Simple workflow, help!

[Shawn Nelson]

I'm a FCP guy, but one of my potential clients wants to do a simple project in Red and cut on their Avid. I would be extremely grateful to anyone who can help me here, as I have never used Avid before.

They want to record hours of talking head interviews to use to cut a SD commercial. The producers were quite unhappy with the idea that Red could not record audio but I have assured them that syncing the audio in post will be easy and automatic since we will be jam-syncing Red to a Sound Devices 744T audio recorder.

So what's the simplest way to pull in hours and hours of Red footage, with timecode, into Avid and then automatically sync all the footage? It would be okay to drop all the way down to SD. I read the full Avid thread, and as I understood it, you have to manually re-sync every single clip. At that point I might as well dumb-slate the whole operation onto a non-TC system! I'm hoping I am misunderstanding this and that there is a simple way to make this happen in Avid.

Perhaps I can export QT to Standard Def Quicktime with timecode from RedAlert, Sync the whole thing in FCP and then batch export all those clips out together for Avid, with the audio already linked. Will that work?

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

I'm a FCP guy, but one of my potential clients wants to do a simple project in Red and cut on their Avid. I would be extremely grateful to anyone who can help me here, as I have never used Avid before.

They want to record hours of talking head interviews to use to cut a SD commercial. The producers were quite unhappy with the idea that Red could not record audio but I have assured them that syncing the audio in post will be easy and automatic since we will be jam-syncing Red to a Sound Devices 744T audio recorder.

So what's the simplest way to pull in hours and hours of Red footage, with timecode, into Avid and then automatically sync all the footage? It would be okay to drop all the way down to SD. I read the full Avid thread, and as I understood it, you have to manually re-sync every single clip. At that point I might as well dumb-slate the whole operation onto a non-TC system! I'm hoping I am misunderstanding this and that there is a simple way to make this happen in Avid.

Perhaps I can export QT to Standard Def Quicktime with timecode from RedAlert, Sync the whole thing in FCP and then batch export all those clips out together for Avid, with the audio already linked. Will that work?

Shawn,

Avid does not support TC from Quicktime. Yes I know. Retarded.

And yeah, you might as well have dumb slated.

I want BWF file auto syncing in REDCINE. It totally can be done. I am not holding my breath.

If you are trying to this yourself (Shawn!!) your best bet, I hate to say, is to import wrappers into a FCP timeline. Sync. Link. Drag to the Bin. Batch export to self contained QTs with audio. Batch transcode to an Avid code in compressor. Problem here is, somebody will have to manually input the TC into the Avid project.
Hope this was some help - but I feel your pain Shawn.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

Wow, thanks Mark, I really appreciate this, you rock!

So you are confirming what I thought. Now on your last point, if I do the full sync in FCP and then batch output them as self-contained QTs with audio, why would I need to manually input the TC into AVID? It seems we could let Avid assign it whatever TC it wanted, since we already achieved the purpose of syncing our footage.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Wow, thanks Mark, I really appreciate this, you rock!

So you are confirming what I thought. Now on your last point, if I do the full sync in FCP and then batch output them as self-contained QTs with audio, why would I need to manually input the TC into AVID? It seems we could let Avid assign it whatever TC it wanted, since we already achieved the purpose of syncing our footage.

Sure - but then how are you going to conform for a final finish?

 

[Shawn Nelson]

Sure - but then how are you going to conform for a final finish?

Well for this particular project there would be no final conform as the deliverable is just SD. Once we got the raw files down to SD we'd just work there.

Now for other projects, I have not yet learned that process. On Wednesday I was on the phone with an assistant editor of a nationally known Director based in Portland (hint: there's only one) and he was asking me detailed questions about using Red in 2k and then doing a hi-end conforming and I was so unknowledgable it was embarassing. Any recommendations on how I can learn this stuff? I get the concepts easy enough, but beyond the 10000ft view and it gets fuzzy.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Well for this particular project there would be no final conform as the deliverable is just SD. Once we got the raw files down to SD we'd just work there.

Ahhhhh .... we'll in that case I would consider using REDCINE. No wrappers - they are a lower quality decode - and transcode a full-quality to the best Avid codec their system can handle - and sync in the avid. Sorry.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

Ahhhhh .... we'll in that case I would consider using REDCINE. No wrappers - they are a lower quality decode - and transcode a full-quality to the best Avid codec their system can handle - and sync in the avid. Sorry.

