REAL TALK 01 02 04 05 06 07 08 10 11 13 P A G E
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P A G E
Avid introduces ISIS 5000 - 16TB
Command more,
Avid making Everyday News!
Film Editing Workshop
Edit faster
BINGO for Avid
P A G E
- Tips and tricks from users
T H E TEC H N O LO G Y M A R K E T I N G T E A M
P A G E
- Mark Goldblatt
A Q UA R T ER LY N E W S L E T T E R F R O M
P A G E
P A G E
P A G E
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(16TB - 96TB RAW CAPACITY)
ISIS5000 - 16 TB
A new benchmark for affordable shared storage with greater reliability, more flexibility, higher performance, and more powerful collaboration than competitive offers. Industry-leading ISIS file system deployed on lower cost hardware Up to 96TB raw capacity Includes 90 Seat licenses and Avid Priority Support Resolutions to uncompressed 1080i 10-bit HD ISIS5000 is an open storage system. In addition to support for Avid editing systems, Interplay workgroups, and AirSpeed Multi Stream servers, full support for Apple Final Cut Pro editors is included, with support for more editors coming. Based on proven technology from the leader in shared media storage and backed by the most rigorous real-time performance and workflow verification, ISIS5000 is the best investment customers can make in a solid, flexible foundation for media production. System Resiliency Hot Spare drive - Automatic rebuild to minimize exposure Redundant System Drives Operating System, Meta Data protection, Hot swap, accessible on rear of storage enclosure RAID-5 Parity - Media protection and storage efficiency Resilient System Director option Protect file system meta data, Increase media availability Click here to know more about ISIS5000
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AVID INTERPLAY CENTRAL Avid Interplay Central revolutionizes workflow by changing the way media professionals access, create, distribute, and manage media. Designed to accommodate a wide array of workflows, Interplay Central delivers next-generation workflow tools for on-the-go media professionals through both web-and mobile-based apps. With an open user interface, Interplay Central allows individuals in different media production functions to access the tools they need to complete tasks with greater visibility to assets, team collaboration, and workflow agility.
The intuitive browser-based UI of Interplay Central enables any news pro with an Internet connection to swiftly develop and synchronize text, video, and audio, record audio VO, and even add graphics to create finished stories to be sent directly to air, for publishing to Web, or to be completed by craft editors. Smartphone users [BlackBerry currently, others soon] can take advantage of Interplay Central with a native Mobile app that lets them browse, edit, and create iNEWS stories and rundowns. Even with no connection, stories can be completed and then uploaded once connectivity is restored.
A highly versatile application requiring only a browser and Internet connection, Interplay Central extends Avid’s Interplay family of workflow-enabling solutions with a new generation of lightweight applications that provide a more agile, collaborative, and profitable means of media production.
With no local device software to install and maintain, Interplay Central is a model of simple deployment and low cost of ownership. Software installation, licensing, administration and upgrades are consolidated on one or more servers that handle multiple simultaneous client connections for browsing and editing. Deployment can be phased in gradually while existing systems are still in operation.
The Interplay Central user interface is highly customizable and enables integrated development of text, video, graphics, and voiceovers that can play directly to air, web or rough sequence for finish by craft editors. Efficient story-centric and rundown-based workflows enable contributors to work together with unprecedented effectiveness, whether they are at the station or in the field by providing access to, and control of content, rundowns, and Interplay-based video assets.
The Interplay Central architecture is highly scalable and fully open to accommodate future functionality, customer needs, and third party applications. It delivers on the Integrated Media Enterprise vision with simple, user-friendly tools that span media enterprise workflows to improve access and visibility into assets, collaboration and business agility.
Feature set includes the capability of viewing and editing MXF files that are being captured. Playback and editing also supports the full range of formats and resolutions supported by the Avid Craft Editors. Voice overs and sophisticated audio adjustments are also available in the Interplay Central. And there is an intuitive user toolset with customizable interface and fields for script writing and editing too. All this, on Mac and Windows.
Interplay Central is ground breaking technology. It is not only the entry point to enable media professionals become more agile and efficient, but is an extensible, forward-looking application that helps them adapt and embrace new ways of working, connecting, and collaborating in an ever-changing, always competitive, business environment.
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AVID INTERPLAY CENTRAL
*Available initially for Blackberry; other device support to follow
Click here to know more about Avid Interplay Central Page 3
The latest version of Command includes the following updates : Updated and Larger Icons
Updated Playlist Lock Behaviour
Play While Transfer Items with a new Transferring Status Icon Loop Playback for iNews Playlists
Loop Count Indicator
RULE YOUR PCR WORKFLOW
WITH THE LATEST FROM
INEWS COMMAND
Alphabetical Channel Grouping in the Inventory Panel
Resizable Inventory Panel Item Count for the selected group in the Inventory Panel Search feature no longer Case Sensitive
iNews Command from Avid has been continuously updating its features based on advancing Broadcast Workflows as well as customer requests.
