Final Cut Studio Workflows
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Contents Preface 5 5 6 6 Introduction About Final Cut Studio Workflows About the Final Cut Studio Documentation Additional Resources Chapter 1 9 9 13 14 Developing a Post-Production Strategy The Overall Post-Production Workflow Explained Why Design Your Workflow in Advance? Types of Overall Workflows Chapter 2 27 27 29 30 32 44 Ingesting and Organizing Your Media What Is Ingest? Importing Information to Aid in Capturing Choosing the Best Ingest Strategy for Your Workflow Ingest Methods Based on Med
82 Color Correction 90 Final Sound Editing, Design, and Mixing 4 Chapter 6 97 97 98 99 100 105 Mastering What Is Mastering? Creating Versions of a Program with and Without Titles Format Conversion Subtitling and Closed Captioning Delivering Audio Chapter 7 109 109 115 115 Output and Delivery How to Output? Doing a Negative Conform Long-Term Archiving of the Finished Project and Media Contents
Preface Introduction The Final Cut Studio Workflows document has been designed to summarize the overall post-production process and show how the various applications in Final Cut Studio fit into it. This manual also explains how the applications in Final Cut Studio work together, letting you send projects and media from one environment to another to perform specialized tasks. This preface covers the following: • About Final Cut Studio Workflows (p. 5) • About the Final Cut Studio Documentation (p.
There are many more possible combinations of input and output formats, and Final Cut Studio can accommodate nearly all of them. The important thing to remember is that the type of program you’re working on has less of an effect on your workflow plan than do decisions concerning how best to match the original acquisition format of your media to the required output format of your program’s final master.
Discussion forums are also available to share information about each of the applications in Final Cut Studio. To participate, go to: • http://discussions.apple.com For more information about the Apple Pro Training Program, go to: • http://www.apple.
Developing a Post-Production Strategy 1 This chapter discusses, in broad strokes, the overall workflows and strategies you can employ for ingesting, editing, finishing, and mastering various kinds of programs. In the process, you can see how choosing one ingest strategy over another affects not just how you work in Final Cut Pro, but also how you’ll eventually finish, color correct, and master your program. This chapter covers the following: • The Overall Post-Production Workflow Explained (p.
Before focusing on where workflows diverge in different projects, it’s helpful to take a step back and look at how all workflows are alike. In this overview, you can see how every single project you work on in Final Cut Studio—from music videos to educational and corporate communication programs to feature films—follows the same basic process.
There’s one key decision that you make during ingest that affects editorial development, and later, finishing. This is whether to ingest your program’s media at an offline resolution, where visual quality is lower but the media is easier to work with, or at an online resolution, where the visual quality is superior but the media requires more processing power to work with and more storage space.
Stage 4: Finishing After a program’s story has been edited and the project’s content is considered complete, it’s time to give the program its final polish and tweaking, appropriately referred to as finishing. The first part of finishing, if you’ve been working on your project using offline-quality media, is to conform your edited sequence to the highest-quality version of the original source media that’s available.
For more information about how Final Cut Pro, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, and Color work together to output to any of these delivery media, see Output and Delivery. Why Design Your Workflow in Advance? Final Cut Studio provides numerous tools for performing the many tasks that each program requires, along with features for integrating industry-standard, third-party applications into your post-production workflow.
You can focus on being creative, rather than on fixing problems Lastly, working out your post-production strategy in advance lets you avoid problems before they come up. For example, if you’re working with film that was telecined to video as an inexpensive “one-light” transfer, and you know in advance that you’ll be requesting specific sections of the video to be retransferred at “best-light” settings, you can request a telecine log file.
How to Approach Workflow Design Two of the most important decisions to make are how you want to ingest your media and how you’ll output it. These decisions are tightly linked and define everything that happens in between. In general, it’s wise to plan your post-production strategy with the end product in mind. What do you expect to deliver at the end of the process? There are far fewer steps involved when you output to videotape than when you output to film, so this decision is crucial.
Quality-Control Guidelines An absence of standardization and engineering oversight means that venues hosting web video usually have extremely permissive quality-control standards. Furthermore, computer display of video is simply more forgiving than that of traditional video playback devices. However, it’s to your advantage to use color correction to adjust the clips in your program in order to provide your audience with the best possible experience.
