Little Frog in High Def

No, that isn’t some odd Frankenstein-vampire thing.  It is a term that is often used by documentary editors to explain how we edit certain interview clips.  Much like Frankenstein’s Monster was made from body parts of different people, a “Frankenbite” is a soundbite made up of statements from several sentences from an interview subject.  We might need half of one sentence, and the other half of another, or a small word to piece together a couple sentences, or to add to make what they say sound right (mean, make sense).

Now, to keep things ethical, which is one of the main rules of documentaries, you shouldn’t do this to make the subject say something they didn’t say.  Rather, we are trying to condense what they are saying, or make what they are saying clearer…make sense.  Not everyone is concise in how they say things, nor can some people explain things in a way that makes sense to the normal everyday viewer.

It’s a bit different than a “pull up.” A “pull up” is when an editor cuts out “uhm,” “uh,” “you know,” “like,” or any number of paused-in-thought-words, or stumbles, repeated words…or empty air when the subject is formulating what they what they are about to say.  We make “So I, uh…I ran across the str…the road to the store, uhm, where I, you know, ran into Harrison Ford, like…uh…buying beer” into “So I ran across the road to the store, where I ran into Harrison Ford buying beer.”  Basically just cleaning up the statement.

Frankenbyting is where we try to fix what people say.  Take the following statement: “The school I went too, back in 1988, I was in third grade at the time.  I was listening to our teacher talk about Andrew Jackson, the president who forced the Indians to march hundreds of miles from the east coast to Oklahoma…many of them died.  Mr.Braeburn said he was a hero for moving these dirty Indians away from civilized people, but I…I couldn’t stand for that, so I raised my hand…I am Indian…I confronted that…told him he was wrong for saying that.”  I might want to chop this up and make it more clear.  ”Back in 1998, (when) I was in third grade, our teacher, Mr Braeburn, (said) that President Andrew Jackson forced Indians to march hundreds of miles to Oklahoma, (and) man of them died.  He said that he was a hero for moving these dirty indians away from civilized people.  I am Indian…I couldn’t stand for that.  I confronted (him) (and) told him he was wrong.”

So what I did was make what the subject said clearer…but say the exact same thing.  Because their speech pattern was so broken up that it make it difficult to follow.  So I rearranged things to make it clearer.  But I didn’t have all the words I needed to make it right.  You’ll note that the words in parenthesis, (these things), those are words that aren’t in that sentence…bridging words that I need to find.  I will listen to other parts of the interview in order to find those words.  But not only do I need to find those words…they need to sound right.  Someone might say “and” differently, depending on what they are talking about…or “but.”  Or any other word.  So I have to find that word, and it needs to sound right, fit the sentence.  Have the right inflection.

Was this time consuming…you bet it was.  But now there is software out there that can help us.  Scott Simmons of The Edit Blog over at Pro Video Coalition mentioned this on Twitter.  He said that he used GET, from AV3 software, to search for the word “but” to help him build his Frankenbite.  GET, and PhraseFind on the Avid side, is designed to use waveform prediction (corrected by Phillip Hodgetts in the comments below) which uses pattern matching of audio waveforms to catalog narration, and allow us the editors to search for soundbites, or words, by simply searching for it.  Now that is what I call handy!

Now, this can have an evil side.  This can be, and has been, used to make people say things that they didn’t really say.  I would hope that it would go without saying that this is highly unethical, but many people do this.  So that the person would say what they need them to say to further the story they are working on.  Just plain wrong.

Now, the intention of this article wasn’t as marketting for GET or PhraseFind.  It stemmed from the Twitter post where Scott mentioned that he used GET to find a word, and then I commented how it’s great for Frankenbiting, and more than a few people hadn’t heard the term.  But that software is darn useful, and I like pointing out useful tools to editors any chance I get.

The twenty-ninth episode of THE EDIT BAY is now available for download.

This one is about ads with contests.

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Simply brilliant…

(Credit goes to ToksterJokester over on digg.com)

Hey people…because I have been too busy lately to post any cool tips or tricks or workflow fun (due to an upside down schedule), I would like to point out a blog that IS doing this.  Scott Simmons over on the Editblog at PVC is posting lots of quick tips for Avid and FCP.  And he is asking for readers to submit tips as well.  This is a great way for editors to share the great and often hidden tricks and tools they use when editing.  If you have a tip to submit, click here.

