Turnover bins

I was having a problem getting a change list of 2 of our sequences, so I sent a bin to a fellow assistant editor who started raving about something that I thought made sense and helps me, but apparently, it was pretty exciting in a postproduction kind of way, so I thought it worth sharing:

I have structured my turnover bins so that they contain all of the information that I need and provide a straightforward template for turnover and changes. The size / complexity of the sequences dictates how many versions of each I can have in a bin, but once they have exceeded reasonable bin size, I just start a new bin and continue the series.

I know that some people keep each turnover version in their own bins, but I like to have an immediate overview and by keeping multiple versions, I can see the progression of who has what, lengths, notes etc... at a glance

As you can see, I fill in the information that pertains to that particular turnover. Not all turnovers require 30 frame TC, so I don't necessarily fill that in unless needed. Same for TC24. If your tracking requires frame countes for DI, add a column.

I have separate columns for MX and Composer because on some projects, we have a temp Mx editor who may or may not work in concert with the final composer and they can be working separate versions.

I added a sort column into the cutting bins, so that I can easily sort bins with a reverse sort function. That way I can also easily track back to which version in the editor's bins were turned over.


-Scott

Forums

We have added a forum to Post Production Standards.  Now you have the ability to ask questions as well as post your own special tips.  Enjoy.

Copying Media Files - Unity

Sorry for the long hiatus everyone. Work, work, work, work...you know the drill.

Just getting through dailies on a show and was told about an interesting bug when copying over media files into your Unity. Basically, if you copy your media to one of your Unity partitions, make sure you keep the user folder that Unity has with in the OMFI MediaFiles folder closed when you copy them over. If you open the Unity User folder (ex. ZJustin), and do the copying, you run the risk of a file of the media files becoming corrupted...making you have to do the process all over again.

So do yourself a favor and keep the user folder closed as shown below. Makes the dailies process a little less annoying.

Avid data entry tip

Are you sick and tired of Cmd-V, pasting your way down a entire bin of takes where you want the same information applied to all the takes you have selected? I.E. date shot. Of course you could export the bin, open it in a spreadsheet and do a fill down command, re-import the bin, but who wants to deal with that?

My friends, our time has arrived.

I received this info from a Avid engineer who saw me doing this and said "we fixed that."

I'm not sure which version the fix came in on, but I am working on Adrenaline v2.7.7

-Select/sift the clips that you want the data duplicated into.

-Hover your cursor over the field you want new data in, right click and select "set COLUMN NAME for selected clips"

-A new dialog box will come up named "Set COLUMN NAME." Enter your text and hit OK.

-Click on on the confimation dialog box and your new data will be entered into the clips you had selected.

Days just became a little shorter.

-Scott

Production Sound

It happens often. You cut to the best performance of a character, and another character steps on the line. Picture departments often will find an alternate reading to "clean up" the area were the overlap of lines happen. However, it is still important that sound editorial has access to the original line reading.

So what you do in these situations is keep the original production in one of your tracks, but bring it down to zero (infinity on the audio mix tool). That way, you get your clean line reading for screenings, but sound has access to the sync track when you turn over your OMFs.

This is a very simple thing to do and will save time down the road.

Commenting

Information is my friend, so I am always looking at things and trying to find new ways to organize that info or refine existing info.

So, in the AVID, they give you the standard array of columns, which is growing by leaps and bounds, but not always the way I want or need.

Add a few new columns and name them:
Comments_Pix
Comments_Snd
Comments_Mx
Comments_VFX
Comments_DI
Comments_Whatever...

When you export to a codebook, your comments are broken out by category making it really easy to do a search for sound problems and not having to sift thru ancillary comments.

-Scott