Types of Programs Program types commonly include direct-to-video programming, shorts and features intended for film festival exhibition, corporate communication videos, and educational programming. Typical Acquisition Formats and Means of Ingest Acquisition formats include but are not limited to DV-25, DVCPRO 50, HDV, AVCHD, DVCPRO HD, and XDCAM, to name just a few.
Workflow Summary This is one of the most basic and straightforward workflows you can follow. Your video is ingested into Final Cut Pro using the Log and Capture or Log and Transfer window, as appropriate. During editing, you can use Motion and Soundtrack Pro, along with the video and audio effects tools that Final Cut Pro offers, to incorporate motion graphics, effects, and sound work into your program.
Quality-Control Guidelines Because programs in this workflow are being delivered for broadcast, tight quality-control standards usually apply. (Some networks have more stringent standards than others.) Although video and audio standards vary by network, submitted programming is always closely scrutinized, and quality-control violations may result in tape masters being rejected by the network, incurring additional costs for the client.
Types of Programs Program types include high-end commercial spots, high-end music videos, dramas, made-for-TV movies, and miniseries. Typical Acquisition Formats and Means of Ingest The acquisition format is typically 16mm or 35mm film (or their Super 16mm and Super 35mm counterparts) via any one of a number of cameras.
Delivery Specifications Each network typically has specific required delivery formats, which may include one or more SD and HD formats. Also, networks usually require separate versions of each program with and without titles (also called texted and textless versions). Inquire in advance about what deliverables are required. Programs intended for broadcast invariably are mastered to a high-end, tape-based format. What this means to you is: • SD programs are typically output to Digital Betacam.
Acquired on Film for Theatrical Exhibition This workflow refers to programs shot on film and then mastered and output for theatrical exhibition via film or digital projection. Color correction and film output may be accomplished either by conforming the negative and using optical printers or through a digital intermediate process and film printer. Types of Programs Program types include advertising spots, shorts, and features intended for theatrical exhibition.
• It’s best if you coordinate your efforts with the facility that is printing or mastering the final project. Delivery Specifications A program’s distributor usually provides the exact delivery specifications that are required. Delivery specifications for film projection include 24 fps playback, specific aperture sizes and aspect ratios, and specific audio encoding methods.
Workflow Summary for Digital Intermediate Finishing and Film Printing If you intend to use a digital intermediate workflow to finish your program, there are several approaches you can take. The easiest, from a workflow perspective, is to transfer the camera negative via a datacine (a device that scans each frame of film as an uncompressed image file) to create DPX image sequences of all the shots you want to edit.
• Other digital cinema cameras, such as the RED ONE, record 2K and 4K resolution image data using a proprietary RAW format. The RED Digital Cinema Camera Company provides plug-ins for Final Cut Studio that enable specialized ingest and finishing workflows. Other manufacturers rely on proprietary image-processing utilities to convert their format to one useful to Final Cut Studio applications. • Still other digital cinema cameras record images as DPX image sequences.
Workflow Summary Digital cinema cameras typically shoot tapeless media (although some filmmakers record to HDCAM SR), so the specific method of ingest depends on the exact type of media that was originally captured. Usually, this includes proprietary RAW formats (such as the RED ONE camera’s REDCODE format) or DPX image sequence capture.
Ingesting and Organizing Your Media 2 This chapter covers the myriad ways in which you can ingest media into the Final Cut Studio applications for editing, motion graphics work, and sound design. Ingesting into Final Cut Pro is covered most extensively, as most audiovisual projects begin in this application. This chapter covers the following: • What Is Ingest? (p. 27) • Importing Information to Aid in Capturing (p. 29) • Choosing the Best Ingest Strategy for Your Workflow (p.
However, this is only part of the story. Depending on the type of media you’re ingesting, other applications such as Cinema Tools and Color might play a part in the ingest process. Workflows for ingesting film-originated media, in particular, can be more involved depending on how important it is to be able to match back to the original film negative and whether the film negative was transferred to videotape or DPX or Cineon image sequences.
Importing Information to Aid in Capturing There are three ways in which you can import organizational information into Final Cut Pro that will help you prepare for ingest. The method that best fits your particular workflow depends on the type of media you’re ingesting and how much preparation you want to do in advance. Import batch capture lists A batch capture list is a tab-delimited text file that specifies which clips you want to capture from a particular videotape using timecode.
