07/06Vol .28 /No .7

IssuesJim Feeley on fear and

loathing (the exhibit

floor ) in Las Vegas

More TutorialsApple Final Cut Pro

Avid Liquid

studiomonthly.com

Smooth MovesNew support that keeps

your camera rolling

More ReviewsAlienware MJ-12 7500A

Disc Makers Elite2

Go to studiomonthly.com for

this month’s Web exclusives–tutorials, reviews, profiles

and more

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4 s t u d i o / m o . | s t u d i o m o n t h l y. c o m | J u l y 2 0 0 6

Not Ready for the Close-UpsDick Wolf, the Law and Order-franchise king, recently noted in Variety that iPods and

similar personal viewing devices will force production techniques to change. “I may be

completely out of my mind,” said Wolf, “but I think people don’t even realize yet how

much the iPod is a game changer. Once you put the headphones on, the screen size

doesn’t matter at all.” He said he’s thinking about all this for his new series in development,

Power, and wondered if you shoot differently for a show that might be downloaded more

than it is watched the old-fashioned way. “The future is now,” he added. “This is what’s

going to be happening.”

It’s already happened, Dick.

We all know the early days of television began with stagy situation comedies with

similarly blocked shots and eventually migrated to tighter torso shots and, finally, nostril-

hair close-ups (still popular on soaps and soapy derivatives during prime time). But until

recently, slow-and-steady panning and editing styles kept viewer fatigue to a minimum.

Mix those close-ups with the frenetic showmanship of a particular editing style popular

today, and the result is hard to take. What happened to all the long shots?

Consider Lost, whose creative team has known for some time that the weekly show is

among the top iPod episodic

downloads. Has that already

changed the way they work? I

think so. I’ve been getting more

and more nauseous watching

Lost on my far-from-huge flat-

screen TV at close range. It’s the

same queasy feeling I get when

close talkers lunge in during

conversation and I’m not wear-

ing my reading glasses. Call me

the anti-Norma Desmond, and

pass the Tums.

Thank heaven HD is enabling plenty of long shots for another kind of production—the

stunning vistas and perspectives that make for great travel programming. Our cover story

(page 28) details the visual and audio conform that director and

producer Tom Strodel and his team at 24fps Productions

mapped out and locked down during their ten months

on the road producing Any Given Latitude for the Fine

Living Network. They shot places some of us can only

dream about, with both the Sony HDCAM and Z1U HDV

cameras. This feature, like the best of our tutorials,

is long on technique. Tom walks you through each

step of the process in Final Cut Pro that brought it all

together. Enjoy the trip!

—Beth Marchant, Editor-in-Chief

bmarchant@accessintel.com

editor’s note

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shoot | post | deliver

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07 editors note.OK.indd 6 6/19/06 10:01:17 PM

Ju ly 2006 Vo l .28/ No .7CONTENTSshoot | post | deliver

/monthly

COVER PHOTO BY THOMAS STRODEL

28 Changes on Latitude, Changes in AttitudeFollow along as a location-rich travel show leads to the creation of a conform guidebook.

By Thomas Strodel

TECHNIQUE

UV Phactory builds a new spot where both 2D and 3D artists shine, p.42

34 Roll With ItCan’t get a grip on the latest and greatest camera support launched at NAB? We tracked moving camera systems for you.

By Will Holloway

TECHNOLOGY

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CHANGES IN LATITUDES, CHANGES IN ATTITUDESA LOCATION-RICH TRAVEL SHOW SHOT IN HDCAM AND HDV FOR THE FINE LIVING NETWORK LED ONE PRODUCTION TEAM TO CREATE A CONFORM GUIDEBOOK THEY

NOW CAN USE ON ALL FUTURE PROJECTS. THE SHOW’S DIRECTOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SHOWS YOU HOW THEY GOT THERE.

Steve Miller, the show's primary DP, took the Sony HDCAM up an Icelandic glacier (top left) and down to one of the country's famous termal hot springs (below). He also took a slow boat through the waters of Vietnam (top right). A shot of a Portugese mountain village is in the background.

