Post

Master the correct path and succeed.

Ignore the correct path and fail.

The following covers a general overview of postproduction mastering process. Understanding picture and sound mastering is essential for success and maximizing your postproduction budget. And utilizing the full capabilities of your desktops editing system can help you save money. Conversely, you need to know the limitations of your editing system and the person operating to avoid problems down line that could cost you money. All too often, it’s what you don’t know that determines the difference of delivering a great looking (and technically correct) show master or a sub standard one that will be rejected by your distributor.

One box, many people

A great editor may make for a lousy colorist and a great colorist may make for a lousy editor. You get the idea. Assuming your Final Cut Pro system, for example, has all the right bells and whistles, and is set up in a suitable environment to balance color and sound levels, you can finish a broadcast quality project right on your desktop. But you may need a sound mixer, a composting artist and a colorist, people skilled at different levels of the process, to create a great looking and sounding picture.

Different boxes, different people

It’s not always suitable or practical to finish on single platform, especially if you have a tight deadline. If you have the budget, it’s always best to master your sound and picture at a post house. A good house (you may use more the one) will provide the right boxes and dedicated professionals for each phase of the process best suited for your budget and workflow.

DIY or not to DIY?

Do It Yourself? Frugal minded folks always try to save money but, as the old adage goes, you can be penny wise and pound-foolish. If you try to do everything on the cheap you could spend more time and money fixing problems in post then you would have otherwise. Do it right the first time. Even if you think you can Do It Yourself, future proof your workflow so you can finish your project at a post house if you get into jam.

Some other guy’s box.

If you’re not an editor, have a tight budget, and don't have access to an editing system, there are versatile and talented wizards out there that own their own systems, some working out of their homes. This can be a cost effective alternate so do your homework and make sure she or he has the all the right stuff.

Watch out for the smooth talkers. Get a reel, a resume and references! You can find good people on Mandy.com and other places. We can refer you to good folks too.

If you don’t have a post budget and plan on finishing on your desktop, assuming you have the necessary gear, you still need to create a final show master and make good on versioning and deliverables. You’re distributor may cover the costs for QC, cloning and conversions but they may want to use their own facility which could get political. These costs will come out your pocket if your distributor doesn’t cover these services. Visit our DELIVER page for more info.

There are great NLE apps like Avid and Adobe Premiere but if you haven’t noticed, our focus is on Final Cut Pro. FCP has rapidly been adopted by many indie filmmakers. Our Ranch hands are big fans of Apple’s killer app and we are equally excited how innovative companies like RED and Quantel has developed solutions optimized for Final Cut Pro, bringing forth powerful workflows for highly efficient, desktop digital cinema production. For example, RED allows you to reference its REDCODE wavelet media to edit natively in Final Cut Pro while Quantel built a digital bridge from FCP to its Pablo 4, a powerful non-linear film mastering system that also allows conform, color correction, format versioning and the output of deliverables on one single box.

Wow, good thinking! Using the open and non-proprietary AAF format compatible with both Final Cut Pro and Avid editors, your final FCP offline project can be conformed on a Quantel Pablo system replicating exactly the same structure as in your offline project. This includes automatic rebuild of transitions, DVE, layer opacity and text. Once your cut is approved, your locked picture is ready for finishing and color grading.

Booking a Pablo room is usually quite pricey but if you have a complex offline cut with native Final Cut effects and transitions, you can spend more time and money doing finishing, versioning and deliverables work on other boxes then you would doing so on a Pablo. If you have a more straightforward offline with mostly cuts and dissolves,and don't' mind converting REDCODE R3D media to DPX, then using another system will work fine. However, if you are dealing with RED footage, and don't want to go through the time and expense of converting R3D files to DPX files, you can now conform directly from R3D on the Quantel Pablo system.

If your RED workflow calls for using DPX files, or if you are shooting on another camera format, the Assimilate Scratch system and Iridas Speed Grade are very powerful and cost effective non-linear color grading tools.

The system you choose to master and color grade on will largely depend on the colorist and post house you are working with. At the end of the day, the most important part of the equation is the people, not necessarily the technology.