For more information, search for “batch capture list” in Cinema Tools Help. Import Edit Decision Lists You can also import an Edit Decision List (EDL) into Final Cut Pro to use as a starting point for ingesting media. An EDL is a text file that describes an edited project as a series of events. Events can include cuts, transitions, and sometimes superimpositions that make up an edit.
Ingest at online quality, edit using duplicate offline media, and reconform to online media for finishing This strategy is typical for many programs whose media was acquired using a tapeless recording format. Using this method, you copy or ingest all of your recorded media at its highest native level of quality and then immediately back it up for safety.
Ingest Methods Based on Media Type The type of acquisition format you work with determines the ingest method used by the specific Final Cut Studio application. Most tape-based or tapeless acquisition formats must be captured or transferred using Final Cut Pro. Other formats, including QuickTime media, still-image files, and audio files, can be imported directly into any of the Final Cut Studio applications that are capable of using them.
During the log and transfer process, you have several options for organizing your media. You can choose specific source media to ingest and add logging information, including clip name, scene number, shot/take number, camera angle, log notes, and a “good” flag that you can use to indicate preferred selects. Tracking and Organizational Information The most important piece of organizational metadata that Final Cut Pro uses for ingested tapeless media is a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID).
Popular HD formats include DVCPRO HD, HDCAM, HDCAM SR, and D-5. Method of Ingest All tape-based formats are ingested using the Log and Capture window in Final Cut Pro. Some formats, like DV-25, DVCPRO 50, and DVCPRO HD, can be captured directly via a FireWire interface. Others require the use of a third-party video capture interface for capture of composite, S-Video, component Y′PBPR, SDI, or HD-SDI video signals.
If you’re worried you won’t have the time or budget to get access to the deck in the future, you can capture at online quality right from the start. This method is increasingly popular for highly compressed acquisition formats like DVCPRO HD. These formats have low bandwidth requirements, allowing for capture at the highest native quality of the source media, with little overhead, and giving you the freedom to work at this quality all the way through to mastering.
• Safety transfer: Safety transfers are extremely conservative, with the camera negative being transferred as neutrally as possible. The emphasis is on maximizing the amount of color and contrast within the widest available dynamic range of the video recording format, while avoiding clipping in the highlights and shadows as much as is reasonable (although some highlights, like direct light sources, sun glints, and lighting reflections, should be clipped).
Sometimes, to save on tape costs, multiple rolls are transferred to a single 60-minute tape. For 35mm film, each subsequent roll is transferred in 15-minute increments. For example, the first roll is transferred starting at 01:00:00:00, the second roll is transferred starting at 01:15:00:00, the third roll starts at 01:30:00:00, and the fourth roll starts at 01:45:00:00.
Another advantage to importing telecine logs is that other logging information, such as film type, camera roll, telecine speed, and sometimes even the script supervisor’s notes from the shoot, is included. Ask the facility doing the transfer what options are available. Backup and Archiving Considerations One of the nice things about videotape formats is that the source tapes are their own backup. Some producers also opt to clone the source tapes for offsite storage for an added level of security.
Popular Formats Scanned film is typically stored as uncompressed 10-bit logarithmic DPX or Cineon image sequences. Both DPX and Cineon are RGB color space formats with 4:4:4 chroma sampling. Method of Ingest There are several ways you can ingest scanned DPX or Cineon image sequences into Final Cut Pro: • Using Color, you can convert the scanned image sequences to Apple ProRes 4444 media, which you can then use directly for mastering your program.
The most important piece of information for organizing DPX media is the filename of each frame, which includes the frame number that identifies the frame’s place in each sequence. For later conforming in Color, DPX filenames must have a prefix, an underscore, a frame number, and a file extension, taking the following form: Filename_0123456.dpx. Another important piece of information for Final Cut Studio workflows is the name of the directory in which each image sequence is located.
After you edit your sequence using these converted QuickTime clips, you then export an EDL from Final Cut Pro, which is used to reconform your project to the original DPX or Cineon media in Color. After your program has been reconformed, you grade and output your program as a single DPX or Cineon image sequence that can be delivered to a facility for film printing. For more information about different post-production workflows involving scanned film, see the Color documentation.
