NAB 2013 Distilled

Another year – another NAB exhibition. A lot of fun stuff to see. Plenty of innovation and advances, but no single “shocker” like last year’s introduction of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Here are some observations based on this past week in Las Vegas.

4K

Yes, 4K was all over. I was a bit surprised that many of the pieces for a complete end-to-end solution are in place. The term 4K refers to the horizontal pixel width of the image, but two common specs are used – the DCI (film) standard of 4096 and the UltraHD (aka QuadHD) standard of 3840. Both are “4K”. Forgotten in the discussion is frame rate. Many displays were showing higher frame rates, such as 4K at 60fps. 120fps is also being discussed.

4K (and higher) cameras were there from Canon, Sony, RED, JVC, GoPro and now Blackmagic Design. Stereo3D was there, too, in pockets; but, it’s all but dead (again). 4K, though, will have legs. The TV sets and distribution methods are coming into position and this is a nonintrusive experience for the viewer. SD to HD was an obvious “in your face” difference. 4K is noticeably better, but not as much as SD to HD. More like 720p versus 1080p. This means that consumer prices will have to continue to drop (as they will) for 4K to really catch hold, except for special venue applications. Right now, it’s pretty obvious how gorgeous 4K is when standing a few feet away from an 84” screen, but few folks can afford that yet.

Interestingly enough, you can even do live 4K broadcasts, using 4K cameras and production products from Astro Designs. This will have value in live venues like sporting events and large corporate meetings. A new factor – “region of interest” – comes into play. This means you can shoot 4K and then scale/crop the portion of the image that interests you. Naturally there was also 8K by NHK and also Quantel. Both have been on the forefront of HD and then 4K. Quantel was demonstrating 8K (downsampled to a 4K monitor) just to show their systems have the headroom for the future.

ARRI did not have a 4K camera, but the 4 x 3 sensor of the ALEXA XT model features 2880 x 2160 photosites. When you use an anamorphic 2:1 lens and record ARRIRAW, you effectively end up with an unsqueezed image of 5760 x 2160 pixels. Downsample that to a widescreen 2.4:1 image inside a 4096 DCI frame and you have visually similar results as with a Sony or RED camera delivering in 4K. This was demonstrated in the booth and the results were quite pleasing. The ALEXA looked a bit softer than comparable displays at the Sony and RED booths, but most cinematographers would probably opt for the ARRI image, since it appears a lot closer to the look of scanned film at 4K. Part of this is inherent with ARRI’s sensor array, which includes optical filtering in-camera. Sony was showing clips from the upcoming Oblivion feature film, which was shot with an F65. To many attendees these clips looked almost too crisp.

In practical terms, most commercial, corporate, television or indie film users of 4K cameras want an easy workflow. If that’s your goal, then the best “true” 4K paths are to shoot with the Canon C500 or the Sony F55. The C500 can be paired with the (now shipping) AJA KiPro Quad to record 4K ProRes files. The Sony records in the XAVC codec (a variant of AVC-Intra). Both are ready to edit (importer plug-ins may be required) without conversions.

You can also record ARRI 2K ProRes in an ALEXA or use one of the various raw workflows (RED, Canon, Blackmagic, Sony, ARRI). Raw is nice, but adds extra steps to the process – often with little benefit over log-profile recording to an encoded file format.

Edit systems

With the shake-up that Apple’s introduction of Final Cut Pro X has brought to the market, brand dominance has been up for grabs. Apple wasn’t officially at the show, but did have some off-site presence, as well as a few staffers at demo pods. For example, they were showing the XAVC integration in an area of the Sony booth. FCP X was well-represented as part of other displays all over the floor. An interesting metric I noticed, was that all press covering the show on video, were cutting their reports on laptops using FCP X. That is a sweet spot for use of the application. No new FCP X news (beyond the features released with 10.0.8) was announced.

Adobe is currently the most aggressive in trying to earn the hearts of editors. The “next” versions of Premiere Pro, SpeedGrade, Audition and After Effects have a ton of features that respond to customer requests and will speed workflows. Adobe’s main stage demos were packed and the general consensus of most editors discussing a move away from FCP 7 (and even Avid) was a move to Adobe. In early press, Adobe mentioned working with the Coen brothers, who have committed to cutting their next film with Premiere.