The Command Clock panel now automatically displays the Count Up/Down clocks for all video channels in the active (open) playlist, and users can customize the size and color of the clocks in the panel.
User can also set the clocks to flash red for the last 10 seconds of an item’s duration.
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When New Items are added to a Playlist, the Time Remaining In Show updates immediately. And many more updates for 3rd party integration through VDCP.
DAILY THANTHI GETS AVID FOR THEIR TELEVISION VENTURE Dina Thanthi, one of the oldest publications in the state of Tamil Nadu has opted for an Avid solution for their upcoming News Channel DTTV. When the newsprint baron decided to go for their news channel, Avid was clearly the choice from the beginning. An Avid Unity ISIS5000 with storage of 32 TB will be the production storage server. With the ISIS being completely scalable, the channel can always add more storage based on later requirements. Interplay will be used for the Production Asset Management, to keep track of the millions of extensive metadata generated for the clips in the production storage. And Interplay Assist will help journalists preview clips from their desk, add locators, do rough cuts, etc. Airspeed Multistream will be used for all baseband ingest. For the news and craft editing, a total of 10 video editors are being used. The latest NewsCutter and Media Composers are capable of handling any file based workflow efficiently and directly on the timeline. Playout integration has been done with the Grass Valley K2 servers, another commitment to the openness path that Avid has been pursuing. With DTTV, the total broadcast channels in Tamil Nadu with Avid Newsroom solution stands at 8.
REAL TALK Issue 02
Contributions from: S Shankar Bhat | Sathish Kumar P | Naveen KL | Murlee | Prasanna K | Vivek S | Anbu P | Amit Naik Khan MD | Brunda Kumar | Srinivas G | Balakrishna P | Manoj RS | Venkatakrishna A Ruksana H | Sonali Seth | Venugopal P | Jeano Page 5
MARK GOLDBLATT
-FILM EDITING WORKSHOP
Mark mentioned that sometimes all the required footage may not be available and it’s important for the editor to watch the dailies and give his feedback to the filming unit. When mentioning the technology advances in the editing field, Mark, an Academy Award Winner for T2 mentioned that he has been using Avid as his software of choice and that he loved working on Avid. He also mentioned that it was the de facto editing platform for most Hollywood blockbusters. The session went on for a longer duration than slated for with audiences wanting to get more insights about his work and film editing in general.
This was a full house event at FICCI Frame 2012, with Mark taking the audience through the history and various styles of feature film editing showcasing clips for silent era of movie making and then some from the movies he had edited like the Terminator series, True Lies and Rise of The Planet of the Apes. Clips from Terminator, StarShip Troopers etc were played, where Mark was able to walk the audience through certain decisions made during the edit and how it impacted on the movie. Case in point was Director James Cameron shooting a particular shot based on Mark’s advice while editing Terminator. Page 6
Avid recently updated its AMA plugins to support audio for Red Epic native editing. Also updated was the support for the latest Canon 5D Mark3 as well as Canon C300 cameras…including timecode metadata on the 5D.
AMA UPDATES
Avid also released an update [6.0.1] for its flagship editing product, Media Composer v6.0. This 64 bit version of the Media Composer supports 5.1 and 7.1 surround audio mixing, native editing for XDCAM, P2, AVCHD, PreRes, Canon XF, Ikegami GFCam and Red files. Also supported are I/O hardware from AJA, BlackMagic, Blue Fish, Matrox and Motu. MC 6 also offers the best 3D Stereoscopy workflow available. And this version also supports the Artist series of panels from Euphonix for CC as well as Audio Surround mixing etc.
FOR THE
AVID MC
And for those of you who may still be using the older versions of the Media Composer, listed below are a few tips that make even the previous versions of the Media Composer a joy to work with. After creating an effect, editors may customize several parameters to the effect and then save it to the bin for future use. If they want to use just ‘one’ of those parameters in another effect, they can drag the customized effect from the bin to an open parameter of another effect in the Effects Editor and the values from the saved effect will ONLY be applied to that parameter.
Saved Color Effect
Effect Dropped into the Contrast parameter of a new Color Effect = Only saved Contrast value applied.