Thanks Scott!

Today Avid Technology issued a press release outlining the changes and new features in their latest version of the Media Composer software, Avid Media Composer 5.5.  Among the new features is one that particularly excites me…and it has been very difficult to keep quiet about this (I’m on the Avid Beta, so I’ve been playing with this for a while).  Media Composer 5.5 now works with AJA hardware, specifically, the AJA IO Express.  What is major about this announcement, other than adding another third party partner to their list (they opened up MC5 to the Matrox MXO2 Mini last year) is that this isn’t just another monitoring solution…this is a capture solution as well.

Yes, you can capture and output using the AJA IO Express.  Capture to Avid MXF media.  Have deck control so that you can capture and output with accurate timecode. That’s a big deal!  Sure, it doesn’t offer the hardware acceleration that the DX line of hardware does, but it is a great economical way to get your footage into and out of your system.

Not long ago…last year, around NAB in April…Avid announced Media Composer 5, and I blogged about it.  One of the things that I mentioned that was HUGE was monitoring via non-Avid hardware, specifically the Matrox MXO2 mini.  That was a huge thing…now we could monitor what we were doing without the expensive Avid hardware.  Because that was a gripe of a lot of people, that yes, the Media Composer software is now inexpensive, but still they needed to shell out upwards of $8000 for a Mojo DX  just to see what they were doing on a monitor.  They didn’t need to capture, they just needed to monitor…as they shoot tapeless.

Still, this left more than a few people asking, why the MINI?  We want this to work with AJA, Black-Magic.  We want Avid to open up to the hardware we already have so that we can capture using the same card in Final Cut Pro as well as Avid.  The answer Avid had to that was…”baby steps.”  They were slowing working towards this…soon more and more hardware will be added. Sure enough, we have new hardware, and the ability to capture and output…for under $1000.  And it works on a tower and laptop (if the laptop has an Express34 slot).

What else did they announce?

PHRASE FIND.  This is much akin to GET from AV3 software.  This software will index all of the spoken words in a project, and allow you to search for something someone said.  For the times where you know that the interviewee talked about their life in Montana, but you don’t know where in the 2 hour interview they said this.  You could spend the two hours looking for it, or use Phrase Find to find the word MONTANA within seconds.

Phrase Find isn’t part of the Avid Media Composer package…it is what they call an “addon” product. But, it is one that will be well worth the money, with the amount of time it saves.

They have also added native support for HDCAM Lite, expanded support for Euphonix hardware (no surprise since they bought the company, and enhances their Smart Tool functionality…allowing us to directly manipulate transitions on the timeline with the mouse.

Avid is advancing their Media Composer software faster than I would have imagined.  It is very difficult to keep up with them now.  Every time I turn around, BAM, new Media Composer with great new features. BAM! support for more hardware.  Adding new functionality, and making changes to old functionality to make it better.  Listening to editor’s needs and addressing them at the speed of light.  Avid Media Composer is emerging as the leader in keeping up with current technologies…and losing the image of the old stagnant system that while rock solid, was very antiquated.

In the past I would find my self cursing under my breath…or rather loudly for people around me to hear…that Avid couldn’t do this or couldn’t do that….cursing that I wasn’t working on my lovely Final Cut Pro system.  But now more and more often I find myself on Final Cut Pro cursing and swearing and wanting to be using Media Composer.  Honestly, I want both systems at my beck and call.  And Avid is making it easier for me to do that.

The twenty-eigth episode of THE EDIT BAY is now available for download.

This one has me lost in translation.

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No, you can’t do that now…not without third party plugins.  But I wanted to mention two situations of me needing to do this recently, and two of the third party options I used.

SITUATION #1:

I am working on a show business talk show that airs weekly on cable.  This show is shot in a small studio to three HPX-300 cameras, recorded onto P2 cards.  AVCIntra-100…1920×1080 at 23.98fps.  Now, we have a VERY fast turnaround time.  The show needs to be edited in three days.  But the biggest rush is getting the footage back from the set and ready to start cutting in the same day.  Because a producer comes in and pulls out all the selected bits he wants in the show…and we don’t want him to be here until 3:00AM!

