Blackmagic Cloud Store is here.

Last year Blackmagic Design announced a new line of network storage products along with Blackmagic Cloud. The storage products include Blackmagic Cloud Store (a high-performance RAID-5 array), Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini 8TB (a RAID-0 storage solution), and Blackmagic Cloud Pod (an appliance to turn any USB-C drive into network storage). I reviewed the Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini in August. Now its big brother, Blackmagic Cloud Store, is finally shipping.

Good things in small packages

Blackmagic Cloud Store comes in three sizes: 20TB ($7,595 USD), 80TB ($22,995 USD), and 320TB ($88,995 USD). Each uses the same canister-style enclosure as the company’s eGPU. It features dual power supplies and fast, quiet M.2 SSD memory cards, which are installed around a central core. You can literally leave it on your desk and hardly hear the fans running. Cloud Store runs Blackmagic OS and applies wear leveling, so each M.2 card won’t see excessive data writes. Every sixth M.2 card is used for RAID-5 parity/data protection. The quoted capacity is a net figure, meaning you actually have the full 20TB, 80TB, or 320TB of useable storage.

In the unlikely case of hardware issues, such an M.2 SSD card going down, you would need to contact Blackmagic Design support. Cloud Store is not designed for end-user repair. However, it would be easy to repair by an authorized service engineer, even though it’s not a rack mount design. Various internal assemblies can be unbolted from the core chassis and replaced.

For editors and colorists working with shared media, there’s a built-in 10G switch with four 10G high-speed (10Gb/s) ethernet ports. Connect an external network switch to one of these if you need high-speed access to the array from more than four computers. Next, there are two USB-C and two standard 1G ethernet ports, which can be used to connect additional users at slower ethernet speeds.

The intended use for the USB ports is to connect external drives for ingest and back-up*. An ethernet cable from your internet modem or switch to the 1G ports is needed for Dropbox and Google Drive syncing (more on that in a moment). There is also an HDMI port for a monitor used to display real-time data, such as storage activity, drive health, and connected users. Functions like port aggregation of the 10G switch and the USB-C media I/O have not yet been enabled.

In theory, all eight data ports could be used to connect users, if you forgo syncing and the media I/O function. Although the M.2 SSD array is fast, the network connections will determine the true speed. For example, the 1G and USB-C ports yield write/read speeds of around 200-300MB/s, whereas the 10G ports perform in the 800-1,100 MB/s range.

Setting up a shared network

Download the Blackmagic Cloud Store set-up application to your computer. Run the installer for the set-up app, a user guide PDF, and the standalone Proxy Generator application. Review the network set-up section of the user guide. You can connect a device without using the application, but you’ll need it to set up media sharing over the internet. Bring your own standard 3-prong AC power cord for the unit, too.

I created a small workgroup by connecting the Blackmagic Cloud Store to my 2020 27″ iMac and my 2021 14″ M1 Max MacBook Pro. The iMac has a 10G port and was directly connected. The MacBook Pro was connected using a Sonnet Solo 10G Thunderbolt-to-10G ethernet adapter. If you use a bus-powered adapter like the Sonnet with a laptop, make sure you keep the laptop on AC power. Otherwise, the storage volume will tend to unmount. As with most NAS systems, each time you start the computer, you’ll need to manually mount the storage volume again within the OS.

The Cloud Store device is largely plug-and-play using standard network protocols built into the computer’s operating system. The iMac connected right away, but, I had to change the IP address for the MacBook Pro within its preferences. Other than that minor hiccup, setting up Blackmagic Cloud Store was the easiest installation that I’ve ever done with any NAS system.

If you are using Blackmagic Cloud Store on-premises in a workgroup, then you are set to go. Blackmagic Design intended this to be an easy system to administer. Therefore, you cannot subdivide it into different virtual volumes nor assign different levels of user permissions. The Blackmagic Cloud Store drive is mounted as a single drive volume on your desktop and shared media is accessible on all systems. This product is not solely built for DaVinci Resolve users. Apple Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro library/project files also work fine when stored on the Cloud Store volume.

Syncing remote media

Blackmagic Design has factored in remote workflows, which is where Dropbox and Google Drive come in. Connect an ethernet cable for an internet feed to one of the 1G ports on the Blackmagic Cloud Store. There’s a tab in the Cloud Store set-up application for Dropbox or Google Drive. Now assign the Cloud Store volume as the location for your Dropbox or Google Drive folder. You can the opt to share only proxy media or full-res files and proxies. Proxy media files can be generated by DaVinci Resolve itself or using the Proxy Generator application.