The big push was for Adobe Anywhere – their answer for cloud-based editing. Although a very interesting product, it will compete in the same space as Quantel Qtube and Avid Interplay Sphere. These are enterprise solutions that require servers, storage, software and support. While it’s an interesting technology, it will tend to be of more interest to larger news operations and educational facilities than smaller post shops.

Avid came on with Media Composer 7 at a new price, with Symphony as an add-on option to Media Composer. The biggest features were the ability to edit with larger-than-HD video sources (output is still limited to HD), LUT support, improved media management of AMA files and background transcoding using managed folders (watch folders). In addition, Pro Tools goes to 11, with a new video engine – it can natively run Avid sequences from AAF imports – and faster-than-real-time bounce. The MC background transcode and the PT11 bounce will be time savers for Avid users and that translates into money saved.

Avid Interplay Sphere (announced last year) now works on Macs, but its main benefit is remote editing for stations that have invested in Interplay solutions. Avid is also bundling packages of ISIS storage, Interplay asset management and seats of Media Composer at even lower price points. Although still premium solutions, they are finally in a range that may be attractive to some small edit facilities and broadcasters, given that it includes installation and support.

The other NLE players include Avid DS (not shown), Quantel Pablo Rio, Autodesk Smoke 2013, Grass Valley EDIUS, Sony Vegas, Media 100 (not shown) and Lightworks. Most of these have no bearing in my market. Smoke 2013 is getting traction. Autodesk is working to get user feedback to improve the application, as it moves deeper into a market segment that is new to them. EditShare is forging ahead with Lightworks on the Mac. It looked pretty solid at the show, but expect something that’s ready for users towards the end of the year. It’s got the film credits to back it up, so a free (or near free) Mac version should shake things up even further.

One interesting addition to the market is DaVinci Resolve 10 gaining editing features. Right now the editing bells-and-whistles are still rudimentary, though all of the standard functions are there. Plus there are titles, speed changes with optical flow and a plug-in API (OpenFX). You can already apply GenArts Sapphire filters to your clips. These are applied in the color correction timeline as nodes, rather than effects added to an editing timeline. This means the Sapphire filters can be baked into any clip renders. The positioning of Resolve 10 is as an online editing tool. That means conforming, titling and trims/tweaks after grading. You now have even greater editing capabilities at the grading stage without having to return to an NLE. Ultimately the best synergy will be between FCP X and Resolve. Together the two apps make for a very interesting package and Apple seems to be working closely with Blackmagic Design to make this happen. Ironically the editing mode page looks a lot like FCP X would have looked with tracks and dual viewers.

Final thoughts

I was reading John Buck’s Timeline on the plane. Even though we think of the linear days as having been dominated by CMX, the reality was that there were many systems, including Mach One, Epic, ISC, Strassner, Convergence, Datatron, Sony, RCA and Ampex. In Hollywood, the TV industry was split among them, which is why a common interchange standard of the EDL was developed. For awhile, Avid became the dominant tool in the nonlinear era, but the truth is that hasn’t always been the norm – nor should it be. The design dilemma of engineering versus creative was a factor from the beginning of video editing. Should a system be simple enough that producers, directors and non-technical editors can run it? Sound familiar?

When I look at the show I am struck at how one makes their buying choices. To use the dreaded car analogy, FCP X is the sports car and Avid is the truck. But the sports car is a temperamental Ferrari that does some things very well , but isn’t appropriate for others. The truck is a Tundra with all the built-in, office-on-the-road niceties.

If I were a facility manager, making a purchase for a large scale facility, it would probably still be Avid. It’s the safe bet – the “you don’t get fired for buying IBM” bet. Their innovations at the show were conservative, but meet the practical needs of their current customers. There simply is no other system with a proven track record across all types of productions that scales from one user to massive installations. But offering conservative innovation isn’t a growth strategy. You don’t get new users that way. Media Composer has become truly complex in ways that only veteran users can accept and that has to change fast.

