from Film&Video

A Whole New Way to Look at Your Edit

The post-production gurus behind Next say it’s the first studio feature to be edited entirely in HD using Avid’s DNxHD codec — and they figure it represents the latest forward leap in post workflow. Avid’s codec delivers high-quality compressed HD images in the bandwidth of uncompressed SD, which enabled Next-generation innovation like putting a 1080p video projector in the cutting room so Christian Wagner could see how his edits played out on a big screen without packing up and heading for the screening room. Orbit Digital provided post support on the project, including three Avid Media Composer Adrenaline HD systems and an Avid Unity LANshare LP.

With Apple set to offer its own codec (ProRes 422) for sparkling HD imagery in the editing room, are we on the verge of a sea change in the editorial process? Film & Video quizzed Bruce Markoe, Revolution Studios’ head of post-production, and Chad Andrews, director of sales at Orbit Digital’s Orbit West facility, about their workflow.

FILM & VIDEO: I’m told Next is the first studio feature that was completed using DNxHD.

BRUCE MARKOE: That’s my understanding.

F&V: Was the decision to edit in high resolution at all tied to the fact that Next was an all-digital production using the Genesis for acquisition?

BM: It seemed like a logical choice, since we were acquiring in HD, to edit in HD. But that was not the only reason we did it. I just believed that, as soon as the Adrenaline and the new codec were available, it represented an opportunity for another major leap in the dynamic of how movies are edited. I think that was the driving factor.

F&V: What’s your perception of the advantage of allowing the editor to work at full-res?

BM: It offers the editor and the director the opportunity to edit the image on a very large screen — even projected, which is what we did on Next. It changes the way an editor and a director can see a movie. Often times, you edit on monitors that are 20 or 30 inches, and then you take it into a screening room and project it on a big screen to see how your cuts and edits are playing. If you do that in standard definition the video quality is horrendous. It’s soft and blurry, and the advantage of looking at a big screen is compromised by the fact that you’ve degraded the image so much. So now you have the opportunity to see it on a very large screen in the editing room itself without any degradation of the image. You can see critical focus and you can see detail like you would in the finished product. That represents a really big shift in how we edit movies, because it enables the cutting room to take a position it was never able to take before.

F&V: Does it mean the editorial and post process becomes more expensive?

BM: No. Actually, I think it becomes less expensive.

CHAD ANDREWS: I’ve done a cost analysis, and there is a higher cost for storage for the offline editorial process. But you find you can do outputs directly out of the Adrenaline for screenings. Also, for critical decisions such as VFX, you can actually save the time and effort of having to review everything at an FX house.

BM: Right. We were taking the visual effects as they came in from vendors and watching them projected in the cutting room in full HD resolution. Judgments in terms of the quality and caliber of the visual effects could be made very quickly and easily, and they could be cut into sequence so you’re not just looking at them on their own. And it saves money, again, because we did not go to a video house to do onlines and assemblies for screenings. We came right out of the Avid. As it turned out, we did not preview Next in a large theater — we didn’t have enough visual effects completed in time to do the test screenings — but we were prepared to do that and we would have used the DNxHD codec to preview this movie. I have seen it demonstrated on a large screen at ETC in Hollywood and in my opinion it held up beautifully. We had several screenings in our private screening room directly out of the Avid, and it looked fantastic. We saved time and money by not needing to go to an online facility or use an Avid Symphony to reassemble the show and color-correct.

F&V: And the cutting room now has a projector?

BM: Yes. We used the Sony VPL-VW100 SXRD, which is a full 1080p projector. It’s actually a high-end consumer projector. They were also using a 63-inch JVC D-ILA rear-screen television as a large monitor, but they had an A/B switch to use when they wanted to send the Avid feed to the projector. We had a white wall in the cutting room, and the editor and the director would turn around and look at this image on the wall.

CA: I think it was an eight-foot screen.

BM: The picture looked phenomenal. They were able to use that while cutting – just spin around and look at a big screen to see how things were playing. That’s a fundamental change in how we edit movies. I believe that as directors and editors start doing that, they’ll realize it can make a very big positive difference in the editing process.

F&V: It sounds like you’re getting closer to the environment colorists have as they work with directors in the DI suite.