Oh whoa...doing that in RedCine will preserve the TC for an automatic sync in Avid?

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Oh whoa...doing that in RedCine will preserve the TC for an automatic sync in Avid?

Nope. Right now, REDCINE doesn't put TC in QTs - but in your case - it doesn't matter as there is no conform. (BTW - What automated sync in Avid?)

You need to get all your footage transcoded to SD at the highest possible quality, then sync. That is NOT using the QT wrappers.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

Nope. Right now, REDCINE doesn't put TC in QTs - but in your case - it doesn't matter as there is no conform. (BTW - What automated sync in Avid?)

You need to get all your footage transcoded to SD at the highest possible quality, then sync. That is NOT using the QT wrappers.

The producer I am dealing with pretty much said he wouldn't do this unless the syncing of the audio was automatic via the magic of timecode and jam-syncing the Red to the audio. He didn't want to pay an editor to sync up the takes manually. The TC is needed to make this sync automatic, otherwise the jam-syncing is worthless and we're back to square one.

Perhaps I should advice to either: (a) do this syncing with the Red files in FCP and batch export them as self-contained mov (as previously discussed) or (b) don't rent Red now. But it sounds like there is no TC option for Avid from RedCine?

 

[I Bloom]

The producer I am dealing with pretty much said he wouldn't do this unless the syncing of the audio was automatic via the magic of timecode and jam-syncing the Red to the audio. He didn't want to pay an editor to sync up the takes manually. The TC is needed to make this sync automatic, otherwise the jam-syncing is worthless and we're back to square one.

Perhaps I should advice to either: (a) do this syncing with the Red files in FCP and batch export them as self-contained mov (as previously discussed) or (b) don't rent Red now. But it sounds like there is no TC option for Avid from RedCine?

Seems like, if you can clap the takes. You should do it anyways, even if you are counting on jam syncing working for you.

IBloom

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

The producer I am dealing with pretty much said he wouldn't do this unless the syncing of the audio was automatic via the magic of timecode and jam-syncing the Red to the audio. He didn't want to pay an editor to sync up the takes manually. The TC is needed to make this sync automatic, otherwise the jam-syncing is worthless and we're back to square one.

Perhaps I should advice to either: (a) do this syncing with the Red files in FCP and batch export them as self-contained mov (as previously discussed) or (b) don't rent Red now. But it sounds like there is no TC option for Avid from RedCine?

Well - there are tools from GALLERY SOFTWARE that can do this - but they are not cheap. http://www.gallery.co.uk/

I asked for automated BWF sync in REDCINE back in July - http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3113&highlight=BWF+sync

Sounds like you should pass - if you can't deliver what the producer wants - better to bow out and tell him why than try to pull it off and fail -

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Auto-sync in Avid will lock the clips together but it will require that your video and audio have jamsynced timecode. You can do it via manual marking as well. I would sync via FCP as Mark described. These kind of requests are going to be quite common. In the feature film world, double system sound is the norm, so the workflow of syncing clips is normal but I'm sure it's going to be a hard sell for other types of projects that want a quick turnaround and will say what do you mean there's no sound with the picture. This will all work itself out once the audio features are enabled in the camera.

Steve

 

[Dylan Reeve]

I'd either take the pass on RED for this (given that it's SD anyway you're probably just gilding the lily), or go the FCP way. Otherwise you are going to have to assign timecode and source to every clip you import to Avid.

Otherwise the FCP thing will work - only issue to really check for that is video format between the systems. Blackmagic codecs are popular for that.

Or get the shot selection down to a handful of the best takes first, then only take those into Avid - that'll make the manual metadata entry a little more manageable. However the way you've described the ad (big sit down I/V) it seems that may not be practical.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

Thanks Mark and others who posted. I tried to stop this shoot but they're saying they want to go ahead and do a test tomorrow and try to sync first in FCP then export over to Avid. If that works, then the shoot will be on. I'll update on how that workflow goes.

 

[donatello b]

i wouldn't take the 2k clips and render them put of Redcine as SD ...
because they'll take the SD files and CC down the line etc ... i would render out ( slightly low contrast) min 1280x720 - that would leave a little room to change framing later -seeing how that Director is very creative ... BUT it's his Producer that knows what they want ( but still i would offer/talk them into a little more then SD) ...