The proper use of the scratch removal tool is to have it mapped to a keyboard key. Then all you have to do is park on the problem frame and enable the proper video track and hit the key. The scratch removal tool will automatically place an Add Edit on either side of the “scratch” and adds the effect to the small section in the middle. The first frame of the scratch segment” is the clean frame that the scratch pulls from. Thanks to Steve Hullfish for sharing these tips on his Cut.N.Color blog series. Page 7
Avid introduced an unprecedented number of new and upgraded solutions for advanced asset-based workflows at NAB this year. New storage servers for archival, new playout servers, cloud editing possibilities on the Media Composer /News Cutter and more. Third party integration announcement was also full swing. The new Blackmagic Camera supports recording in Avid’s DNxHD format. Convergent Design’s Gemini 4:4:4 also now supports recording in DNxHD. And there is a new Baselight plugin for the Media Composer. Avid also announced a fabulous crossgrade/upgrade offer for users to move up to the Avid Symphony. While Avid’s announcements at the NAB have gone well with the Broadcast community and everyone feels a winner, Avid also walked away with a few laurels to their credit. Avid was awarded a TV Technology Star award for their Interplay Sphere. Interplay Sphere also received an InBroadcast Editors Award. Media Composer 6 received the Digital Video ‘Best in Show’ Black Diamond award as well as several other awards from Studio Daily. Below is a sneak peek on the new announcements from Avid. Elaborate details and workflows will be published in the next issues of Real Talk.
Avid ISIS 2000 Avid ISIS storage systems give us the power to store, share, and manage large quantities of media. Now, with Avid ISIS 2000, one can more economically extend their library of accessible media with a cost-effective, disk-based nearline solution that augments active real-time production storage and provides ready access to more of their media assets.
Avid Airspeed 5000 The AirSpeed 5000 server takes on a wide range of applications for broadcasters of any size. It is equally proficient at working with Avid and third-party control systems to automate ingest and playback. Page 8
Avid Interplay Sphere Adding a critical new dimension to the world of distributed production, Avid Interplay Sphere is a real-time universal access technology that gives you the freedom to acquire, access, edit, and finish media from any geography or time zone. Interplay Sphere along with Avid NewsCutter and Media Composer will provide distributed production capabilities allowing journalists to access and edit video footage captured at the scene of breaking news along with media files from any other Interplay Sphere-connected location.
Avid Motion Graphics This on-air graphics platform offers advanced design tools, powerful production capabilities, and sophisticated workflow integration, built on a revolutionary rendering engine that lets everyone involved in graphics development make the most of their media.
Baselight plug-in for Avid Film Light demonstrated a beta version of their soon to be available Baselight plugin for the Media Composer at NAB. Likely to be priced at $995, the interface is expected to have most of the key features of Baselight packed in. With this plugin, round-tripping is possible as well as the possibility to send colour grading data back and forth between Media Composer and Baselight. A green dot effect, the plugin will be realtime based on the complexity of the grading.
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Nucoda Helps Film Factory Make
Mirror Mirror
The Fairest Of Them All
Digital Vision returns in a supporting role to the Paris-based Film Factory, a global post-production company, in the finishing of Relativity Media’s Mirror Mirror. The beautifully stylized retelling of the Snow White tale, featuring Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen, is a visual feast, pushing post production and visual effects fully to express the filmmaker’s colorful vision. The project, which was directed by Tarsem Singh was shot by Brendan Galvin on the Sony F35. This is the same creative team that delivered The Immortals to audiences last year, and the design of the production-through-final color workflow had been developed for that earlier project. Like its predecessor, Mirror Mirror had a number of complex visual elements to manage and with the experience gained on The Immortals, this guaranteed a fast turnaround. The Post process is centered on the Nucoda Film Master, which marries a powerful on-set solution to the final color pass. The Film Master system, which included a SAN and Nucoda Fuse assist station, was installed on set in Montreal. From the set, a grading pass of the Sony F35 dailies was done, which were then sent to the editing room with the color settings. In some cases, a further grading took place prior to dailies screening in the DI suite with director and crew. Designing this system meant that the dailies – from the set through screening and ultimately delivery – were kept in a closely matched, carefully monitored environment. “Building the infrastructure frees me and the director to concentrate on what we really want to do, and that is to create something beautiful,” says Kopp, World renowned Colorist. “This workflow allowed the artistic process to go on through the entire course of the project, not just at the end. It was all about the color palette and choosing visuals that we wanted in the story. If you have to worry about how the pipeline is going to work, that takes time away from what is important. Nucoda has freed us from those concerns.“ There were nearly 1,300 visual effects shots in the movie, and Kopp states, “The Nucoda enabled us to have one central hub, where dailies color settings, visual effects and eventually the DI was managed. There were vendors from all over the world, but the VFX Supervisor, Tom Wood, was in house with us in Montreal during the shoot, and in the post production building at Wildfire Studios in Los Angeles where editing, sound editing and mixing, and DI rooms were all together. As shots came in, we were able to look at them in the DI rooms and see how they were working. The ability to have all of these activities going on in one location, our facility, was crucial given the time frame and the visual style of the movie.” “Keeping the process in-house was important.” Kopp adds. “Every project we undertake is an artistic and technical process, and we plan and execute how to do that in the best way, from day one to the final delivery. We want to be efficient, creative, and enable filmmakers to tell the story they set out to tell. As we finish this second project with our Nucoda driven pipeline, we have seen again that the Nucoda Film Master is fundamental to our process.” Page 10
Interview for Real Talk
Featuring
Editors Praveen K.L & Srikanth N.B National Award winners
for the best in editing – Feature Film
Hearty congratulations on winning the National Award for best editing for the feature film "Aaranya Kandam" (AK). How does it feel to receive this recognition? Praveen: Thanks first of all for featuring us on 'Real Talk'. It is an honor. We were ecstatic when we heard about the award from colleagues. Irony was I was stuck in a film festival in Coimbatore as a judge and couldn’t pick up calls. Srikanth didn't have power at the edit room to cross check. It was unbelievable initially. It slowly sank in. The award brought in more responsibilities and projects and we are glad for it today. Aaranya Kandam was close to all of the crew members and receiving an award for it makes it all the more special.