BM: You could say that. Obviously, colorists are looking at 2K images. But this codec looks awfully good in HD. The one thing that still has not gotten where it needs to be is making sure we have the color accuracy throughout the process — ensuring that the color calibration of the monitor and projector are matching what was originated on set. We were shooting with the Genesis and using Technicolor’s Digital Printer Light system, so the DP was assigning color-correction on set. The original HDCAM SR 4:4:4 tapes went over to Technicolor, where they copied the tapes, building in the printer lights that were assigned on set. So the cloned tape, with the color-correction baked in, was delivered to the cutting room, where it was digitized directly into the Avid using DNxHD. The color was what the DP had selected on set. We did our best to calibrate the monitors, but there’s a bit of a grey area there. I don’t know if you guys, Chad, did anything specific there or not.

CA: No, we didn’t. We specialize in color-correction and conforms for previews, and there are a number of things we do to make poor-man’s LUTs, trying to compensate for changes in and out of color spaces. That process of keeping color consistent from the set through dailies, through previews and to the DI is something we’re working on, but we’re still in the R&D process. One of the great things about having a projector in the screening room is that the contrast issues, at least, get addressed. The company who will be most valuable to a guy like Bruce throughout the editorial process will be the one that can maintain a perfect symmetry of color.

BM: That’s something that all the different labs and facilities are working toward, and they’re getting closer and closer. That will improve the process even further – but the editors and director [on Next] were very happy with the ability to see a large image projected at such high quality in the cutting room. They’re sold. Going back to the way they used to work is going to be difficult or impossible. You don’t want to go back to SD once you’ve cut in HD.

F&V: So the color wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty good on the D-ILA screen. And then the projector got it a little bit closer.

BM: And they both have slightly different characteristics, so it was hard to get them to match. From an editing standpoint, the exact nature of the color is not as hyper-critical as it is later in the process. And they changed the color in the editing room. The editor and director did color-correction in the Avid to give the film more of a specialized look, and that served as a model and a reference for Technicolor, which did the digital intermediate. That’s the funny thing – everyone wants to keep the color consistent from production to the end, but many times the director decides to make changes to the look once he starts editing the movie.

F&V: Earlier, we touched on the storage requirements for this workflow.

BM: Yes. Obviously the storage requirements are much higher when you’re cutting in HD. But storage prices these days are not that bad. I think it’s well worth the extra money. The fact that you’re improving the creative nature of editing in the cutting room? It’s hard to place a value on that. I’d say it’s worth every penny. But there is, still, a savings doing it this way, as long as you don’t go back and do onlines or rebuilds and all that. You have to use the Avid all the way through. If you do that, you’re saving money. And time.

F&V: Are you planning on using this kind of workflow again?

BM: Absolutely, yes. Obviously, you will have the ability to do a similar workflow with Final Cut Pro’s new codec (ProRes 422). That’s more an editor’s choice in terms of which particular system they may like. But they both have the ability now to edit in HD with a compressed image that doesn’t take up a huge amount of space. How many terabytes did we have, Chad?

CA: You had 16 TB, but didn’t use all of it. The DNx 115 codec takes about the same amount of storage as 1:1 SD video, so it’s about 1 GB a minute.

BM: And they just came out with a new codec that’s even more compressed, right?

CA: Yeah, it’s DNx 36. It sort of splits the difference between offline and HD, but you see a lot more in the frame. It was just released. We never like to be a guinea pig for something like that. Nobody’s proven that it works, yet, in a feature workflow. But we’re monitoring it closely and getting some good reports in the field.

BM: To me, there may be an advantage to using that — it’ll use less storage space. But if it starts to reduce the quality of the picture, even though it might look really good in the cutting room, that codec may not hold up on a 40-foot screen. The real cost advantage would be using more storage [for the more robust version of the codec] and using the higher-quality image for cutting, because that way you can come right out of the machine for screening. I think this is a big step forward, and my understanding is a lot of Adrenalines are being sold and other studios are starting to cut in HD.

F&V: I’ve heard The Bourne Ultimatum movie is.

CA: We’re working on that one [at Orbit] as well. They’re using a partially SD and partially HD workflow. They’re reviewing VFX in HD, and they’ve edited the majority of it in SD. They have an SD project and an HD project, and they jump in and out of the two.

F&V: Is anything else notably different about this workflow for the editors?

BM: One of the slight drawbacks is — if I recall, the editor [on Next] was complaining that it takes longer to render in HD because the files are so much larger. My belief is, as the computer processing power continues to increase, that will become less of an issue. On Next, they got through it. The question is, if you get to edit on a large screen, is it worth waiting the extra minutes for an effect to render? My guess is, most of the time, they’ll be fine with it.

Will Pro Res 422 or Avid DNXHD wins?

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