READY TO MASTER

Finally, you have picture lock and the green light to finish the final show master. Before you start, there are several elements that you may receive from other people to complete the final master. They are including but not limited to:

Opening and closing titles
Visual Effects shots
Text elements build (possibly including subtitles)
Final audio mix

You will conform these and other elements and, depending on your workflow, your source original footage too. Once your conform is done, you may have to resize some shots (to get rid of boom microphone), blend or layer multiple images, insert one image into another and use other digital video and compositing tricks. You may also deal with Image enhancement/restoration issues such as scratch removal, dust busting, de-noise and digital paint fixes that will be difficult and time consuming to do on your FCP desktop.

The last two legs of your mastering journey are final color grading and the audio mix and effects. In addition to your primary color correction, you may need to embellish or modify certain shots using secondary color grading. Your final audio will most likely require a 5.1 or 7.1 mix. As you can guess, the further you get into mastering, the more complex it becomes.

At this stage you have three options.

Use a post house to master your final picture and sound.
Do most of the work yourself on your desktop and then finish the rest at a post house.
Do the whole project on your desktop and output the show master yourself

Technically most of these components can be created and finished on Final Cut Studio 2, with additional programs like Photoshop, Aftereffects, Shake and other apps. However, functions like scratch removal, dust busting, de-noise and other Image enhancement/restoration clean up functions will require specialty hardware and software systems such as the Teranex. You can also install Pro Tools or another digital audio program on your desktop for sound editing, mixing and effects. Remember to consider the 'different boxes, many people' approach If have you have to finish the project on your FCP system

Ok, let’s start with option 3 and work back from there.

First, make sure your editing system has a calibrated video display (If you’re finishing in HD, use a true 1920 x 1080 resolution display) and waveform monitor and vector scope to make sure your color, black and white levels are legal. You will also need professional grade near -field audio speakers to make sure your sound mix is properly represented.

If you don't have this gear, don't understand how works and don't know how to use it, you are flying blind. Call an equipment house, talk to a tech, rent the right gear and hire a video engineer who understands this stuff to help set you up.

If you do have impaired images like dead pixels, digital hits and noise, you can fix some of these impairments using After Effects. To fix dead pixels or digital hits, you will need to export each bad frame into After Effects and rotoscope or paint each frame manually. For example, you can select and clone adjacent good pixels and use them to paint over the bad ones. Again, you are most likely dealing a 'one box, many people' workflow scenario. Your best bet is to get one of those brainy engineer types who understand all this tech stuff. If you have noise problems, they are usually incurred by shooting low light levels on a digital video camera. You can pass the noisy video scenes through a Teranex or other de-noising box. The best way to tackle these issues is to identify image impairments ahead of time to put together a game plan before you start the mastering process. Again, consult with a video engineer or talk to a post house to help you out. You may have audio glitches too, so talk to an audio engineer to figure out how to fix important dialogue and production sound.

When you are finished with your final picture and sound mastering, you need to output your show master. Before you do, make sure you format your time line before picture start.

If you are printing to videotape, make sure you jam record at least 30 seconds of video black starting at time code 00: 58:00:00 on your tape stock. Once you pre-black 30 seconds of video leader, set your system to do an assembly edit (remember to set your deck to regenerate time code) and then format your time line accordingly. Set your tape in point at 00:58:30:00 and start your assemble edit.

The follow is a typical format that may vary according to your distributors specifications.

This is how we roll but you may have a different routine. Whatever your preferred method is please make sure you have a frame accurate edit.

Before you commit your final output, check your delivery specs. It may be necessary to make multiple versions including adding select video scenes at the end of the master required by some foreign distributors. If you don't have distribution yet or don't know the specifications, we strongly recommend creating two versions of your show.

A full show version with text titles with Stereo LT/RT & M/E (program mix. plus stems)
A text-less (no titles) version (for foreign distribution).

If you want to save money by printing only one tape, your full show version, save the text-less version as a self contained QuickTime movie and save if for future reference.

Once you confirmed frame accuracy, start your finally assembly and sit back and watch your show roll down one more time just to make sure you caught any mistakes you may have missed earlier. When done printing your show master, spot check to verify video playback at the end, middle and beginning of the tape. When done, set the safety tab on the tape cassette so no one will accidentally record over it. Label the tape and case accordingly.

You are now ready to send your show master to your distributor or a duplication facility to create additional clones, conversions and other deliverables but before you do, QC your HD master first. See our DELIVER page.