How did the project come by? Were there any specific technical challenges that you had to deal with? AK was the first script that we heard after the phenomenal "Chennai-28". SP. Charan, the producer, called us up in Singapore and said there is a kick-ass script and I want you guys to cut it. We heard the script and immediately knew it had a lot of scope for us to showcase our work. The script had no regular mainstream cliches like songs and fights, they were all omitted. It was an experiment of sorts, we thought why not give it a try. We knew it was different but weren't sure if the audience were ready to digest it yet. This was way back in 2007. After some discussions the project happened in 2009. For producer SP. Charan it was his pet project. He had more faith in us than we did on ourselves. AK's footage was acquired in various formats, from 35mm to SI-2k. So it was a multi-format project. It was a first for us on the film front, but since we were using Avid to edit the film it wasn’t a real issue for us to mix the various formats on the timeline.
Praveen K.L Srikanth N.B
You have been editing on Avid systems all along. Tell us a bit about the journey so far, working on various versions, formats, etc. Avid has always been a pillar of strength for all of our projects. I have been editing on Avid's various editing softwares since 1998. After all these years there was never a situation of not achieving what we wanted on Avid. Every problem or challenge that we came across, there was always a solution with Avid. We have cut from SD-HD, RED, 35mm, 16mm, you name it, it has already been done. It is always a joy to know about their updates/upgrades and we are eager to know what next. Avid also pushes the boundaries and is constantly upgrading their softwares, so any new format or technology out in the market, there is always Avid to rely back on. We have worked on other editing softwares but were never quite satisfied with them. We had stability issues on long form projects, there were problems with media management. So we stuck to Avid and I guess it made us better than what we are as editors today!
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Trust you heard about the great new offer on the Avid Symphony upgrade for existing customers. Avid Symphony as you may know is Avid's top end HD finishing system with secondary colour correction with grading panel support and universal mastering features. Would you be interested in upgrading your systems to Symphony and possibly explore finishing the projects yourself and be able to deliver top quality colour corrected content for Digital Cinema mastering straight from the editing desk itself?
Your opinion about the technical support offered by Real Image?
Digital Cinema has shattered the way traditional post production operates. There are several formats and cameras to acquire footage from these days. Filmmakers have embraced all these various changes and are evolving every day. We as editors also have to equip ourselves with the knowledge of these new technologies and also provide the correct workflow solutions to make their task easier. We are in the process of setting up new edit rooms and have also decided to upgrade our existing machines to Symphony. Finishing the final film on the edit desk is definitely going to happen and we are planning to setup our machines to do that. It is an exciting phase and we don't want to miss out.
Last but not least - your thought share to the existing editing fraternity on the need to adapt to the latest in technology offerings and some words of advice for the future editor generation please?
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RI has always been there when needed. I have called them even during nights and they never flinched. I kind of know most of the tech guys from there and they are one of the coolest bunch I have ever met. They are always happy to help out even if the query isn't about Avid. There has never been a downtime for us, as they are always available over the phone.
When I started my career whenever I said I'm an editor people used to ask me for which newspaper. Fortunately there isn’t that much confusion now. Visual media in India has grown leaps and bounds over the past few years, so there is always space for newcomers. A lot more people are into Vfx and editing these days. It is a welcome change. As editors, there is always a need to be constantly updated about the latest changes in our field. We would be able to offer solutions to our clients only when we understand the technology behind it. So it is no more a luxury but a necessity. There are several websites that send you the latest changes in technology to your mailbox. Subscribing to them is one good way of starting out. And then there are books that are available online to read. For budding editors I will strongly advise them to start on Avid. We did on Avid and it has gotten us here today. There is a common misconception that Avid's learning curve is steep. It is entirely wrong and it is a fantastic piece of software to channel out creativity.
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