Editors with whom you collaborate remotely will have access to the media thanks to Dropbox or Google Drive syncing. The remote editors don’t need Blackmagic Cloud Store units for this to work and can certainly work with other storage solutions. There are a variety of possible workflows, depending on whether it’s an editor sharing files with a colorist or an editor working with assistants on a feature film.

Dropbox and Google Drive syncing allows for an incremental workflow. For example, many productions are filmed over several days. As new media is added to the primary Blackmagic Cloud Store volume, syncing can happen automatically for all remote collaborators. Remember that the Dropbox and Google Drive options are based on your account and not Blackmagic Design. So you may incur charges based on your plan with these companies.

I personally have reservations about leaving your storage directly connected to the internet. As many NAS owners who had systems exposed to the internet can attest, getting hacked and having your media held for ransom is a very real risk. So take precautions – you’ve been warned.

Blackmagic Cloud and DaVinci Resolve

Blackmagic Design has specifically tailored the workflow for DaVinci Resolve, which works with a database (library) containing multiple projects. There are three types of databases: local (stored on your computer), server (stored on a separate networked computer), or cloud, i.e. the Blackmagic Cloud server. Anyone can sign up at the Blackmagic Design website to get their own free Cloud account. If you decide to add a library to Blackmagic Cloud, then the charge is $5 per month, per library. Of course, a single library can contain multiple projects.

In a typical Blackmagic Cloud scenario, the main editor adds a Resolve library to Cloud and creates the active Resolve project there. When its time to share the project with other editors/VFX artists/colorists, turn on multi-user collaboration within Resolve. The library owner sends an invitation to the email address tied to the remote user’s account. The second editor has already received the media via a shipped drive or synced over the internet. That editor logs into their Blackmagic Cloud account to gain access to the library and that project. Open the project, relink the media, and it’s off to the races.

The first person to open a sequence has write access to that sequence. Everyone else has read-only access to the open sequence, but write access to any others that they open. If a change is made to a writeable sequence and saved, the library on Blackmagic Cloud is updated. This is relatively fast, but not as instant as if the database were local. Anyone viewing the sequence in a read-only mode is prompted to refresh the sequence. Both Resolve Studio and Resolve (the free App Store version) worked fine.

Who this is for

There are three potential use cases for Blackmagic Cloud Store. You could simply use it as a local drive attached to one computer. This wouldn’t be the best solution, because Thunderbolt arrays are faster and cheaper. The second use case is the small workgroup under one roof. For example, this could be a small post house or a team of editors cutting a film. Simply connect four computers to the Blackmagic Cloud Store unit and now everyone can share media and project files.

The final use case embraces a remote workflow. One or more users are connected to a Blackmagic Cloud Store at one location. They can then share media and Resolve projects using the built-in syncing and Blackmagic Cloud. For example, you might be a great editor, but not the best colorist. Using this workflow, you could share your project remotely with an experienced colorist and work together through a sequence interactively. Or it’s a feature film and several editors, each working remotely, is editing a different reel of the same film.

There’s plenty of competition in the market for shared, networked storage solutions. Most require a certain level of IT knowledge to set up and administer. Blackmagic Cloud Store is a deceptively simple, yet powerful, storage device that can fit many operational models. It’s a high-performance drive array that can sit quietly on your desktop without the need for rack space or extra cooling. Couple it with a Blackmagic Cloud account and you have one of the simplest way to collaborate across town or across the country.

Update  *This feature was enabled with the Blackmagic Cloud Store 1.1.3 software update. This update also includes several bugs fixes, as well as performance and stability improvements.

An earlier version of this review was written for and appears at Pro Video Coalition.

©2023 Oliver Peters

Impressions of NAB 2023

2023 marks the 100th year of the NAB Convention, which started out as a radio gathering in New York City. This year you could add ribbons to your badges indicating the number of years that you’d attended – 5, 10, etc. My first NAB was 1979 in Dallas, so I proudly displayed the 25+ ribbon. Although I haven’t attended each one in those intervening years, I have attended many and well over 25.

Some have been ready to sound the death knell for large, in-person conventions, thanks to the pandemic and proliferation of online teleconferencing services like Zoom. 2019 was the last pre-covid year with an attendance of 91,500 – down from previous highs of over 100,000. 2022 was the first post-covid NAB and attendance was around 52,400. That was respectable given the climate a year ago. This year’s attendance was over 65,000, so certainly an upward trend. If anything, this represents a pent-up desire to kick the tires in person and hook back up with industry friends from all over the world. My gut feeling is that international attendance is still down, so I would expect future years’ attendance to grow higher.