Typically we backup the cards to small drives, then import the footage into FCP via Log and Transfer.  Well, the cards are all 64GB cards and each one has about 75-80 mins of footage total (4 cameras, multicamera shoot).  There are eight cards…four usually fill up, and the other four go about 1/4 full.  Offloading these takes a while.  We don’t have that Panasonic AJ-PCD35 PCIe card reader that makes this VERY fast.  Nope, we have to rely on my Powerbook G4 and ShotPut Pro.  It takes a while.  Offload the cards…then ingest into FCP.  Even coming in native AVCIntra took time.  And the first show did have the producer waiting forever.  So this wouldn’t do.

So I suggested an alternative.  Offload the cards immediately to G-Raid drives that we use for editing…then use CALIBRATED MXF Import to access the footage and allow editing to begin right away.  Then backup the cards again for archive.  This way we can start editing right away, after only 3-4 hours of offloading.  And we need this solution on multiple machines, as the main editor uses one machine, I, the online editor, use another, and the assistant yet another.  So we needed an economical solution we could all use.  I already had Calibrated on my MacPro, so it was an easy choice.

All we do is find the video files and drag them right into the FCP Browser.  They link to the audio right away and we can start multiclipping and cutting…well, after we do a bit of labeling of the bins as for what card they came from so we can group things properly.  It works rather well.  The only drawback is that the individual P2 files come in their original 4GB chunks.  So if you run the camera for a long time, you will have one shot broken into multiple clips.  Log and Transfer will stitch these together as one long clip.  That’s handy.  We had to work around this by Multiclipping the smaller 4GB clips, and then just stringing them out on the timeline.  It works fine.  And you do need to work in a ProRes timeline, as there is no setting for AVCIntra.  But that is fine, it renders quickly…well, quickishly…on my end.

SITUATION #2:

I am tasked to edit a promo for a product.  I am asked to do this on Friday.  It is due Monday.  The footage is all RAW P2 file backups on three 2TB USB drives.  I do have notes as for selects, but I have literally hundreds of hours of footage to look at.  There is no way that I have time to load all of that into FCP’s Log and Transfer interface and click through the footage.  Then choose my selects, and wait for them to import.  Nope…I need a faster solution.

For this I was on my laptop, that has MXF4Mac and P2 Flow.  MXF4Mac, like Calibrated and Raylight, offers you the ability to open the MXF files directly from the VIDEO folder.  And with the ability of the MacOS to allow you to preview footage without opening the application simply by clicking it and pressing the space bar is a big big bonus.  This allowed me to scan through all the MXF files by having that preview option open, and simply pressing the DOWN ARROW to select the next clip.  I was able to scan the footage VERY quickly.

When I found a shot I was looking for, I’d use MXF4Mac to send that shot to FCP…or P2 Flow to access and send the entire card to FCP (takes a matter of seconds).  After only a day, I was able to locate and import all the footage I needed, and work with the footage off of the USB drives.  I then cut the promo, output a QT of the rough cut for notes, addressed the notes, then exported the final.  All without converting one frame.

MXF4Mac is a bit more expensive than Calibrated, but it offers a few more features.  Like the ability to stitch the footage so that one take is not broken into several small chuncks, but actually imports as one chunk.  And you can view and edit metadata, and even MAP metadata so that you can then send a batch capture list to FCP, or just send the MXF native, and have that metadata appear in existing FCP columns.

Yes, I do primarily advocate converting your footage to QT when working with P2.  Why?  Because more often than not I am working in situations with 4-6 editors, and multiple seats of third party MXF readers can get expensive.  And organizing that amount of footage in that format is easier for assistants and editors to manage.  But, if you are a sole editor, and want access to all that metadata, and want to edit quickly, I do recommend these third party options.

The twenty-seventh episode of THE EDIT BAY is now available for download.

This one has someone else watching the cut, and giving me darn good notes.

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This is pretty motherfucking awesome.

The kickoff of the third season (apparently I do 13 episodes in a shot), the twenty-sixth episode of THE EDIT BAY is now available for download.

This one analyzes how the cops on the TV show, THE WIRE are similar to those of us in post production.

To play in your browser or download direct, click here.