Apple FCP X is the wild card, of course. Apple is playing the long game looking for the next generation of users. If FCP X weren’t an Apple product, it would receive the same level of attention as Vegas Pro, at best. Also a great tool with a passionate user base, but nothing that has the potential of dominating market share. The trouble is Apple gets in its own way due to corporate secrecy. I’ve been using FCP X for awhile and it certainly is a professional product. But to use it effectively, you have to change your workflow. In a multi-editor, multi-production facility, this means changing a lot of practices and retraining staff. It also means augmenting the software with a host of other applications to fix the short-comings.

Broadening the appeal of FCP X beyond the one-man-band operations may be tough for that reason. It’s too non-standard and no one has any idea of where it’s headed. On the other hand, as an editor who’s willing to deal with new challenges, I like the fast, creative cutting performance of FCP X. This makes it a great offline editing tool in my book. I find a “start in X, finish in Resolve” approach quite intriguing.

Right now, Adobe feels like the horse to beat. They have the ear of the users and an outreach reminiscent of when Apple was in the early FCP “legacy” era. Adobe is working hard to build a community and the interoperability between applications is the best in the industry. They are only hampered by the past indifference towards Premiere that many pro users have. But that seems to be changing, with many new converts. Although Premiere Pro “next” feels like FCP 7.5, that appears to be what users really want. The direction, at least, feels right. Apple may have been “skating to where the puck will be”, but it could be that no one is following or the puck simply wasn’t going there in the first place.

©2013 Oliver Peters

The NLE that wouldn’t die

It’s been 18 months since Apple launched Final Cut Pro X and the debate over it continues to rage without let-up. Apple likely has good sales numbers to deem it a success, but if you look around the professional world, with a few exceptions, there has been little or no adoption. Yes, some editors are dabbling with it to see where Apple is headed with it – and yes, some independent editors are using it for demanding projects, including commercials, corporate videos and TV shows. By comparison, though, look at what facilities and broadcasters are using – or what skills are required for job openings – and you’ll see a general scarceness of FCP X.

Let’s compare this to the launch of the original Final Cut Pro (or “legacy”) over 12 years ago. In a similar fashion, FCP was the stealth tool that attracted individual users. The obvious benefit was price. At that time a fully decked out Avid Media Composer was a turnkey system costing over $100K. FCP was available as software for only $999. Of course, what gets lost in that measure, is the Avid price included computer, monitors, wiring, broadcast i/o hardware and storage. All of this would have to be added to the FCP side and in some cases, wasn’t even possible with FCP. In the beginning it was limited to DV and FireWire only. But there were some key advantages it introduced at the start, over Avid systems. These included blend modes, easy in-timeline editing, After Effects-style effects and a media architecture built upon the open, extensible and ubiquitous QuickTime foundation. Over the years, a lot was added to make FCP a powerful system, but at its core, all the building blocks were in place from the beginning.

When uncompressed SD and next HD became the must-have items, Avid was slow to respond. Apple’s partners were able to take advantage of the hardware abstraction layer to add codecs and drivers, which expanded FCP’s capabilities. Vendors like Digital Voodoo, Aurora Video Systems and Pinnacle made it possible to edit something other than DV. Users have them to thank – more so than Apple – for growing FCP into a professional tool. When FCP 5 and 6 rolled around, the Final Cut world was pretty set, with major markets set to shift to FCP as the dominant NLE. HD, color correction and XML interchange had all been added and the package was expanded with an ecosystem of surrounding applications. By the time of the launch of the last Final Cut Studio (FCP 7) in 2009, Apple’s NLE seemed unstoppable. Unfortunately FCP 7 wasn’t as feature-packed as many had expected. Along with reticence to chuck recently purchased PowerMac G5 computers, a number of owners simply stayed with FCP 5 and/or FCP 6.

When Apple discusses the number of licensees, you have to parse how they define the actual purchases. While there are undoubtedly plenty of FCP X owners, the interpretation of sales is that more seats of FCP X have been sold than of FCP 7. Unfortunately it’s hard to know what that really means. Since it’s a comparison to FCP 7 – and not every FCP 1-6 owner upgraded to 7 – it could very well be that the X number isn’t all that large. Even though Apple EOL’ed (end of life) Final Cut Studio with the launch of FCP X, it continued to sell new seats of the software through its direct sales and reseller channels. In fact, Apple seems to still have it available if you call the correct 800 line. When Apple says it has sold more of X than of 7, is it counting the total sales (including those made after the launch) or only before? An interesting statistic would be the number of seats of Final Cut Studio (FCP 7) sold since the launch of FCP X as compared to before. We’ll never know, but it might actually be a larger number. All I know is that the system integrators I personally know, who have a long history of selling and servicing FCP-based editing suites, continue to install NEW FCP 7 rooms!

