Three little things...

I think everybody has pet peeves in their department. Lighting guys don’t like it when unit unplugs something for a food appliance. Sound doesn’t like it when people can’t sit still for 60 seconds during atmos. These are completely understandable frustrations.  So I think it is ok for me to say that I have little pet peeves in post. They’re not things that are necessarily the wrong way to do something; they’re just not as efficient. I’m sure I’m guilty of a million similar things, but these three are ones that I feel pretty strongly about.

1.       Syncing in the timeline- No. Just no. It ties your hands in so many ways, especially if you want to review the entirety of your shot after you’ve shortened it. Doing so requires pulling a ripple edit on both ends of your clip in the timeline, checking things out, and then undoing the damage. If you create merged clips in your bin, you can simply hit the ‘f’ key and it will match frame it in your source monitor, sound and all. Also, I get the distinct feeling that when people sync in the timeline, they only do it for takes they think they’ll use; which means when you’re at the point in the editing stage when you’re really desperate, and searching for a few little frames from a take for a reaction or just some filler, you will have to go through all of your unsunc takes and sync them up on the spot, which is not ideal.

Creating merged subclips is so easy, I’m not exactly sure why most people don’t do it. In the source monitor, find the slate point, and set your in point one frame before that. In the corresponding audio clip, set your in point at the same point you did in the video clip. Then control click (command click for my mac hommies out there) on both the audio and video clips in the bin* to select them both. Right click on one of them, and then select merge clips. You’ll then be prompted with a window- pick your name for the clip, and then just below that, select your merge method- in this case it will be by the in point (obviously when you have a tail slated take you would apply the same method with an out point rather than in).

BAM! You now have a subclip that has both audio and video, in its entirety.

*at the time of writing this, I’m not sure how to merge clips that aren’t in the same bin together, which is a little bit of a pain because it just means that during the merging process you have to shift both audio and video files into the one bin together, then drag them back into their respective bins afterwards. If anyone knows a way around this, please tell me, and you’ll be the recipient of a mighty sincere and enthusiastic high five.

2.       “What computers can I edit on?” I’ve heard this a few times, and I’ve actually been asked it a few times too.

I think the big gap at Swinburne is the divide between cameras and post production facilities. Don’t get me wrong, we have amazing computers, but the fact of the matter is there are very few facilities open to us that can handle the data rates that the RED spits out. And even then, sometimes 2K Alexa and 2 or 3 K 35mm scans struggle with a lot of computers on campus. So, if you’re faced with the question of ‘can this computer handle the data rate’, just remember; cmd + shift + F11 (cntrl + shift F11 for the Windows kids).

Hitting this inside of Premiere will bring up the CUDA/OpenCL/OpenGL (depending on the graphics card) render system data overlay the next time you hit play in either the source or project monitor. It’s a pretty awesome feature- it tells you what your scheduled fps is, what your actual fps is, what size your render previews are, and most importantly, how many frames you’re dropping on playback. I guess it’s all a matter of personal preference, but for me, if it’s more than one frame every five seconds, it’s time to either drop the playback resolution or find a beefier computer.

3.       Markers, or lack thereof. Markers are pretty much an editor’s best friend, especially in the early stages of post.  I’ve always thought of them as like digital Post-its, and that’s pretty much the best way to describe them- you can add a marker at a specific frame by pressing the ‘m’ key in either the source or project window, and add comments.  And to sweeten the deal, if you’re working on a project that has been heavily reliant on markers, you can use the shortcut  shift + m to jump forwards to the next marker , or cntrl + shift+ m to jump back to the previous marker. So when you’re using markers for suggested in and out points of a clip, this becomes very handy.

Having said all this while looking down on the world form my high horse (I’m sorry :/), I’m sure on a daily basis I still make plenty of post production booboos… So in the spirit of fairness (and self improvement), if anyone sees me doing something the wrong way, I welcome the feedback J