TECHNIQUE

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TECHNIQUE

CHANGES IN LATITUDES, CHANGES IN ATTITUDESA LOCATION-RICH TRAVEL SHOW SHOT IN HDCAM AND HDV FOR THE FINE LIVING NETWORK LED ONE PRODUCTION TEAM TO CREATE A CONFORM GUIDEBOOK THEY

NOW CAN USE ON ALL FUTURE PROJECTS. THE SHOW’S DIRECTOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SHOWS YOU HOW THEY GOT THERE. BY THOMAS STRODEL

T he locations took us along the isolated ridges of glacial drifts, down into bustling city streets and restaurants and even under the water along lesser-known coral reefs off the coast of Vietnam. Most of these settings, featuring our host, Joanne

Colan, and the people she meets along the way, were shot by our DPs Steve Miller, Jon Fordham and Jeff Fisher, with the Sony HDW-700A HDCAM camera at 60i. Although the Fine Living TV Network broadcasts in standard def, we chose to shoot in HDCAM for two reasons: its superior sharpness—a huge advantage for travel-themed projects—and the flexibil-ity it would give us down the line for future use. We also used the Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camera for underwater sequences, in low-light conditions, and as a second camera for cooking segments.

The production schedule was tight as it was, but the delivery schedule was even tighter. With 13 episodes and very little time in between each one, we needed to develop a bulletproof post-production and conform process with constant and repetitive quality assurance to handle mul-tiple half-hour episodes being edited simultaneously. As we wrapped and posted each episode, we’d tweak and refine this process. By the end of the series, we realized that we’d creat-ed the outline for an invaluable “conform bible” that details each step and will be our go-to guide for future projects. Our final strategy not only addressed the technical complexity of editing in full-resolution HD, but also gave us greater flexibil-ity for small changes and reviews throughout the workflow. What follows is a general overview of this workflow and how we dealt with some of the technical issues we encountered along the way.

PRE-CONFORM: EDITING IN SDLong-form editing of 1920 x 1080 high-definition mate-rial usually starts with downconverting the source tapes to a standard-def format (with matching time code), like DV-CAM, then finishing the edit with an NLE like Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid. It’s far easier to complete the bulk of editing in standard def, then conform the edit back to HD after it’s

gone through the review process.The series was edited off-site and conformed at our stu-

dios in Manhattan using a Mac G5 with Apple’s Xserve 5.6 Terabyte RAID, an AJA KONA 2 card and the Sony HDW-F500 HDCAM VTR (which we rented from Liman Video Rental in New York for the final tape mastering).

The starting point for the conform is the near-complet-ed SD episode edit in Final Cut Pro. This edit contains the music, SD-resolution template show graphics (show open, lower-thirds, name keys), photos, map animations and in some cases, a small amount of HDV material. You’ve got to make sure all these elements are incorporated into the edit. You need to create internal and network reviews that are as near complete as possible.

How you organize your sequences and tracks in the SD edit is critical. Any Given Latitude, like many half-hour for-matted cable network programs, consists of four segments of varying lengths, so we created four individual sequences in FCP to hold each segment. It’s important to avoid nest-ing sequences as much as possible; it can make the results of media management (the next step) more complicated. With the exception of the lower-thirds and name keys, nothing in our sequences is nested. We also make sure to consistently assign certain types of media to specific tracks. This helps keep the conform and audio mix-down process efficient.

After we made any last internal or network requested changes to the edit, we finalized the timing of the show, which for our series is 19:20. This triggered the scheduling of the final voice-over recording, with our host, Joanne Colan. Only after we had reached this last stage could we start the actual conform.

THE CONFORM: STEP-BY-STEPTo schedule the conform process for standard half-hour shows can take anywhere between two-to-four days, de-pending how complex the material is. This is what we did for each episode of Any Given Latitude and how we’ll approach conforms on future episodes and future series in develop-ment.

Last March, my team at 24fps Productions began a ten-month journey to create a travel show in high-def for the Fine Living TV Network called Any Given Latitude. The show uniquely combines three primary, of-ten disparate travel priorities: local culture, adventure and breathtaking accommodations. For each of the series’ episodes this past year, we traveled to a different country, including Iceland, Belize, The Dominican Republic, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Puerto Rico, Croatia, the Czech Re-public, Austria, Portugal and Curaçao. The series premiered in October 2005 to some 30 million U.S. viewers and continues to air on Fine Living on Saturdays at 10:00 a.m. (EST). The final episode in this year’s series, shot in Curaçao, premiered on June 3.

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TECHNIQUE: HD AND HDV CONFORM

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Step 1 RUN MEDIA MANAGER IN FCP OFFLINEThe first thing we do for an episode is launch FCP’s ingenious Media Manager on the SD edit. Select-ing the four base sequences, we run Media Manager, using the Create Offline function, and target it to our KONA 2 10-bit 1920 x 1080 29.97 set-up. This essentially creates a new project file, which contains the four new sequences (now at the HD resolution), and a media bin with the trimmed media files, represented as offline clips.

Step 2 MOVE THE OFFLINE EDIT INTO HDNext, we pull our new media-managed project file onto the HD edit system along with epi-sode-specific media files like the music, photos and the scratch-track VO. Before we launch the new project file, we disconnect the hard drive with the SD edit, which lets us easily identify media files we may have missed.