Like most drastic product changes, once you get over the shock of the new version, you quickly realize that your old version didn’t instantly stop working the day the new version launched. In the case of FCP 7, it continues to be a workhorse, albeit the 32-bit architecture is pretty creaky. Toss a lot of ProRes 4444 at it and you are in for a painful experience. There has been a lot of dissatisfaction with FCP X among facility owners, because it simply changes much of the existing workflows. There are additional apps and utilities to fill the gap, but many of these constitute workarounds compared to what could be done inside FCP 7.

Many owners have looked at alternatives. These include Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer/Symphony, Media 100 and Autodesk Smoke 2013. If they are so irritated at Apple as to move over to Windows hardware, then the possibilities expand to include Avid DS, Grass Valley Edius and Sony Vegas. Several of these manufacturers have introduced cross-grade promotional deals to entice FCP “legacy” owners to make the switch. Avid and Adobe have benefited the most in this transition. Editors who were happy with Avid in the past – or work in a market where Avid dominates – have migrated back to Media Composer. Editors who were hoping for the hypothetical FCP 8 are often making Adobe Premiere (and the Production Premium bundle) their next NLE of choice. But ironically, many owners and users are simply doing nothing and continuing with FCP 7 or even upgrading from FCP 6 to FCP 7.

Why is it that FCP 7 isn’t already long gone or on the way out by now? Obviously the fact that change comes slowly is one answer, but I believe it’s more than that. When FCP 1.0 came on the scene, its interface and operational methodology fit into the existing NLE designs. It was like a “baby Avid” with parts of Media 100 and After Effects dropped in. If you cut on a Media Composer, the transition to FCP was pretty simple. Working with QuickTime made it easy to run on most personal machines without extra hardware.  Because of its relatively open nature and reliance in industry-standard interchange formats (many of which were added over time), FCP could easily swap data with other applications using EDLs, OMFs, text-based log files and XML. Facilities built workflows around these capabilities.

FCP X, on the other hand, introduced a completely new editing paradigm that not only changed how you work, but even the accepted nomenclature of editing. Furthermore, the UI design even did things like reverse the behavior of some keystrokes from how similar functions had been triggered in FCP 7. In short, forget everything you know about editing or using other editing software if you want to become proficient with FCP X. That’s a viable concept for students who may be the professional editors of the future. Or, for non-fulltime editors who occasionally have to edit and finish professional-level productions as one small part of their job. Unfortunately, it’s not a good approach if you want to make FCP X the ubiquitous NLE in established professional video environments, like post houses, broadcasters and large enterprise users.

After all, if I’m a facility manager and you can’t show me a compelling reason why this is better and why it won’t require a complete internal upheaval, then why should I change? In most shops, overall workflow is far more important than the specific features of any individual application. Gone are the differences in cost, so it’s difficult to make a compelling argument based on ROI. You can no longer make the (false) argument of 1999 that FCP will only cost you 1% of the cost of an Avid. Or use the bogus $50K edit suite ad that followed a few years later.

Which brings us to the present. I started on Avid systems as the first NLE where I was in the driver’s seat. I’ve literally cut on dozens of edit systems, but for me, Final Cut Pro “legacy” fit my style and preferences best. I would have loved a 64-bit version with a cleaned-up user interface, but that’s not what FCP X delivers. It’s also not exactly where Premiere Pro CS6 is today. I deal with projects from the outside – either sent to me or at shops where I freelance. Apple FCP 7 and Avid Media Composer continue to be what I run into and what is requested.

Over the past few months I’ve done quite a few complex jobs on FCP X, when I’ve had the ability to control the decision. Yet, I cannot get through any complex workflow without touching parts of Final Cut Studio (“legacy”) to get the job done. FCP X seems to excel at small projects where speed trumps precision and interoperability. It’s also great for individual owner-operators who intend to do everything inside FCP X. But for complex projects with integrated workflows, FCP 7 is still decidedly better.