Breaking down the halls

Like last year, the convention spread over the Central, North, and new West halls. The South hall with its two floors of exhibition space has been closed for renovation. The West hall is a three-story complex with a single, large exhibition floor. It’s an entire convention center in its own right. West hall is connected to the North hall by the sidewalk, an enclosed upstairs walkway, as well as the LVCC Loop (the connecting tunnel that ferries people between buildings in Teslas). From what I hear, next year will be back to the North, Central, and South halls.

As with most NAB conventions, these halls were loosely organized by themes. Location and studio production gear could mostly be found in Central. Post was mainly in the North hall, but next year I would expect it to be back in the South hall. The West hall included a mixture of vendors that fit under connectivity topics, such as streaming, captioning, etc. It also included some of the radio services.

Although the booths covered nearly all of the floor space, it felt to me like many of the big companies were holding back. By that I mean, products with large infrastructure needs (big shared storage systems, large video switchers, huge mixing desks, etc) were absent. Mounting a large booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center – whether that’s for CES or NAB – is quite costly, with many unexpected charges.

Nevertheless, there were still plenty of elaborate camera sets and huge booths, like that of Blackmagic Design. If this was your first year at NAB, the sum of the whole was likely to be overwhelming. However, I’m sure many vendors were still taking a cautious approach. For example, there was no off-site Avid Connect event. There were no large-scale press conferences the day before opening.

The industry consolidates

There has been a lot of industry consolidation over the past decade or two. This has been accelerated thanks to the pandemic. Many venerable names are now part of larger holding companies. For example, Audiotonix owns many large audio brands, including Solid State Logic, DiGiCo, Sound Devices, among others. And they added Harrison to their portfolio, just in time for NAB. The Sennheiser Group owns both Sennheiser and Neumann. Grass Valley, Snell, and Quantel products have all been consolidated by Black Dragon Capital under the Grass Valley brand. Such consolidation was evident through shared booth space. In many cases, the brands retained their individual identities. Unfortunately for Snell and Quantel, those brands have now been completely subsumed by Grass Valley.

A lot of this is a function of the industry tightening up. While there’s a lot more media production these days, there are also many inexpensive solutions to create that media. Therefore, many companies are venturing outside of their traditional lanes. For example. Sennheiser still manufactures great microphone products, but they’ve also developed the AMBEO immersive audio product line. At NAB they demonstrated the AMBEO 2-Channel Spatial Audio renderer. This lets a mixer take surround mixes and/or stems and turn them into 2-channel spatial mixes that are stereo-compatible. The control software allows you to determine the stereo width and amount of surround and LFE signal put into the binaural mix. In the same booth, Neumann was demoing their new KH 120-II near-field studio monitors.

General themes

Overall, I didn’t see any single trend that would point to an overarching theme for the show. AI/ML/Neural Networks were part of many companies’ marketing strategy. Yet, I found nothing that jumped out like the current public fascination with ChatGPT. You have to wonder how much of this is more evolutionary than revolutionary and that the terms themselves are little more than hype.

Stereoscopic production is still around, although I only found one company with product (Stereotec). Virtual sets were aplenty, including a large display by Vu Studios and even a mobile expando trailer by Magicbox for virtual set production on-location. Insta360 was there, but tucked away in the back of Central hall.

Of course, everyone has a big push for “the cloud” in some way, shape, or form. However, if there is any single new trend that seems to be getting manufacturers’ attention, it’s passing video over IP. The usual companies who have dealt in SDI-based video hardware, like AJA, Blackmagic Design, and Matrox, were all showing IP equivalents. Essentially, where you used to send SDI video signals using the uncompressed SDI protocol, you will now use the SMPTE ST 2110 IP protocol to send it through 1GigE networks.

The world of post production

Let me shift to post – specifically Adobe, Avid, and Blackmagic Design. Unlike Blackmagic, neither Avid nor Adobe featured their usual main stage presentations. I didn’t see Apple’s Final Cut Pro anywhere on the floor and only one sighting in the press room. Avid’s booth was a shadow of itself, with only a few smaller demo pods. Their main focus was showing the tighter integration between Media Composer and Pro Tools (finally!). There were no Pro Tools control surfaces to play with. However, in their defense, NAMM 2023 (the large audio and music products exhibition) was held just the week before. Most likely this was a big problem for any audio vendor that exhibits at both shows. NAMM shifts back to January in 2024, which is its historical slot on the calendar.

Uploading media to the cloud for editing has been the mantra at Frame io, which is now under the Adobe wing. They’ve enhanced those features with direct support by Fujifilm (video) and Capture One (photography). In addition, Frame has improved features specific to the still photography market. New to the camera-to-cloud game is also Atomos, which demoed its own cloud-based editor developed by asset management developer Axle ai.