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I have a new podcast sponsor…Blackmagic Design. So that means that very soon, like this week, THE EDIT BAY podcast will be starting up again. Bi-Monthly. And due to this sponsorship, I have some new equipment to play with: A Decklink Extreme 3D capture card and RESOLVE.  And to ensure that RESOLVE works, I also added  an NVidia GTX 280 graphics card.  Things are quite tight…double wide GFX card, and a two slot capture card (HDMI uses up a slot).

Anyway, I started out my capture card ownership with a Decklink SD card…but then move on to an AJA Kona LH card, then used the Kona 3…then the Matrox MXO 2 and MXO2 Mini.  So for at a few years I have used the AJA Kona cards, and for a couple of years I used the MXO 2…and I feel that I know both systems very well.  It is time that I kicked the tires on Decklink and see how things go with them.  Plus, I want to see how RESOLVE might fit into my workflow, especially since I use Avid quite a lot recently.

I like being well rounded…and able to give honest working opinions on hardware and software.  So let’s see how this year goes.

When I first started color correcting in FCP I used the built in 3-way color corrector.  When it first was introduced in FCP 3, it is what first drew me to FCP.  And I have been able to do quite a bit with it.  But when Magic Bullet Colorista by Red Giant Software came out, and I was able to push the colors further than the 3-way…take things more to the extreme.  And lately, while I have been glued to COLOR, there are many instances when I can’t use it.  Such as times when I have projects with mixed formats, and no time to conform everything to one format.  It happens more often than I’d like.

Such was the case on a recent project I was slated to online.  And when you are the online editor, handed the project only when picture has locked, you don’t have the luxury of getting everything converted to a uniform codec for editing.  Editors often do what they want, and if it works, they keep doing it.  This project was mainly DVCPRO HD from P2, but also had a lot of stock footage, in many formats…DV, DV50, Photo JPEG (SD and HD) and ProRes.  All on a DVCPRO HD timeline.  And as most of the projects I work on lately, it was a LOW low budget project, and I only had 2 days to color correct it.  Given that time constraint, I didn’t have time to convert all the footage to DVCPRO HD, or ProRes, so that I could take it into COLOR and do my work there.  I did have a lot of converting to do to get frame rates to match, and that was already eating into my allotted time.

Because of this, I opted to go with Colorista…because I feel limited by the 3-way color corrector, and I really like the ability to use SECONDARIES in Colorista.  But now I was psyched because a NEW version of Colorista was released, Colorista 2, and with this, many new improvements.  I still had the great control and ability to push colors as much as I can do with COLOR, and I still have access to the easy to use Secondaries that allow me to target color correction, or create vignettes…but now I have access to a great thing called the HSL KEY, and other small improvements.

First, the small improvements:

- Along with EXPOSURE controls, I have PRIMARY DENSITY which deals more with the gamma and the blacks, and HIGHLIGHT RECOVERY, which allows me to pull in detail from the highlights, that I tend to lose when I push the highlights up really high.

- I not only have a PRIMARY 3-way, and a SECONDARY 3-way…but a MASTER 3-way, that is not unlike COLOR’s PRIMARY OUT.  You can make primary corrections, secondary corrections, then adjustments to the overall image.  I don’t often use this, but I have, and it is nice to have.

- CURVES!  For those who don’t like the the color wheels, but rather like to adjust the image via CURVES, you can.  But there is the drawback that you can’t adjust the curves directly on them, but rather by using the sliders.  The sliders control CONTRAST, SHADOWS, MIDS and HIGHS for the overall RGB space, or for each individual color.  Nice for those used to using them.  And I have gone to them on occasion.

- FLIP IMAGE.  Nice thing to have if your footage was shot with a camera that used a lens system that flipped the image.  Color correct and flip in one plugin.

- Render using GPU (graphics card) or CPU (computer processors).  If you have a kick ass graphics card, you can opt to use it to render.  Yeah, it does speed things up.

And then my favorite, the HSL KEY.

This amazing tool allows you to target a specific color, and only effect changes to that color.  For instance, if you have one color that is too bright, straying into the illegal chroma zone (say really bright RED), then I can grab the RED control and knock in down only…instead of reducing the saturation of the entire image.  This is something I do in COLOR in the SECONDARIES, SAT CURVE area.  You can also do this in the 3-way color corrector, by playing in the LIMIT EFFECT area of the color wheels.  But this is much faster.  Much much faster, and with better control.