As was the case with early FCP, where most of the editing design was there at the start, I now feel that with the FCP X 10.0.6 update, most of its editing design is also in place. It may never become the tool that marches on to dominate the market. FCP “legacy” had that chance and Apple walked away from it. It’s dubious that lightning will strike twice, but 18 months is simply too short of a timeframe in which to say anything that definitive. All I know is that for now, FCP 7 continues as the preferred NLE for many, with Media Composer a close second. Most editors, like old dogs, aren’t too eager to learn new tricks. At least that’s what I conclude, based on my own ear-to-the-ground analysis. Check back this time next year to see if that’s still the case. For now, I see the industry continuing to live in a very fractured, multi-NLE environment.

©2012 Oliver Peters

The race to the bottom

Whenever a group of established professionals in the business gets together, they bemoan the “race to the bottom”. That’s the concept that simpler, more inexpensive tools result in the lowering of quality. The prevailing attitude is that now “anyone can do it” so no one “values the craft”. Editors complain about what low-cost editing software like Final Cut Pro has done to facilities. Directors of photography complain about the Canon 5D or the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and how these are killing quality production. Colorists complain about the impact of free color grading tools, like DaVinci Resolve Lite on their ability to earn a living.

I’m sure this is echoed in other industries. Whether you are talking about multitrack audio decks versus Pro Tools, or vinyl records versus CDs versus iTunes, or the work of a talented machinist compared to “fab labs” and 3D printing – the theme (and fear) is the same. That is, that these trends bring more users into the field and I/we/my company will go out-of-business. I won’t argue the result, because disruptive technologies do displace workers and do change the dynamics of cost. In fact, at my first paid editing gig after college in the mid-70s, the company billed $275/hour for editing time. That was with three quad VTRs, a switcher and audio mixer, edit controller and two black-and-white title card cameras. All analogue, no character generator, no digital video effects manipulation (ADO, K-scope, A-53, etc.). Bare bones. Today, you’d be hard pressed to pay more than $175/hour for most NLE suites with editor. That’s a room with an order-of-magnitude more features than the typical mid-70s edit suite, for a lot less. And that’s not even accounting for the change in the value of money over four decades!

I view the technology of our business as more of a bell curve than a slide down from the top. When film production and post was the norm, the cost of the tools was relatively cheap. Yes, a film camera and Moviola or KEM were expensive, precision mechanical products, but they were within the grasp of a sole entrepreneur to own. With the introduction and expansion of video production and post, the industry diverted to a three-decades-long love of the next biggest-baddest box. In the heyday of the linear digital suite, a decked-out room was a million-dollar investment. Facilities marketed themselves based on the hardware, rather than the talent at the controls.

Then we started moving down from the top of the curve and many of those same facilities never survived. That “race to the bottom” started with Avid, Lightworks, Media 100 and EMC2, who introduced digital NLEs that were built around affordable, desktop systems. As expensive as they were at the time, they were significantly less costly than the linear suite of the day or even other first-generation nonlinear systems. One of the early NLEs that was used extensively in episodic television offline editing was the Ediflex. It used 12 industrial-grade VHS decks to mimic random access. You could only lease them in Los Angeles, but being in Orlando, the post house I was with considered the purchase of four systems. The asking price was $250K each, so we continued leasing. Ultimately the company went belly-up and the four systems we were leasing weren’t worth the shipping cost and so ultimately ended up on the scrap heap. The Ediflex was done in by the success of the desktop NLEs, like Avid, which ushered in widespread nonlinear post. Following the technology advances of all other computing and software trends, quality improved, cost dropped, operation was easier and performance and capacity became better. Final Cut Pro was simply a new stop on this ride.

Many of my fellow editors equate software complexity with professional. Maybe it’s a macho thing. If software takes an effort to understand and use, it must be inherently better than one which is simpler, even though the end result might be identical. Yet, all professional software developers are embracing simpler UIs that feature more unified controls, presets and templates. It’s not just the post industry. As I can attest from meetings I’ve attended, this is the over-riding software development direction taken in other fields, too, such as the engineering and CAD products from Autodesk, Solidworks and similar companies. Software can be both easy and deep (when needed) and that’s a design direction across-the-board. This is enabled by the fact that the under-the-hood processes required for the hidden magic are easy to run on most modern, off-the-shelf desktop and laptop computers. They finally have the necessary horsepower.