Step 3 IGNORE THE OFFLINE WARNING BUT LOOK FOR PROBLEMS NOWAfter we open the new media managed project file (dismissing the warning about media files that have gone offline), we analyze the sequences and media bin to look for any initial issues. Note that the few sequences that were nested in the SD edit (the lower thirds and name keys), end up as “virtual” sequences in the media managed HD file. They appear on the timeline, but not in the bins.

Step 4 REVERT ANY RETIMED CLIPS FROM THE OFFLINEClips in the SD edit that have been adjusted for creative effect (time remapping, reversing, speeding up, etc.) will show up incorrectly in the timeline as one frame in length. Watch out: Sometimes these clips can wreak havoc on the edit and even crash your program. Because of this, we usually revert these clips to normal timing in preparation for media manager, applying the creative time change in the conform.

Step 5 REDIGITIZE HDCAM CLIPSOnce we complete this initial quality assurance (Q/A), we start to re-digitize the clips from the HDCAM tape masters using a Sony JH-3 HDCAM recorder. Undoubtedly, there are always a few clips that don’t capture correctly; we do these manually. For the offline HDV clips, we simply change the Easy Setup preset configuration in FCP to HDV 1080i60, and capture these clips using the Sony Z1U camera, connected via FireWire.

Step 6 RE-LINK THE OTHER MEDIA ELEMENTSAfter all the offline clips have been recaptured in HD resolution, we typically re-link all the other media (music, photos, scratch track VO, etc.). The easiest way to do this is to quit FCP, relaunch it, and use the re-link function on start up. Our RAID contains HD versions of the show open, lower- thirds base graphics and name keys—these all have the same file name as the template used in the SD edit. This makes reconnecting these elements much easier.

Step 7 BEGIN CORRECTIVE PASSES AND SOUND LOCK THE CONFORMAfter all the media is linked, we start a series of corrective passes. In the first pass, we resize all the HDV footage from the native 1440 x 1080 HDV resolution to our working resolution of 1920 x 1080. To do this, we scale each HDV clip in the timeline by 133 percent, and adjust the aspect ratio (in the Motion tab) to -33.33, which stretches the 1440 x 1080 native HDV source material to properly fill our 1920 x 1080 frame. For some clips—especially those involving scenes shot underwater—we scale them by as much as 144 percent. In the second corrective pass, we replace the scratch track and load in the new final VO clips, adjusting their position as necessary. This step is some-times done in the SD edit if there are delays in starting the conform.

After the new VO has been inserted and adjusted, the conform is then considered sound locked. At this point, we create four OMF files and four mini “video reference” movies for each sequence, and FTP these to Mike Ryan, our on-location and mix-down sound engineer. As we’re continuing with the conform, Mike mixes down the show using ProTools.

The third corrective pass is to fix all the graphics (lower thirds, name keys, map animation, photos, etc.) and finalize the end-credits. For the lower thirds and name keys, it’s a simple matter of re-sizing the text, and adjusting the motion if necessary. The map animation, which lasts on the screen anywhere from 6 - 8 seconds, usually consists of about 350 separate TARGA frames. Importing all these frames into the conform edit tends to impede performance, especially when launching the project file. To get around this, we do the animation in a separate project file, export it as a full-res movie, then import it as a single clip into the conform. Photos usually require

Both the Z1U and HDCAM were used during production in restaurants and in kitchens.

The Final Cut Pro conform for a wall-climbing scene in Portugal (below).

The show included underwater shots off Curacao that were taken with the Sony Z1U.

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TECHNIQUE: HD AND HDV CONFORM

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resizing, and minor move adjustments, which are relatively straightfor-ward.

Step 8 RENDER AND REVIEWAfter all the sequences have been rendered, we normally initiate the first full

review. It’s important to be consistent with the quality assurance, and have

more than one person, besides the editor and producer, review it. What might

be a glitch to one person might be an “edit effect” to someone else.

Step 9 TIME FOR COLOR CORRECTIONOnce any issues are corrected, we move on to the last corrective pass—color

correction. Some producers and directors feel that every scene needs color

correction. I don’t share this opinion, especially on projects with this kind of

delivery schedule. I trust in my DPs to capture imagery in a way that doesn’t

require it to be fixed in post. Still, there are always a few scenes that need to

be tweaked. For these clips, we use FCP’s three-way color corrector. After these

scenes are color corrected and rendered, we do another full review of the se-

quences, logging and correcting any new or outstanding issues.