• Importing audio from CDs: You can also directly import tracks copied from audio CDs. It’s important to copy all the tracks you want to use from the CD to your scratch disk before importing them into Final Cut Pro. Otherwise, they’ll go offline when you eject the CD. Clip Organization You can use Final Cut Server to organize audio you want to share among multiple users. Locally, audio media is principally organized by filename prior to import.
Popular Formats Final Cut Pro and Color support a wide range of image file formats. The most popular include TIFF, PICT, TGA, and JPEG. If you’re planning to use JPEG files, it’s best to use the least amount of compression possible to avoid artifacts in your final program. Final Cut Pro and Motion are also capable of using layered or flattened Photoshop files in different ways. See the Final Cut Pro and Motion documentation for more information.
Popular Formats When you create media in another application that you want to use in Final Cut Pro, it’s best to use the highest-quality codec that your system can handle in order to avoid compression artifacts in the final program. An additional consideration, especially for computer-generated imagery (CGI) and broadcast animation, is whether or not you need to preserve an alpha channel in a media file with regions of transparency in it.
Ultimately, good organization will help you and your collaborators spend more time being creative.
Create a hierarchy of clearly named bins It’s important to prevent the Browser from becoming difficult to navigate. You can use bins like folders, to help you organize large numbers of clips into manageable groups. You can create a simple structure for your project, with separate bins for audio clips, video clips, Motion projects, and sequences. You can also use bins to separate the clips you intend to use for individual scenes, or to subdivide audio clips into music, sound effects, and voiceover clips.
Once placed within a shot, these markers can be used for navigation in the Viewer or Timeline. You can also access a menu of every marker within a clip by opening the clip in the Viewer and Control-clicking the Current Timecode field. Choosing a marker from the resulting shortcut menu instantly moves the playhead to that marker. Markers can also be viewed within the Browser (in list view) by opening the disclosure triangle to the left of any clip that contains markers.
When you import a telecine log file into Final Cut Pro, all of this information appears in the Browser, associated with each offline clip, ready for use as soon as you capture the media. There are additional columns in the Final Cut Pro Browser that are dedicated to film information coming from Cinema Tools.
Integration During Editorial Development 3 This chapter describes different ways in which Final Cut Studio applications can be used together during the editorial development phase of post-production. For more information about the editorial workflow itself, see the Final Cut Pro documentation. This chapter covers the following: • What Is Editorial Development? (p. 49) • Importing Editorial Information from Other Sources (p. 50) • Integrating Titles and Broadcast Design Elements During Editing (p.
Although cutting picture and sound are the heart of this process, editorial development also includes the development of titles and graphics as well as broadcast design animation. Editorial development can also include a certain amount of audio cleanup and sound design, temporary music placement and editing, and even temporary color correction. All of these elements, whether in a rough or final state, play a part in helping you to hone the final content.
Import an Edit Decision List from another application The Edit Decision List (EDL) format is one of the oldest and most widely supported project interchange formats for editing. EDLs are formatted as plain text documents, which can be output and read by most editing applications.
Integrating Titles and Broadcast Design Elements During Editing Most editors begin integrating titles and broadcast design elements into their projects during the offline edit. In some cases these clips are temporary placeholders, and in other cases the final titles are created right away. If your program requires animated design elements or effects, Final Cut Studio provides two environments in which these can be created.
Editing Media from Motion into a Final Cut Pro Sequence If you’ve already created a Motion project that you want to use in your Final Cut Pro sequence, there are two ways you can edit it into your sequence. • Edit a Motion project file into a Final Cut Pro sequence: You can import any Motion project file into a Final Cut Pro project. Motion projects (with the file extension .
When you send one or more clips from within a sequence, you have the option (turned on by default) of immediately embedding a Motion clip in your sequence to replace the media being sent. This way, once you finish working in Motion, all you need to do is save the project and return to Final Cut Pro to see the results already there in your sequence.
Compatible Still-Image Formats All Final Cut Studio applications that can import graphics files are capable of supporting a wide variety of image formats. However, because of their high quality and prevalence, the following formats are the ones most commonly used for post-production media interchange. (All these formats support alpha channels for preserving transparency.) • TIFF: The Tagged Image File Format is a commonly used image format for RGB graphics on a variety of platforms.