As tools get cheaper and easier to use, pros fret that the proverbial “YouTubers” and the “editor in his bedroom” will put them out of business. And yes, ease of use and low cost-of-entry do mean that there’s more competition. It also means that your clients will often decide to tackle the post on a job by themselves. All of this is true, but it’s the nature of technological change. We’ve seen it before in desktop publishing and photography. Some folks went out of business and some embraced the change and figured out how to thrive. After all, FCP X at $299 benefits the working pro just as much as the up-and-comer. This is especially true considering that FCP X is well-suited for the next wave of technology change in post – namely 2K and 4K frame sizes and higher frame rates, such as 1080p/59.94.

In most cases (though, unfortunately not in all) – the cream will rise to the top. The Canon 5D and RED One are good examples. These cameras lowered the needed investment to shoot high-end footage. In the hands of a talented DP, each camera can yield superb results. Likewise, in the hands of a wannabe who hasn’t learned the basics, they can also produce crap. Why? Simply put, the basics are still the most important. Lighting, lens selection, camera movement, focus, art direction, etc. These all contribute to the difference between art and junk. Believe it or not, most clients actually can see the difference. Sometimes they don’t know why. Sometimes they don’t need the difference. Sometimes they don’t want to pay for the difference. That’s why we as professionals need to continue to educate clients on the value that we bring to the project and NOT the value that our tools bring.

This isn’t always an easy sell, but it’s what makes good writers, directors, record producers, musicians and others successful. Joe Satriani, Steve Vai or Eric Johnson would sound as good on any guitar they played. A movie cut by Walter Murch, Angus Wall, Kirk Baxter or Pietro Scalia would be just as good, regardless of the edit software at their disposal.

© 2012 Oliver Peters

It starts at the camera

Modern color correction and grading systems allow you to performance a lot of magic in post. All too often though, producers take the “fix it in post” mantra way too seriously. Since modern cameras offer excellent low light sensitivity, the basics of good lighting and proper art direction get short-changed. If the director, DP and lighting crew are allowed a bit of time to exercise their craft, the results will be so much better in the end. Grading can make up for lighting deficiencies, but often at a cost of noise and color artifacts. Here are three basics to remember that will greatly improve your next production.

Exposure

Proper exposure is essential, but with improved low light sensitivity and an increased use of log-based gamma curves, operators often have a hard time deciding what the right exposure actually is. I’ve mocked up some images to help clarify some of my points. (Click on any of these images throughout this post for an enlarged view.)

Most log curves mathematically “bend” or “compress” the high-end and low-end range of what the sensor is picking up. It’s a way of squeezing a wide dynamic range into a recordable space. The typical mantra is to “expose to the right”. This can be interpreted as making the image brighter by setting the exposure so it displays in the bright section (the right side) of a histogram. In you expose too dark, you will effectively underexpose the image. When you try to make it brighter during color correction, you will increase noise, especially in the midrange. That’s because there’s not enough of an image to gracefully “stretch” without introducing artifacts, such as noise, posterization and banding.

To illustrate these points, I have taken this RED One shot and created various exposures from the raw file. These were then exported as “baked” ProRes files, which I subsequently graded using FCP X’s color board tool. I took the corner of the image into Photoshop and exaggerated the levels to make the defects in the dark area more obvious. If you review the larger images, you’ll see the one that started with the darkest simulated exposure as having the most posterized look, while the dark areas are smoothest in the shots that represented brighter lighting.

You want to be careful not to go too bright, since the opposite is also true. Highlights on hair make be too bright and you might have difficultly getting the image dark enough in the dark areas of the picture. Ideally, the image wants to cover an area on a histogram that’s roughly the middle third of the scale. On a waveform, skin values want to hit in the 50-60IRE range. This lets a colorist stretch up or down from there, without having to raise skin values “out of the mud”.

Contrast ratio

Next to having the image bright enough for good correction, you need to have some range to work with between the darkest and lightest portions of the picture. A typical waveform would show this as 0-100IRE, but that gets more difficult with log images, which start out considerably more washed out in appearance. Typically a 20-40 IRE spread in a log image, like ARRI Log-C or RED RedLogFilm, will yield excellent grading results, as these images attest.