Adobe demoed the new, text-based editing features for Premiere Pro. It’s currently in beta, but will soon be in full release. In my estimation, this is the best text-based method of any of the NLEs. Avid’s script-based editing is optimized for scripted content, but doesn’t automatically generate text. Its strength is in scripted films and TV shows, where the page layout mimics a script supervisor’s lined script.

Adobe’s approach seems better for documentary projects. Text is generated through speech-to-text software within Premiere Pro. That is now processed on your computer instead of in the cloud. When you highlight text in the transcription panel, it automatically marks the in and out points on that source clip. Then, using insert and overwrite commands while the transcription panel is still selected, automatically edit that portion of the source clip to the timeline. Once you shift your focus to the timeline, the transcription panel displays the edited text that corresponds to the clips on the timeline. Rearrange the text and Premiere Pro automatically rearranges the clips on the timeline. Or rearrange the clips and the text follows.

Meanwhile over at Blackmagic Design’s massive booth, the new DaVinci Resolve 18.5 features were on full display. 18.5 is also in beta. While there are a ton of new features, it also includes automatic speech-to-text generation. This felt to me like a work-in-progress. So far, only English is supported. It creates text for the source and you can edit from the text panel to the timeline. However, unlike Premiere Pro, there is no interaction between the text and clips in the timeline.

I was surprised to see that Blackmagic Design was not promoting Resolve on the iPad. There was only one demo station and no dedicated demo artist. I played with it a bit and it felt to me like it’s not truly optimized for iPadOS yet. It does work well with the Speed Editor keyboard. That’s useful for any user, since the Cut page is probably where anyone would do the bulk of the work in this version of Resolve. When I used the Apple Pencil, the interface lacked any feedback as icons were clicked. So I was never quite sure if an action had happened or not when I used the Pencil. I’m not sure many will do a complete edit with Resolve on the iPad; however, it could evolve into a productive tool for preliminary editing in the field.

Here’s an interesting side note. Nearly all of the Blackmagic Design demo pods for DaVinci Resolve were running on Apple’s 24″ candy-colored iMacs. Occasionally performance was a bit sluggish from what I could tell. Especially when the operator demoed the new Relight feature to me. Nevertheless, they seemed to work well throughout the show.

In other Blackmagic news, all of the Cloud Store products are now shipping. The Cintel film scanner gets an 8mm gate. There are now IP versions of the video cards and converters. There’s an OLPF version of the URSA Mini Pro 12K and you can shoot vertical video with the Pocket Cinema Camera that’s properly tagged as vertical.

Of course, not everyone wants their raw media in the cloud and Blackmagic Design wasn’t showing the only storage products. Most of the usual storage vendors were present, including Facilis, OpenDrives, Synology, OWC, and QNAP. The technology trends include a shift away from spinning drives towards solid state storage, as well as faster networking protocols. Quite a few vendors(like Sonnet) were showing 25GbE (and faster) connections. This offers a speed improvement over the 1GbE and 10GbE ports and switches that are currently used.

Finally, one of the joys of NAB is to check out the smaller booths, where you’ll often find truly innovative new products. These small start-ups often grow into important companies in our industry. Hedge is just such a company. Tucked into a corner of the North hall, Hedge was demonstrating its growing portfolio of essential workflow products. Another start-up, Colourlab AI shared some booth space there, as well, to show off Freelab, their new integration with Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.

That’s a quick rundown of my thoughts about this year’s NAB Show. For other thoughts and specific product reviews, be sure to also check out NAB coverage at Pro Video Coalition, RedShark News, and postPerspective. There’s also plenty of YouTube coverage.

Click on any image below to view an NAB slideshow.

©2023 Oliver Peters

A Film’s Manageable Length

There are three versions of every feature film: as written, as shot, and what comes out of post. The written and filmed story can often be too long as compared to some arbitrary target length. It is the editor’s job to get the film down such a “manageable length.” Since a film isn’t broadcast television and doesn’t have to fit into a time format, deciding on the right length is a vague concept. It’s like saying how long a book should be.

This idea was derived in part based on both the audience’s attention span to the story and how long their bladders held out. Couple this to a theater’s schedule – longer movies meant fewer screenings and, therefore, lower box office revenue. In past decades, the accepted length was in the 90 to 100 minute range. Modern blockbusters can easily clock in at 120 to 150 minutes. However, if you are an indie filmmaker and didn’t produce a film starring Tom Cruise, then you better stick closely to that 100 minute mark.

The script

The rule of thumb for a script is around one minute per page. 100 pages = 100 minutes. For the most part that works, until you hit a script line, such as, “and the battle ensued.” That can easily consume several minutes of screen time. And so, it takes careful reading and interpretation of a script to get a valid ballpark length. That not only impacts the final length, but also the shooting schedule, production budget, and more.

