that we need.

The only trick we needed to configure on the Editshare, was that I wasnt streaming picture from my Media composer onto my projector, rather I was using a QT ref pointing at the media and opening that on my Decklink card. To make that work, we needed to turn on “QT Reference mode” on those volumes on the Editshare. Seemed logical, we didnt even bother to test it without that mode switched on. It just worked, looked fantastic on the 3.5m projection screen and scrubbed and updated smooth as all get out, just like local SD video, but looking far, far sexier. :)

A happy engineer here – love it when a good plan comes together!

0

Expand tracks by Timecode with Concert recordings

– February 23, 2009Posted in: General Topics

See the notes under the video…

This topic relates to the Expand tracks by timecode feature, that was introduced in PTHD7.4cs5.
It allows you to automatically “conform” your tracklay session (large contiguous files recorded at once) to an edit made by someone else – in the demonstration, a video editor (Media Composer).
So, you have recorded the discrete tracks of a concert, plus a 2-mix. The mix gets given to a video editor along with all the video material. They do a cut of the concert, and hand you back the cut of your original mix file.
With the Expand tracks by Timecode feature, you can now expand out all the discrete tracks, matching the edit to the 2mix given to you…So you can say, bring the bass to the front of the mix when the camera is on the bass player, bring the guitar up front similarly etc rather than a static mix throughout the clip.
As Venue and PTHD systems are used in the field to record more and more concerts, this workflow is a powerful addition to the options for post production of those projects.

Caveats:
1.I handed an embedded AAF over to the video guys with my mix files in them
2.They handed me back a referenced AAF – which I then relinked to the original Mix files in my audio files folder of the concert recording.
3. All files in the session must share an identical “Creation date” in the Project browser. If you have extra files in your session, addition overdubs etc, they may well be expanded as well, giving you many extra tracks that are probably undesirable. It just looks for any region with matching timecode and puts it onto a new track, that’s all. That could encompass alot of material in your session if you are not working with a pure tracklay of the concert.
Hope that’s useful!

7

Indiana Mix and the Template of Doom

– July 10, 2008Posted in: General Topics

The idea of stem mixing is as old as film sound, but in recent years its taken off in the music industry to the point where mastering engineers are often being supplied with stems (or requesting them) instead of the traditional 2-track.

If you adopt a stem based workflow, one of the most effective ways of saving time is setting up a mixing template.

In ProTools that may consist of two parts, both a *.ptf file (write protected/stationary pad) and an io Setup file – so your busses are labelled the way you like and your outputs are set up for either stereo or 5.1 mixing. Be sure to keep a backup of these files somewhere safe!

Going down the path of setting up your ptf file, if you adopt a template there are two killer features you should be using, markers and window configs…

Picture this: you are mixing the project, diving down, working on backing vox or ambience tracks or SFX or the drum kit and you want to change the overall balance of your stems. So what do you do? You simply hit “.”, “2″, “.” to recall memory locate 2 and what happens?

Potentially, all of this: in the edit window, the track list gets hidden, the region bin closes, the io view and inserts views disappear, all your tracks disappear except the buss masters, in volume view, which blow up to take up a quarter of the window each (red lines drawing as you mix in latch mode), on the right hand side, your favourite buss master compressor plug in window opens and maybe Signal tools, showing you the current level in Peak and RMS and you are now in the sweetest place to mix your stems – all the info you want, maximised on screen at the press of a memory locate.

So how? Well, create a memory locate, tied to no “Selection” but with track show hide/track height and a window config attached…

This is the point – combining windows configs and memory locates in your template gives you alot of power when it comes to everyday tasks, navigating your session as a power user who can anticipate the every day tasks of crafting your mix.

Ive seen some power users with templates that include windows configs that open/close a tonne of info in both their edit windows and mix windows saved to common sense buttons on their numeric keypad like 4 and 5 to open and close the edit window, 7 and 8 to do similar with the mix window, 1,2,3, 5 and 9 for project specific views – seeing it in action is definately a “penny drop” moment.

ICON Power feature:

Taking this idea a step further – dig into your ICON preferences to enable “Track Show/Hide: ShowHdn”

This means that tracks that are hidden in the edit window are still accessible on the control surface using your custom fader groups! So you can now mix on tracks on the console, independent of what is visible in the Pro Tools GUI.

Next Blog: An ICON automation feature called AutoJoin, how to mix effortlessly without reaching for the stop button and a mouse when you make a mistake!