Hue separation

One of the in-vogue looks is the “orange and teal” style popularized by blockbuster films and emulated by Magic Bullet Mojo and Looks. This is based on the color theory of various color models. But to get the look in a convincing way, you really need to start out with proper art direction. Skin tones tend to be pink-orange. If you shoot a very warm scene with an actor standing close to an orange wall, you’ve effectively set up a monochrome situation where all the hue values are the same and only saturation and brightness are changed. In that example, it’s very difficult to make the flesh tones and the wall color be different from each other. This can be fixed in the beginning by proper art direction and lighting.

A good place to go to understand and play with examples is Adobe’s Kuler website. The interactive color swatch tools are a good way of testing color schemes using scientific models of complementary colors, triads, etc.

©2012 Oliver Peters

Post Production Mastering Tips

The last step in commercial music production is mastering. Typically this involves making a recording sound as good as it possibly can through the application of equalization and multiband compression. In the case of LPs and CDs (remember those?), this also includes setting up the flow from one tune to the next and balancing out levels so the entire product has a consistent sound. Video post has a similar phase, which has historically been in the hands of the finishing or online editor.

That sounds so sweet

The most direct comparison between the last video finishing steps and commercial music mastering is how filters are applied in order to properly compress the audio track and to bring video levels within legal broadcast specs. When I edit projects in Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and do my own mixes, I frequently use Soundtrack Pro as the place to polish the audio. My STP mixing strategy employs tracks that route into one or more subgroup buses and then a master output bus. Four to eight tracks of content in FCP might become twenty tracks in STP. Voice-over, sync-sound, SFX and music elements get spread over more tracks and routed to appropriate subgroups. These subgroups then flow into the master bus. This gives me the flexibility to apply specific filters to a track and have fine control over the audio.

I’ll usually apply a compressor across the master bus to tame any peaks and beef up the mix. My settings involve a low compression ratio and a hard limit at -10dB. The objective is to keep the mix levels reasonable so as to preserve dynamic range. I don’t want to slam the meters and drive the signal hard into compression. Even when I do the complete mix in Final Cut, I will still use Soundtrack Pro simply to compress the composite mix, because I prefer its filters. When you set the reference tone to -20dB, then these levels will match the nominal levels for most digital VTRs. If you are laying off to an analog format, such as Betacam-SP, set your reference tone to -12dB and match the input on the deck to 0VU.

Getting ready for broadcast

The video equivalent is the broadcast safe limiting filter. Most NLEs have one, including Avid Media Composer and both old and new versions of Final Cut. This should normally be the last filter in the chain of effects. It’s often best to apply it to a self-contained file in FCP 7, a higher track in Media Composer or a compound clip in FCP X. Broadcast specs will vary with the network or station receiving your files or tapes, so check first. It’s worth noting that many popular effects, like glow dissolves, violate these parameters. You want the maximum luminance levels (white peaks) to be limited to 100 IRE and chrominance to not exceed 110, 115 or 120, depending on the specs of the broadcaster to whom you are delivering. In short, the chroma should stay within the outer ring of a vectorscope. I usually turn off any RGB limiting to avoid artifacts.

It’s often a good idea to reduce the overall video levels by about five percent prior to the application of a broadcast safe filter, simply so you don’t clip too harshly. That’s the same principle as I’ve applied to the audio mix. For example, I will often first apply a color correction filter to slightly lower the luminance level and reduce chroma. In addition, I’ll frequently use a desaturate highlights or lows filter. As you raise midrange or highlight levels and crush shadows during color correction, the chroma is also driven higher and/or lower accordingly. Red, blues and yellows are most susceptible, so it’s a good idea to tone down chroma saturation above 90 IRE and below 20 IRE. Most of these filters let you feather the transition range and the percentage of desaturation, so play with the settings to get the most subtle result. This keeps the overall image vibrant, but still legal.