Step 10 PREP THE DELIVERABLESThe delivery requirements on this project to the network were HDCAM and

DigiBeta masters as both texted (i.e., with lower thirds and name keys), and

text-less versions. With similar deliverables, this means you’d need to make

two versions of the edit, as we did. To do this, you simply duplicate all four se-

quences, then rename the copies as “text-less.” Next, use the clip-enable func-

tion to disable the lower thirds and name key nested segments in the text-less

sequences. Although these graphical elements are on the same video track,

we never disable the track, since FCP uses a top-down compositing model

and doing so would force a re-rendering of the entire sequence.

With a mastering template, we construct the two main output sequenc-es. The template includes bars and tone, a slate, “holes” to drop in the four show sequences and 20-second slugs to place in-between. It also has a starting timecode of 00:59:00:00, which abides by the Network’s formatting requirements. Once the sequences are placed, and the holes are closed, we do a quick check to make sure that the total timing is frame accurate. If verified, we unlink the video and audio channels from each segment, and delete all the audio from the sequences.

About this time, we receive via FTP the final mix-down audio files from Mike. Fine Living requires four tracks of audio. Tracks 1 and 2 are full stereo mix, left and right. Track 3 is the narration, host stand-ups, and interviews and Track 4 includes the music and effects. Since we have four sequences, this equals sixteen files. Mike creates these files to be the same length as the sequences, so it’s just a simple matter of plac-ing them into the timeline under each sequence. However, it’s very im-portant to make sure the tracks are correctly set-up in FCP. Since tracks 1 and 2 are stereo mixes, placing them on the track turns them back into mono, as FCP defaults these to a zero pan. To correct this we go into the audio tab of each clip and adjust the pan slider. Track 1 is slid all the way to the left (-1), track 2 is slid to the right (+1), etc. Then, we make sure that the sequence is set up to output four channels, by verifying the audio output tab of the sequence settings. We have four dual-mono tracks, with 0db downmixing. One final thing we do is to make sure each of the four tracks in the timeline are correctly targeted to the four output tracks. We do this by control-clicking on the left part of the track and selecting the appropriate target track from the pop-up menu.

Once all the audio has been placed in and appropriately assigned,

it’s time for another review of the program. In this review, we pay par-ticular attention to the audio FCP, making sure the mixed tracks line-up with the video. We also monitor the audio being output to the HDW-500 HDCAM deck, selectively adjusting the output channels and mak-ing sure they match.

Next, we need to legalize both master sequences. We learned early on that even though you might not see any problem with the video, there may still be problems with excess luma or chroma beyond normal eyesight. Large edit houses use separate scopes and dedicated hard-ware “legalizers” to accomplish this. We use the Broadcast Safe filter in FCP, set to “extremely conservative,” and apply it to each of the four sequences nested into both master output sequences. This requires ev-ery frame of both sequences to render, a process that takes around 6-8 hours at this resolution. We usually let this run overnight.

Step 11 FINAL REVIEW BEFORE MASTERINGWhen the rendering is complete, we review both masters one more time. If we

find an issue, it’s important to make the correction in both versions (assum-

ing it doesn’t relate only to the texted version). Any video change from this

point on will automatically require re-rendering. Occasionally, changes made

to sub-sequences aren’t reflected in the master sequence. When this happens,

we temporarily place a slug over the part of the master sequence that wasn’t

updated, then immediately remove it, which forces a render. Be sure, after any

changes, to re-check the edit. Things that you could easily correct can cause

costly tape rejections by the network.

Step 12 MASTER YOUR FINAL EPISODEFinally, we start the mastering process. Using the Edit To Tape function in FCP,

we first blacken about one minute of the HDCAM tape starting at 00:58:30:00,

then perform an assemble edit of the texted master sequence, making sure

to watch and listen as it’s laid down to tape. Once this is done, we spot-check

the tape before mastering the text-less version.

After both the HDCAM masters are made, we downconvert them to let-

terboxed DigiBeta and send them off to the network. Completed shows can

take up to 700 GB on the RAID. We generally keep them intact as long as pos-

sible, deleting first the render files, then the video files. We then permanently

archive project and related media files to DVD-ROM.

Throughout the whole post-production process, we developed and refined many systems to log, monitor and track the efforts of our team. The end result was a successful travel series that carried view-ers to far away locations via the richness and clarity of HD. We’ve recently launched an edit facility and now offer our HD suite to oth-ers who can benefit from this experience. ■

Thomas Strodel is an independent producer and director. His NYC-based company, 24fps Productions, specializes in creating original programming for cable, broadcast and satellite distribution. You can contact him at tom@24fpsproductions.com, or visit his Web site at www.24fpsproductions.com.For complete programming schedule information on Any Given Latitude, visit www.FineLiving.com.

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