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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Opinions on how to edit large project with Avid 8

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Frank Hague

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Hey, guys. I'm nearly done shooting a project that will be about 7 TB of footage with three different cameras (5TB of Dragon footage and 2 TB of C300 and 5D footage) and have a pretty short turnaround for the editing deadline once I wrap. I edit on my Retina laptop with 2.6 GHz and 16GB of ram which actually handles Dragon footage pretty well with Avid 8. I can read AMA fairly well in the low playback setting without it being too glitchy. Still, I oftentimes prefer to transcode into 14x1 MX proxies and then relink after it's cut.

The problem is I don't think I'll have time to transcode the footage I shoot in the final week because I'll immediately only have a week to cut together all the footage (15 shoot days) into a 20 minute short. The good news is I'm only shooting on the C300 for that final week. Do you guys suggest I transcode all the DRAGON footage ahead of time and then overnight the proxies for the C300 footage once I wrap it? Or do you think it's safe to try to just AMA the whole thing???

Thanks, y'all
 
I don't see any solution except to transcode all the footage to smaller files. You can't impose arbitrary deadlines on stuff like this. Borrow a room-full of computers and start transcoding right this second.

Why not transcode while the shoot is happening? This is why hiring an experienced D.I.T. is always a good idea.

I don't envy any colorist having to match C300's and Red in one production. I hope you guys shot a lot of charts.
 
Agree with everyone. Transcode. Use multiple computers if you have to. AMA linking to a mass files can be very unstable.
 
transcode to dnxhd - offline or online depending on your workflow and the conform in Resolve for final grading/output.
In some projects exporting a dnxhd 220 in redflimlog, half premium can be more than enough,
will be probably better quality than the C300, if you are not planning to go back to the RAW files.
if its usefull to go back to the RAW's, work in offline dnxhd, 1/4 debayer will give you still enough quality and a fast transcode, so you can do this while the shooting
is in progress.
for easier matching the colormetrics between the camera's get some charts from datacolor or others from Resolve Color Match function https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onom8tpiof8
You could also have a look at Final Cut Pro X - extra training needed ! but even there working on a proxy version or transcoded version can be a good thing.
-- ps. in my experience avid mc 8.3 has still a lot of bugs, stick to 8.2.2. Perhaps 8.3.1 solves some of the problems, but test !!!
 
Great advice guys, thanks so much. I'm starting to transcode the footage now to 14x1 proxies and will relink later.

Curiously, do you guys work with proxies like this as well or do you prefer to just transcode to large MXF files and edit there? I don't like not being able to punch in though, that's my only issue with that... (plus LOTS of data space needed too)

Oh and one more thing, I'm thinking of purchasing the Pegasus 8 TB RAID drive: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...s_promise_pegasus2_r_4_bay_4x2tb_t_bolt2.html

Does anyone know if I can use all 8 TB on this or is it just really 4TB and they're mirrored for backing up? Large post workflows are not my specialty, as you can tell lol
 
I've edited two feature films and one of them with a two-cam for every scene, sometimes three plus second unit. There is no way that the complexity of editing such a project would work with AMA and R3D files directly. It doesn't matter what software you use for editing, it will never work whenever you've reached a first cut and start making everything even more complicated with different versions, screenings, directors cut, producers cut etc.

Always transcode to offline files, always. And don't do QT ProRes files. MXF isn't a codec, it's a wrapper/container. If you edit in Avid, use DNxHD as codec with MXFs. So in Redcine-X just put each day of shooting in a bin with it's date and transcode everything to MXFs using DNxHD 36 at 1080p. If you need to, balance the shots so that there aren't any big differences between them, otherwise it will be a pain to look at when edited together. Then transcode and put the MXFs into the Avid MediaFiles folder structure. A big tip is to have a text file in there to pinpoint what material is in which folder. When all the material is transcoded and rests in this file structure, have an empty folder named "1" in that structure. That way all renders and precomps will not get mixed with the original footage.

Open Avid, let it build the database. Then import the ALE from each transcoded bin into the Avid bins of the same date, relink them and they will link to the transcoded footage. From here on you need to sync with sound, but you can rename and do whatever you want with those files and they will always relink correctly to the original files when done.

Doing all this after the shoot will take time, that's why most productions have assistant editors who do this during shooting. Otherwise all those days of work will need to happen after the shoot wrapped, which could be an entire month of work.
 
We work in long form doc projects with large volumes of media and we always transcode - I'd trust AMA for short form but not for complex, large broadcast projects.

For info, we moved across to Avid from FCP 7 and so far the biggest thing we've enjoyed is stability. Avid does crash BUT not often and it is so simple to share projects and work with teams. It's also much easier to find freelance editors when using Avid.

Scott
 
AMA still has the same advantages and disadvantages associated with it based on codec, size of project, drive type and speed, performance expectations such as layers, VFX, multicam, etc. It did add background transcode and external transcode with DMF, but direct linked files will still be hit and miss.
 
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