Let me interject at this point that what you pay for when using a music mastering specialist are the “ears” (and brain) of the engineer and their premium monitoring environment. This should be equally true of a video finishing environment. Without proper audio and video monitoring, it’s impossible to tell whether the adjustments being made are correct. Accurate speakers, calibrated broadcast video monitors and video scopes are essential tools. Having said that though, software scopes and modern computer displays aren’t completely inaccurate. For example, the software scopes in FCP X and Apple’s ColorSync technology are quite good. Tools like Blackmagic Design Ultrascope, HP Dreamcolor or Apple Cinema Displays do provide accurate monitoring in lower-cost situations. I’ve compared the FCP X Viewer on an iMac to the output displayed on a broadcast monitor fed by an AJA IoXT. I find that both match surprisingly well. Ultimately it gets down to trusting an editor who knows how to get the best out of any given system.

Navigating the formats

Editors work in a multi-standard world. I frequently cut HD spots that run as downconverted SD content for broadcast, as well as at a higher HD resolution for the internet. The best production and post “lingua franca” format today is 1080p/23.976. This format fits a sweet spot for the internet, Blu-ray, DVD and modern LCD and plasma displays. It’s also readily available in just about every camera at any price range. Even if your product is only intended to be displayed as standard definition today, it’s a good idea to future-proof it by working in HD.

If you shoot, edit and master at 1080p/23.976, then you can easily convert to NTSC, 720p/59.94 or 1080i/29.97 for broadcast. The last step for many of my projects is to create deliverables from my master file. Usually this involves creating three separate broadcast files in SD and two HD formats using either ProRes or uncompressed codecs. I will also generate an internet version (without bars, tone, countdown or slate) that’s a high-quality H.264 file in the 720p/23.976 format. Either .mov or .mp4 is fine.

Adobe After Effects is my tool of choice for these broadcast conversions, because it does high-quality scaling and adds proper cadences. I follow these steps.

A) Export a self-contained 1080p/23.976 ProResHQ file from FCP 7 or X.

B) Place that into a 720×486, 29.97fps After Effects D1 composition and scale the source clip to size. Generally this will be letterboxed inside of the 4×3 frame.

C) Render an uncompressed QuickTime file, which is lower-field ordered with added 2:3 pulldown.

D) Re-import that into FCP 7 or X using a matching sequence setting, add the mixed track and format it with bars, tone, countdown and slate.

E) Export a final self-contained broadcast master file.

F) Repeat the process for each additional broadcast format.

Getting back there

Archiving is “The $64,000 Question” for today’s digital media shops. File-based mastering and archiving introduces dilemmas that didn’t exist with videotape. I recommend always exporting a final mixed master file along with a split-track, textless submaster. QuickTime files support multi-channel audio configurations, so building such a file with separate stereo stems for dialogue, sound effects and music is very easy in just about any NLE. Self-contained QuickTime movies with discrete audio channels can be exported from both FCP 7 and FCP X (using Roles).

Even if your NLE can’t export multi-channel master files, export the individual submixed elements as .wav or .aif audio files for future use. In addition to the audio track configuration, remove any titles and logos. By having these two files (master and submaster), it’s very simple to make most of the future revisions you might encounter without ever having to restore the original editorial project. Naturally, one question is which codec to use for access in the future. The preferred codec families these days are Avid DNxHD, Apple ProRes, uncompressed, OP1a MXF (XDCAM) or IMX. FCP editors will tend towards ProRes and Avid editors towards DNxHD, but uncompressed is very viable with the low cost of storage. For feature films, another option to consider would be image sequences, like a string of uncompressed TIFF or DPX files.

Whichever format you standardize on, make multiple copies. LTO data tape is considered the best storage medium, but for small files, like edited TV commercial masters, DVD-ROM, Blu-ray and XDCAM media are likely the most robust. This is especially true in the case of water damage.

The typical strategy for most small users who don’t want to invest in LTO drives is a three-pronged solution.

A) Store all camera footage, elements and masters on a RAID array for near-term editing access.

B) Back-up the same items onto at least two copies of raw SATA or SSD hard drives for longer storage.

C) Burn DVD-ROM or BD-ROM copies of edited master files, submasters, project files and elements (music, VO, graphics, etc.).

A properly polished production with audio and video levels that conform to standards is an essential aspect of delivering a professional product. Developing effective mastering and archiving procedures will protect the investment your clients have made in a production. Even better, a reliable archive routine will bring you repeat business, because it’s easy to return to the project in the future.

Originally written for DV magazine/Creative Planet/NewBay Media, LLC

©2012 Oliver Peters