Walter Murch has a technique to get a good idea for the true length of a film. His method is to take a day or two and act out each scene of the script by himself – reading the dialogue and going through characters’ actions. As he does this, he times each scene. He’ll do this two or three times until he has a good average timing for each scene and a total estimate for the film. Then, as the film is being shot, he’ll compare his time estimates with those coming from the script supervisor. If they are radically off, then he knows that something deviated a lot from the written script. And that will need some explanation.

Trimming the first assembly

The starting point for any editor is to assemble everything according to the script. At this point, the editor does not have discretion to drop lines, scenes, or re-arrange anything. The point is to present an initial cut to the director, which is faithful to the director’s intention during filming. Now you know how long the combined material really is. It’s quite common for the film to be long. In fact, that’s better than being too short or even very close to the target length.

If a film runs 10-30% over, then according to Murch, you can get there through “diet and exercise.” If it’s 50-100% or more over-length, then it’s time for true “surgery” to figuratively lose some body parts or organs.

A film that’s 10-30% long can usually be trimmed in various ways, without losing any key scenes. One way is to cut lines more tightly together, which can also help with pacing. A film often has “shoe leather” – getting a character from point A to point B. For example, a character arrives home in his car, walks up to the front door, opens it, and enters the home. Here, the editor can cut from the car arriving home directly to the interior of the home as the actor enters. Another technique is to enter scenes a bit later and exit them earlier. And finally, as you see the assembled film, you may realize that there are redundant dialogue lines or early plot reveals that can be cut. All of these comprise the “diet and exercise” solution.

Surgery

If the film is long and you can’t get to a desired length through “diet and exercise,” then more drastic cuts are needed. You might have to lose entire scenes or even characters. Sometimes this can focus the film by honing in on the real story. You often realize that some of these scenes weren’t needed after all and the film plays better without them. It’s at this stage, that the director and editor may re-arrange some of the scene order. In doing so, you may also discover that certain plot elements become obvious and that scenes, which might have foreshadowed or explained them aren’t needed after all. This process can takes days, weeks, or months.

It can also be painful for many directors. Some are happy to jump in and make severe cuts right away. Others have to go through an iterative process of whittling the film down in numerous passes over the course of weeks.

One of the earliest films I’ve cut was “The First of May.” It was a family film with a child lead actor coupled with an ensemble of older acting legends. Toss in a literal circus and you can see the complexity. The final length was long by what was assumed to be the “ideal” length for an indie, family film.

As we we getting down to the wire for the initial pitches to potential distributors, the producing partners – who split the roles of writer and director – were at odds over the length. One argument was that “ET” was a family film and it was long. The counter-argument was that this wasn’t “ET” and if it was too long, they’d never get in the door in the first place.

We were at an impasse and the co-producer/director and I did what we called the “slash and burn” edit. What could we cut out of the film to get to 90 minutes if told it had to absolutely be at that length? Unfortunately, this exercise didn’t sit well with the co-producer/writer. In the end, after some tense conversations, they were able to agree on an edit that held together well and met the objectives.

This is a dilemma that every editor/director team faces and it will always be painful for some. After all, when the editor cuts out the scene with that great crane shot that took all day to pull off, the director can’t help but wince. However, it’s all in service of the story. Remember, the audience only sees the film that they are presented with and will usually never know what was cut out. If the pacing and emotion are right and the story holds up and entertains, then you’ve done your job as an editor – no matter what the film’s final length is.

©2023 Oliver Peters

The Oscar. Now what?

Everything Everywhere All at Once dominated the Academy Awards night, including winning the Best Film Editing award for Paul Rogers. The team used Adobe Premiere Pro as their NLE of choice. By extension this becomes the first editing Oscar win for Premiere. Of course, it’s the team and editor that won the award, not the software that they used. Top editors could cut with any application and get the same result.

The Academy Awards started as a small celebratory dinner for insiders to recognize each other’s achievements in film. Over the decades this has become a major cultural event. Winning or even being nominated is a huge feather in the cap for any film. This can be heavily leveraged by the marketing teams of not only the film distributors and talent agents, but also the various products used in the process – be that cameras or software.

Avid’s dominance

When it comes to editing, Avid has been the 800-pound gorilla in the modern digital era. Ever since Walter Murch won for editing The English Patient using Media Composer, the specific NLE on an Oscar-winning film has become a hot topic among editors. This was never the case when the only options were Moviola, KEM, or Steenbeck.