Another great improvement that Colorista 2 has made is that it no longer instantly gives you the RED render bar.  I got the orange render bar and was able to play the footage.  And the new version renders faster than the original version.  I’m thinking it is due to the ability to render using the GPU.

There are a few drawbacks to Colorista 2.  First is that the original issue of it instantly cropping the highlights to 100 IRE is still present.  You might think it is a good thing, because it ensures that your levels are under 100 IRE for broadcast, but it isn’t.  Your highlights are cut off, and white becomes yellow.  So I still had to use the Proc Amp or 3-way to adjust the highlights before I added Colorista 2.  And if you open the project in a computer that lacks the Colorista plugin, you are unable to play the sequence.  You get a RED screen and a missing plugin warning.  Not the best thing when you need to swap sequences with other editors, or hand it back over to the client.  Unless they get the plugin too.

Another drawback is that this version doesn’t work in the Avid Media Composer.  The original version did.  But the new one uses modern programming that the Avid MC simply cannot work with.  Sad, but true.  If it did work with Avid MC, then I won’t be so tempted to bring everything to FCP so that I could use Color.

But one of the biggest joys of this plugin is the ability to color correct with a powerful color corrector right inside FCP.  I can color correct, and play back the correction with audio…which isn’t always necessary for colorists, but it is a nice added bonus.  Most of the controls I have with Color, but I get to stay in FCP.  And not have to worry about variable speed changes, freeze frames, still images, and mixing formats.

And that is exactly what I was dealing with on this project. As I said, no time to convert everything, so the ability to use Colorista 2 meant that I could dive right in, push the colors as much as I could in Color, not worry about speed changes…color correct DVCPRO HD from one shot, PHOTO JPEG in the next shot…and then have it all render out to ProRes when I was done. Oh, yeah…I copied everything from a DVCPRO HD sequence to a ProRes sequence, so that when I rendered out everything I was rendering 10-bit and not 8-bit. A big thing when it came to rendering out graphics, and the PHOTO JPEG files…and the other ProRes files in the project. If I wanted to do this in Color, it would take another day or two of prep to convert everything to 1080i 29.97 ProRes. But because I could use Colorista 2 right in FCP, I saved the client time and money…and made them very happy.

http://matrox.com/video/en/press/releases/mxo2_2.1_shipping/

This means that with ANY computer, you can capture to the formats that the three major NLEs like:  ProRes, DnxHD, and MPEG-2I…with their separate VETURA software.  This means that I can use my MXO2 to capture footage for AVID!  Well, it is still QT, and yes, Avid MC5 will still require it to be “transcoded” to MXF in order to be fully functional in the Avid workflow (export of AAF and OMF for audio).  Still…pretty big step here.

Montreal, Canada – December 1, 2010 — Matrox® Video Products Group today announced the immediate availability of release 2.1 software for the Matrox MXO2 family of I/O devices for Mac. Key features of this release include Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium supportand a powerful new stand-alone software application, Matrox Vetura Capture.

Matrox Vetura Capture lets users quickly and easily capture QuickTime files using popular codecs installed on their editing systems. Users of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 can capture to the Matrox MPEG2 I-frame full raster (1920 x 1080) HD codec or to other popular Adobe-supported codecs. Users of Final Cut Pro can capture to ProRes and other popular Final Cut Pro codecs. Users of Avid Media Composer can capture directly to Avid DNxHD .mov files or other popular Avid-supported codecs.

“Media Composer users in network environments will appreciate how the Vetura Capture and Playback applications allow the use of Matrox MXO2 LE, MXO2 and MXO2 Rack on SDI ingest and playout stations,” said Wayne Andrews, Matrox product manager. Editors on the network can use Matrox MXO2 Mini devices for monitoring while editing, then put material back on the network to go out SDI from another Matrox-based ingest/playout station.”

“We are listening to our customers and continuing to add value to the Matrox MXO2 product line,” said Alberto Cieri, Matrox senior director of sales and marketing. “This release rounds out Matrox MXO2’s cross-platform support with complete I/O, fast H.264 encoding, and other important productivity benefits for users of the three most popular professional editing applications: Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Avid Media Composer.”

