feature workflow, audio dual-system, need help....

[Jonathan Alberts]

so--

have a few questions about apple workflow for a feature i'm editing. i'm having some trouble working the kinks out of the workflow. any help would be appreciated...we're prepping for a film-out finish but will going to hdcam sr initially. we are shooting dual-system audio (no camera mic) and cutting FCP 7 and finishing in color.

1. ingesting 4K material, 16:9 through L&T to Prores Proxy for Offline Edit.

2. use 'sync-n-link' to sync polyphonic 24-bit audio and prores proxy material to each other. this creates merged clips. (and sync-n-link works perfectly)

but i've heard (and seen a number of posts) that testify that merged clips can be a bit of a nightmare (if your footage goes offline and at other times making trimming a problem...can anybody protest this?). people have recommended batch exporting these clips to a self-contained qt thereby creating master clips. that's great but then this won't make the move to color at all smooth...because you'll have self-contained quicktime files....am i missing something here?

so, does anybody have experience on a long-format project who worked with audio dual-system that synched the audio to offline prores codec before editing (eliminating an audio post conform)...then went to color successfully?

i'm just curious how people are doing this...any suggestions/remcommendations would be helpful.

thanks

 

[Michael Romano]

If you have enough storage to handle all the material (You will likely need a LOT) and it never goes offline, should be fine. It is a good practice to email the FCP session to yourself every couple of hours in case of corruption, or copy to another disk. NEVER overwrite the last backup! If your session is corrupted, you lose it all and have to start from scratch. Thats worst case scenario though.

If you have a RAID 6 system and offsite backups of FCP sessions and digital negative/audio files you should be safe.

In my practice I try to limit the length of sequences that go to color for ease of use and to keep the system responsive after applying multiple secondaries.

Another reason to keep that in mind is that FCP has a 2GB limit on OMF export size, a nice surprise when you go to audio post!

OMF exports of nested sequences will not do what you want. Trust me. It creates a single massive audio clip the length of the sequence with no individual clips for your audio team. I would avoid nested sequences at all costs and keep well backed up. You should be fine.

I've never had issues with trimming or offline multiclips but I keep my sessions pretty organized and all on a single volume. Avoid the temptation to use a gaggle of external drives, get a large single RAID system. I use CalDigit HDPro but there are numerous options from which to choose at all price and feature points. Stay away from RAID 0!

That all being said, if you do your renders for offline with something like Clipfinder or REDrushes, you can just reconnect to the camera proxies when editorial is complete and hit "Send To Color". I never actually have used the L&T for RED material, it just seems like a total pain compared to the other options.

Sync-n-Link is excellent by the way, a real time saver!

Hopefully I've been of some help, best luck!

 

[Jonathan Alberts]

In my practice I try to limit the length of sequences that go to color for ease of use and to keep the system responsive after applying multiple secondaries.

Another reason to keep that in mind is that FCP has a 2GB limit on OMF export size, a nice surprise when you go to audio post!

OMF exports of nested sequences will not do what you want. Trust me. It creates a single massive audio clip the length of the sequence with no individual clips for your audio team. I would avoid nested sequences at all costs and keep well backed up. You should be fine.

I've never had issues with trimming or offline multiclips but I keep my sessions pretty organized and all on a single volume.

That all being said, if you do your renders for offline with something like Clipfinder or REDrushes, you can just reconnect to the camera proxies when editorial is complete and hit "Send To Color". I never actually have used the L&T for RED material, it just seems like a total pain compared to the other options.

Sync-n-Link is excellent by the way, a real time saver!

Hopefully I've been of some help, best luck!

Yeah, that's helpful...thanks for the response. Though a couple questions. I back-up like crazy (plus the vault..which saves often) and will have all my storage on the XSAN so it won't be moved once it's up there.

I don't think the OMF (for audio) won't be a problem or over the 2GB size limit as I work in <20 min. reels to avoid a 90 minute show on one timeline.

In regards to nesting, I don't really use nested sequences unless maybe i'm letterboxing something for 4:3.

Y'know, I was testing with clipfinder today but then having trouble linking the files back to their R3D when going into Color. I generated Prores proxy for offline. Then, when we moved to color we couldn't see the RED material. We were having a hard time just figuring out how to 'unlink' the proxy material and link to the R3D (and were under a time crunch--more research needed)....i thought this would be simple...i think we must have done something incorrectly. anybody? a step-by-step would be useful because clipfinder was soooo much better than L&T in dealing with the transcoding.






in any case,

 

[Ben Brainerd]

Y'know, I was testing with clipfinder today but then having trouble linking the files back to their R3D when going into Color. I generated Prores proxy for offline. Then, when we moved to color we couldn't see the RED material. We were having a hard time just figuring out how to 'unlink' the proxy material and link to the R3D (and were under a time crunch--more research needed)....i thought this would be simple...i think we must have done something incorrectly. anybody? a step-by-step would be useful because clipfinder was soooo much better than L&T in dealing with the transcoding.

If you use clipfinder to create your prores, you have to go back to Clipfinder before going to Color and conform to the camera proxies. FCP can't link the ProRes back to the R3D.

Basically:
1. Lock Edit.
2. Export XML.
3. In Clipfinder "Run Conform on FCP XML", select "Replace with X proxies", where X is your desired size (I usually just go with _F).
4. Import new XML into FCP.
5. Send to Color.

 

[Chris Parker]

2. use 'sync-n-link' to sync polyphonic 24-bit audio and prores proxy material to each other. this creates merged clips. (and sync-n-link works perfectly)

but i've heard (and seen a number of posts) that testify that merged clips can be a bit of a nightmare (if your footage goes offline and at other times making trimming a problem...can anybody protest this?). people have recommended batch exporting these clips to a self-contained qt thereby creating master clips. that's great but then this won't make the move to color at all smooth...because you'll have self-contained quicktime files....am i missing something here?

thanks

if you did export to self-contained, would the new self-contained QTs contain both the source timecode from RED Cam, and the audio timecode from BWF (eg. you lost jamsync and these are different)? Anyone?

 

[Philip Hodgetts]

if you did export to self-contained, would the new self-contained QTs contain both the source timecode from RED Cam, and the audio timecode from BWF (eg. you lost jamsync and these are different)? Anyone?

Unfortunately when you do a self contained export of merged ciips FCP includes NO information about either video or audio source. The Video reel name and TC are applied to the exported clip but all reference to the original audio reel and TC (and any offset you may have dialed in) is gone.

That's the dilemma with merged clips: keep them merged but not self contained and keep the references; merged them to self contained files for robustness and lose the links.

Someone ought to do something about that!

Philip

 

[Jonathan Alberts]

Unfortunately when you do a self contained export of merged ciips FCP includes NO information about either video or audio source. The Video reel name and TC are applied to the exported clip but all reference to the original audio reel and TC (and any offset you may have dialed in) is gone.

That's the dilemma with merged clips: keep them merged but not self contained and keep the references; merged them to self contained files for robustness and lose the links.

Someone ought to do something about that!

Philip

yes, i agree, something should be done. FCP should take a few notes from AVID on this.

and my tests confirm the above and using the 'Batch Export' command converts my 24bit audio to 16 bit.

 

[craigjkharris]

I used Sync-n-Link on a project recently had never had any issues with clips going offline.
On set, we locked picture to sound and sent the FCP project file to post where they had to reconnect both picture and audio. At post, all files were offline when they got the drives but were able to reconnect without any issues.

As far as workflow from FCP to Color, just lock your edit and you won't have any problems. The file names of the red files will remain the same, no matter what file type they are.

hope that helps.