Even this year nine out of the ten nominees for the Oscar for Best Picture and four out of the five nominees for Best Film Editing used Media Composer. Yet, Avid’s dominance in the winner’s circle has seen some occasional cracks from competitors, like Apple’s Final Cut Pro (legacy version) and Lightworks. Nevertheless, Media Composer is still a safe bet. And let’s not forget sound, where Pro Tools has even less competition from other DAWs among film and TV sound editors and mixers. All of the nominees for the Oscar for Best Sound at this year’s Academy Awards used Pro Tools.

There are, of course, many awards competitions around the world, including the ACE Eddie Awards, BAFTA, Golden Globes, and others, including various film festivals. Many of these don’t give out specific craft awards for editors or editing; however, a lot of these winning films have been edited with other tools. For example, many award-worthy indie films, especially documentaries, have been edited with Premiere Pro. Even Final Cut Pro (the current “X” version) has had wins in such categories. This includes wins for the short films, The Silent Child and Skin at the 2018 and 2019 Academy Awards.

Stacking up the NLE competitors

The truth of the matter is that today, there are seven viable applications that might be used to cut a professional feature film or documentary: Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks, Edius X, and Vegas Pro. You could probably also factor in others, such Final Cut Pro 7 (now zombie-ware) and Media 100 (yes, still alive), not to mention consumer-oriented NLEs like iMovie or Movie Maker. Realistically, most experienced film editors are likely to only use one of the first five on the list.

Of those five, Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the app that most editors have their eyes on. Aside from its widespread use in color correction, Resolve is also a perfectly capable editing application. Although it has yet to pull off an Oscar win for editing, Resolve has been widely used in many aspects of the production and post workflow of top films. Owing to its nature as a “Swiss Army Knife” application, Resolve fits into various on-set, editing, and visual effects niches. It’s only a matter of time before Resolve gets an Oscar win for editing. But other Blackmagic Design products also shouldn’t be overlooked. In the 2023 Academy Awards, more than 20 films across the technical, documentary, short film, international feature film, and animated categories used some Blackmagic Design product.

Marketing

When an application is used on an award-winning film, I’d bet that the manufacturer’s marketing department is doing high-fives. But does this really move the sales needle? Maybe. It’s all aspirational marketing. They want you to feel that if you use the same software as an Oscar-winning film editor used, then you, too, could be in that league. Talent is always the key factor, but we can all dream. Right? That’s what marketing plays upon, but it also impacts the development of the application itself.

Both Avid and Adobe have been fine-tuning their tools with professional users in mind for years. They’ve added features based on the needs of a small, but influential (or at least vocal) market sector. This results in applications that tick most of the professional boxes, but which are also harder to learn and eventually master.

That’s a route Apple also chose to pursue with Final Cut Pro 1 through 7. Despite a heralded introduction with Cold Mountain in 2003, it took until 2010 before Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter nailed down an Oscar with The Social Network. They then reprised that in 2011 with a win for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even as late as 2020, the discontinued FCP 7 was represented by Parasite, winning Best Picture and nominated for Best Film Editing.

Apple and Final Cut Pro’s trajectory unexpectedly changed course with the introduction of Final Cut Pro X. This shift coincided with the growth of social media and a new market of many non-traditional video editors. Final Cut Pro in its current iteration is the ideal application for this market and has experienced a huge growth in users. But, it still gets labelled as being not ready for professional users, even though a ton of professional content is posted using the app. Apple took the platform approach – opting to leave out many advanced features and letting third party developers fill in the gaps where needed. This is the core of much of the criticism.

How advanced/complex does a professional NLE really need to be?

In the case of FCP, it’s certainly capable of Hollywood-level films along with a range of high-end, international dramas. Witness the many examples I’ve written about, like Focus, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Voice from the Stone, The Banker, Jezebel, and Blood Red Sky.  However, a wide range of professional editors would like to see more.

The internal corporate discussion goes like this. Marketing asks, “What do we have to do to get broader adoption among professional film editors?” Engineering answers, “It will take X dollars and X amount of time.” Top management asks, “What’s the return if we do that?” And that’s usually where the cycle stops, until the next year or awards season.

The truth is that the traditional high-end post market is extremely small for a company like Apple. The company is already selling hardware, which is their bread and butter. Will a more advanced version of FCP sell more hardware? Probably not. Avid, Adobe, and Blackmagic Design are already doing that for them. On the other hand, what is more influential for sales in today’s market – Oscar-winning professional editors or a bevy of YouTube influencers touting your product?