Availability

Matrox products are available through a worldwide network of authorized dealers. Release 2.1 for Mac is now available to registered users of Matrox MXO2 devices and Matrox CompressHD as a free download from the Matrox website.

Key Features of Matrox MXO2 Family for Mac

• Convenient form factors for use in studio, on set, in the field, and in OB vans
• Works with Intel-based MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, and Apple Xserve systems
• Broadcast-quality HD/SD video and audio input/output
• Flexible support for leading codecs, file formats, cameras, and workflows
• Extensive application support including Final Cut Pro, Apple Color, Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, and many more
• Support for popular 3D workflows
• Cost-effective HD monitoring for Avid Media Composer 5 with Matrox MXO2 Mini
• 10-bit HDMI input, output, and monitoring with calibration controls
• 10-bit realtime hardware up/down/cross conversion on capture and output
• Hardware acceleration of Final Cut Pro Dynamic RT segments, HDV, and DVCPRO HD
• Matrox Vetura Capture – stand-alone application for quick and easy capture to a variety of QuickTime codecs
• Matrox Vetura Playback – stand-alone application for convenient playback of H.264 and .mov files
• Also available with Matrox MAX for faster than realtime H.264 encoding

A show has locked picture. A show that I started a looooooong time ago…Feb 2010. Now, I haven’t been working on it all that time…I worked on it for two months, then it went on hiatus for a couple months for a variety of reasons. Then I started up on it again in Sept…a week here, another week there. But now it has locked picture and we are ready to online. (I’ll be able to tell you what show as soon as I deliver it.)

The show was started on Avid Media Composer 2.8, but due to some issues in importing and linking P2 footage, we upgraded to Avid MC4 a couple weeks into the show, and used Avid Media Access (AMA) to better access and import the footage. The upgrade mid project was pretty smooth. Everything was shot on P2 and imported full resolution into the Avid…spread across a couple hard drives…one of them was a USB drive, and I suffered no stuttering or dropped frame issues, something that always happens in FCP. I have no theory why that is…just interesting to note.

Now, why do I want to go to COLOR to color correct? Well, more control over the colors, and because I can save more than 8 grades…and the saved grades have a good visual representation. I would be able to do this much faster. Even with the prep time it’d take me to get from Avid to FCP. I have more finesse with the footage, access to vignettes that are fast (the tricks to get these effects in MC take time).  Color correcting in Color is very fast.

To get the sequence from Avid MC to FCP, I use Automatic Duck Pro Import 2.0.

Well, getting the footage to FCP wasn’t as easy as I thought. First off, a lot of the footage was brought into the system via AMA…and NOT consolidated. Just referenced. And by doing that I cannot export an AAF for audio NOR for Automatic Duck.  On top of that, the last two Acts consisted of footage shot with a Panasonic HPX-3000…in the AVCIntra format.  Where Automatic Duck can wrap the DVCPRO HD 720p 23.98 footage (the majority of the footage) into QT wrappers with ZERO quality loss, there is no AVCIntra Avid codec, so the files came over as somthing the Duck couldn’t deal with.  So I had to transcode those order for it to work properly.

After I did the quick prep, I was able to get the sequence from Avid to FCP without a hitch. I recall trying Automatic Duck when it first came out (YEARS ago…5, 6?) and there was a lot it couldn’t deal with.  But now…speed changes, freeze frames, mixed codecs…it is solid.   I will have to recreate a few effects (paint effects used as transitions, animatte in a couple locations), but will be pretty painless.

I then sent it to Color.

I’m in the middle of the color correct now, and it is going pretty quickly.  90 min show…should take two days.  With the one day prep that is three days.  Then the 4th day to make the credits and lower thirds and re-create the transition effects, add the mixed audio and output the show.  And I’m sure that if I did the color correction in MC4, it would take me an extra day to color correct and prep for output…and I don’t think I could have made it half as good as I could with Color.

Soon I will be getting RESOLVE and the Avid MC plugin…and be able to take my Avid projects directly into a world class color correction app.  Can’t wait to be able to do that.

This great tutorial for a cool effect comes from the GeniusDV site. They offer tips and tricks for FCP as well as Avid Media Composer.  Nice!