Option 2: Do most of the work yourself on your desktop and then finish the rest at a post house.

This more scalable approach allows you to reduce your workload according to your capabilities, limitations and comfort level. For example, you could conform the final picture by cutting incoming elements such as the opening and closing titles, visual effects shots and the final audio mix (done elsewhere) into your timeline. Any additional DVE, compositing, Image enhancement/restoration work and primary and secondary color grading can be done at a post house. This approach is also helpful if you are under a tight deadline because you can spread or stage these functions in parallel with your offline and online work. For instance, once your picture is locked you can identify footage in need of de-noising and digital paint fixes. You can export this problem frames as DPX, TIFF or Targa files (determined by your vendor) and have them worked on as you finish your final sequence and then import and cut the repaired frames back into your sequence.

The same goes for audio. Once your have locked picture, export your rough audio tracks along with a reference movie or video to the audio house so they can start mixing as you do other work. Ask the audio engineer for specs.

Overall, the most efficient workflow for a long form project is to create separate reels with total running times twenty minutes or less. When your picture is locked for reel one, for instance, you can have your audio house and post house do finishing work on this reel while you move onto the next. Bt the time you finish picture lock for the last reel, you are ready to conform and finish the entire picture.

Many post houses accept a self-contained movie, which will save you money printing to videotape. Make sure you export your sequence as a high quality QuickTime movie.

In the EDIT section, we mentioned three basic postproduction workflows for offline and online.

Nonlinear tape based (HD Cam source mastering)
HD offline/online (Avid DNX, DVCPro HD and Apple ProRes)
Tapeless (RED and other RAW file based cameras)

In summation, the more you do on your desktop, the more you can save in post – as long as your workflow is set up correctly. Each project is different and different approaches must be planned out unique to the production.

Option 3: Use a post house to master your final picture and sound.

There is no replacing the artistry, dedication and the command of technology that a good post house can provide. A capable colorist does far more then just simple scene-to-scene color balance; they also bring emotion to your picture. Putting the critical stage of mastering in the hands of professionals will always get you're the best results.

RED POST

In the EDIT section, we showed you RED’s diagram for Final Cut Pro native editing for HD mastering.

The diagram below indicates the workflow to create a digital intermediate for filmout. Notice the process for DI is virtually the same as HD but with one additional step, you have to conform from the original R3D files and generate DPX files that will be used for the filmout source.

RED workflow for Final Cut Pro DI

Shoot on the RED ONE.
Store the REDCODE RAW (R3D) files of CF RED drives.
Preview your footage using RED ALERT or REDCINE
Use QuickTime reference files in Final Cut Pro to cut picture.
Transcode the R3D files into Apple Pro Res files.
Re-link your offline sequence to the new Pro Res files.
Complete color correction pass in Final Cut Pro using Color.
Conform R3D files and generate DPX files (2K).
Import your final audio mix tracks.
10) Export 2K DPX files for filmout.

This process sounds simple but it’s a bit more complicated then it appears. The REDCINE and other RED software utilities are finicky and hiccup from time to time but they will become more stable as the technology matures. Like any new software, there is a learning curve involved too.

And then there is a practical issue to consider!

Remember this guy? He didn’t plan ahead! Final Cut Pro is a great tool and having the latest Apple Power PC is a great start but transcoding and rendering R3D wavelet files into another file format is CPU intensive. Watching that render bar is like watching paint dry. And hoping that your system doesn’t crash is not fun either. What you really need is a render farm. Check with your post house or call us if you need help finding one.

File based production and attendant tools are relatively new technologies. At this stage, no single book or website, including this one, is able to provide a step-by-step, bulletproof workflow for digital cinema camera production. At least not until the technology settles in and cross platform standardization is achieved. At the end of the day, when working with RED and other RAW wavelet file formats like CINEFORM, you’ll no doubt need outside assistance along the way, especially of you are preparing for a DI to create a film master and a Digital Cinema Package. However, the more you know, the better prepared you are to maximize the tools and resources at your disposal so you can put more dollars into your production by saving them in postproduction.

Digital camera technology is changing postproduction at a dizzying pace and so keeping up with the latest and greatest is a task we gladly embrace. We will update you as we learn more to help you work better, faster and cheaper.

One more thing, before you delete your R3D files…

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