I’m not privy to sales numbers, so I have no idea whether or not going after the very small professional post market makes financial sense for either Blackmagic Design or Adobe. In the case of Avid, their dominance pays off through their ecosystem. Avid-based facilities are also likely to have Avid storage and Pro Tools audio facilities. Hardware most likely covers the development costs. Plus, both Avid and Adobe have shifted to subscription models (Adobe fully, Avid as an option). This seems to be good for both companies.

Blackmagic Design is also a hardware developer and manufacturer. Selling cameras and a wide range of other products enables them to offer DaVinci Resolve for as little as free. You’d be hard-pressed to find a production company that wasn’t using one or more Blackmagic products. Only time will tell which company has taken the approach that a) ensures their long term survival, and b) benefits professional film editors in the best way. In the case of Apple, it’s pretty clear that adding new feature to Final Cut Pro will generate more revenue in an amount that many competitors would envy. Yet, it would be small by Apple’s measurement.

In the end, awards are good for a developer’s marketing buzz, but don’t forget the real team that won the award itself. It’s wonderful for Paul Rogers and Adobe that Everything Everywhere All at Once was tapped for the Oscar for Best Film Editing. It’s an interesting milestone, but when it comes to software, it’s little more than bragging rights. Great to have, but remember, it’s Rogers that earned it, regardless of the tools he used.

©2023 Oliver Peters

What is a Finishing Editor?

To answer that, let’s step back to film. Up until the 1970s dramatic television shows, feature films, and documentaries were shot and post-produced on film. The film lab would print positive copies (work print) of the raw negative footage. Then a team of film editors and assistants would handle the creative edit of the story by physically cutting and recutting this work print until the edit was approved. This process was often messy with many film splices, grease pencil marks on the work print to indicate dissolves, and so on.

Once a cut was “locked” (approved by the director and the execs) the edited work print and accompanying notes and logs were turned over to the negative cutter. It was this person’s job to match the edits on the work print by physically cutting and splicing the original camera negative, which up until then was intact. The negative cutter would also insert any optical effects created by an optical house, including titles, transitions, and visual effects.

Measure twice, cut once

Any mistakes made during negative cutting were and are irreparable, so it is important that a negative cutter be detail-oriented, precise, and works cleanly. You don’t want excess glue at the splices and you don’t want to pick up any extra dirt and dust on the negative if it can be avoided. If a mistaken cut is made and you have to repair that splice, then at least one frame is lost from that first splice.

A single frame – 1/24th of a second – is the difference in a fight scene between a punch just about to enter the frame and the arm passing all the way through the frame. So you don’t want a negative cutter who is prone to making mistakes. Paul Hirsch, ACE points out in his book A long time ago in a cutting room far, far away…. that there’s an unintentional jump cut in the Death Star explosion scene in the first Star Wars film, thanks to a negative cutting error.

In the last phase of the film post workflow, the cut negative goes to the lab’s color timer (the precursor to today’s colorist), who sets the “timing” information (color, brightness, and densities) used by the film printer. The printer generates an interpositive version of the complete film from the assembled negative. From this interpositive, the lab will generally create an internegative from which release prints are created.

From the lab to the linear edit bay

This short synopsis of the film post-production process points to where we started. By the mid-1970s, video post-production technology came onto the scene for anything destined for television broadcast. Material was still shot on film and in some cases creatively edited on film, as well. But the finishing aspect shifted to video. For example, telecine systems were used to transfer and color correct film negative to videotape. The lab’s color timing function was shifted to this stage (before the edit) and was now handled by the telecine operator, who later became known as a colorist.

If work print was generated and edited by a film editor, then it was the video editor’s job to match those edits from the videotapes of the transferred film. Matching was a manual process. A number of enterprising film editors worked out methods to properly compute the offsets, but no computerized edit list was involved. Sometimes a video offline edit session was first performed with low-res copies of the film transfer. Other times producers simply worked from handwritten timecode notes for selected takes. This video editing – often called online editing and operated by an online editor – was the equivalent to the negative cutting stage described earlier. Simpler projects, such as TV commercials, might be edited directly in an online edit session without any prior film or offline edit.

Into the digital era

Over time, any creative editing previously done on film for television projects shifted to videotape edit systems and later to digital nonlinear edit systems (NLEs), such as Avid and Lightworks. These editors were referred to as offline editors and post now followed a bifurcated process know as offline and online editing. This was analogous to film’s work print and negative cutting stages. Likewise, telecine technology evolved to not only perform color correction during the film transfer process, but also afterwards working from the assembled master videotape as a source. This process, known as tape-to-tape color correction, gave the telecine operator – now colorist – the tools to perform better shot matching, as well as to create special looks in post. With this step the process had gone full circle, making the video colorist the true equivalent of the lab’s color timer.

As technology marched on, videotape and linear online edit bays gave way to all-digital, NLE-based facilities. Nevertheless, the separation of roles and processes continued. Around 2000, Avid came in with its Symphony model – originally a separate product and not just a software option. Avid Symphony systems offered a full set of color-correction tools and the ability to work in uncompressed resolutions.

It became quite common for a facility to have multiple offline edit bays using Avid Media Composer units staffed by creative, offline editors working with low-res media. These would be networked to an Avid shared storage solution. In addition, these facilities would also have one or more Avid Symphony units staffed by online editors.

A project would be edited on Media Composer until the cut was locked. Then assistants would ingest high-res media from files or videotape, and an online editor would “conform” the edit with this high-res media to match the approved timeline. The online editor would also handle Symphony color correction, insert visual effects, titles, etc. Finally, all tape or file deliverables would be exported out of the Avid Symphony. This system configuration and workflow is still in effect at many facilities around the world today, especially those that specialize in unscripted (“reality”) TV series.

The rise of the desktop systems

Naturally, there are more software options today. Over time, Avid’s dominance has been challenged by Apple Final Cut Pro (FCP 1-7 and FCPX), Adobe Premiere Pro, and more recently Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve. Systems are no longer limited by resolution constraints. General purpose computers can handle the work with little or no bespoke hardware requirements.

Fewer projects are even shot on film anymore. An old school, film lab post workflow is largely impossible to mount any longer. And so, video and digital workflows that were once only used for television shows and commercials are now used in nearly all aspects of post, including feature films. There are still some legacy terms in use, such as DI (digital intermediate), which for feature film is essentially an online edit and color correction session.

Given that modern software – even running on a laptop – is capable of performing nearly every creative and technical post-production task, why do we still have separate dedicated processes and different individuals assigned to each? The technical part of the answer is that some tasks do need extra tools. Proper color correction requires precision monitoring and becomes more efficient with specialized control panels. You may well be able to cut with a laptop, but if your source media is made up of 8K RED files, a proxy (offline-to-online) workflow makes more sense.

The human side of the equation is more complex

Post-production tasks often involve a left/right-side brain divide. Not every great editor is good when it comes to the completion phase. In spite of being very creative, many often have sloppy edits, messy timelines, and their project organization leaves a lot to be desired. For example, all footage and sequences just bunched together in one large project without bins. Timelines might have clips spread vertically in no particular order with some disabled clip – based on changes made in each revision path. As I’ve said before: You will be judged by your timelines!

The bottom line is that the kind of personality that makes a good creative editor is different than one that makes a good online editor. The latter is often called a finishing editor today within larger facilities. While not a perfect analogy, there’s a direct evolutionary path from film negative cutter to linear online editor to today’s finishing editor.

If you compare this to the music world, songs are often handled by a mixing engineer followed by a mastering engineer. The mix engineer creates the best studio mix possible and the mastering engineer makes sure that mix adheres to a range of guidelines. The mastering engineer – working with a completely different set of audio tools – often adds their own polish to the piece, so there is creativity employed at this stage, as well. The mastering engineer is the music world’s equivalent to a finishing editor in the video world.

Remember, that on larger projects, like a feature film, the film editor is contracted for a period of time to deliver a finished cut of the film. They are not permanent staff. Once, that job is done the project is handed off to the finishing team to accurately generate the final product working with the high-res media. Other than reviewing the work, there’s no value to having a highly paid film editor also handle basic assembly of the master. This is also true in many high-end commercial editorial companies. It’s more productive to have the creative editors working with the next client, while the staff finishing team finalizes the master files.

The right kit for the job

It also comes down to tools. Avid Symphony is still very much in play, especially with reality television shows. But there’s also no reason finishing and final delivery can’t be done using Apple Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro. Often more specialized edit tools are assigned to these finishing duties, including systems such as Autodesk Smoke/Flame, Quantel Rio, and SGO Mistika. The reason, aside from quality, is that these tools also include comprehensive color and visual effects functions.

Finishing work today includes more that simply conforming a creative edit from a decision list. The finishing editor may be called upon to create minor visual effects and titles along with finessing those that came out of the edit. Increasingly Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve is becoming a strong contender for finishing – especially if Resolve was used for color correction. It’s a powerful all-in-one post-production application, capable of handling all of the effects and delivery chores. If you finish out of Resolve, that cuts out half of the roundtrip process.

Attention to detail is the hallmark of a good finishing editor. Having good color and VFX skills is a big plus. It is, however, a career path in its own right and not necessarily a stepping stone to becoming a top-level feature film editor or even an A-list colorist. While that might be a turn-off to some, it will also appeal to many others and provide a great place to let your skills shine.

©2023 Oliver Peters