Compatible Media Formats for Animation and Effects The format you choose depends on whether or not you need to preserve regions of transparency in the media file. For example, if you’re creating a lower third graphic, you need to preserve the transparent background so that you can superimpose the actual title graphic over the video image in your edited sequence.
• Broadcast safe luma and chroma levels: Even if you’ll color correct your images later, it’s useful to keep the maximum broadcast safe levels for color and brightness in mind when your titles and graphics are being designed. In particular, text should never use 100 percent white, as the high-contrast edges around pure white text can cause unwanted spikes in the signal. All text should be limited to 95 percent white or lower. (Don’t worry, this is plenty bright for white on a television.
The two ways of sending individual clips or groups of clips to Soundtrack Pro are summarized below. For more information, see the Soundtrack Pro documentation. All of these operations can be applied nondestructively, so if you’re unsatisfied with your results later, you can easily change your adjustments or remove them entirely.
Processing Audio Using an External Editor If you need to make a change to an audio item that you’ve already imported, you can use the Open in Editor command to open any file using the application specified by that file’s creator code. You can also choose the specific application with which to open audio files in the External Editors tab of the System Settings window. See the Final Cut Pro documentation for more information.
You can also work synchronized to picture in GarageBand, but you need to export the scene you want to use as a QuickTime movie first. Dragging a QuickTime movie into a GarageBand project window adds the audio and video to the project so you can arrange your loops in time to the picture. When you finish, you can use the Hide Movie Track command to disable the video, and then you can use the Export Song to Disk command to export an audio file that you can edit back into your original Final Cut Pro sequence.
Client Review 4 Final Cut Studio provides several ways of delivering your program for review during any part of the organization, editing, or finishing process. This chapter summarizes the different options that are available to you. This chapter covers the following: • Arranging for Client Review (p. 61) • Local Review Methods (p. 62) • Remote Review Methods (p.
Providing a Window Burn for Reference When providing a review copy to your client, it can be extremely useful to add a timecode window burn to the video. A timecode window burn superimposes the program’s run time over the visuals of the program, in order to provide a consistent timing reference that your client can use to identify the exact moment referred to in each note he or she gives you.
Remote Review Methods Final Cut Studio provides many ways of delivering clips and edited sequences to remote reviewers. The methods that are appropriate for your project depend on the formats preferred by your client and the level of quality required to get useful feedback. For example, if you’re getting feedback on how the editing of a program is working, color accuracy and high resolution may not be important, so web delivery is a convenient option.
Create a DVD with DVD Studio Pro If you want to hand off a copy of the program for someone to review from the comfort of home, you can use DVD Studio Pro to author a standard definition DVD with more options than the Share command’s DVD preset provides. Although this process is a bit more involved, you can add surround-encoded audio tracks, chapter menus, multiple movies encoded to the same disc, and other features that might be better suited to your review process.
Finishing 5 This chapter describes how Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Color, and Soundtrack Pro work together to let you apply the final polish to your programs. This chapter covers the following: • What Is Finishing? (p. 66) • Finishing Using Compressed Versus Uncompressed Media (p. 67) • Format Conversion When Finishing Mixed-Format Sequences (p. 69) • Reconforming Media to Online Quality (p. 71) • Creating Final Broadcast Design Elements and Effects (p. 79) • Color Correction (p.
What Is Finishing? Finishing is a catch-all phrase that describes an entire family of related activities. In a nutshell, finishing describes the process of giving your edited program the final polish it needs to make it as seamless and professional as possible prior to mastering and output.
• Creating Final Broadcast Design Elements and Effects • Color Correction • Final Sound Editing, Design, and Mixing Don’t Feel Obligated to Do Everything Yourself Many of the tasks involved with finishing are highly specialized activities.
Another possible approach is to upconvert previously recorded compressed media by connecting the SDI or HD-SDI output from a video deck or camcorder to the input of a video capture card, thus using the deck’s circuitry to upconvert the compressed signal to an uncompressed media file during capture. However, this doesn’t actually provide access to any additional pixels or samples of information.
Why is it important to upconvert compressed media at the end of the finishing stage? When the time comes to color correct your program, near the end of the finishing stage, you’ll be reprocessing and rendering every clip to which you either make adjustments or apply effects. Whether you’re working in Final Cut Pro or in Color, all image processing is done in an internally uncompressed data space, regardless of the source format.
In some cases, you can mix formats and finish your program using the original media without problems. However, certain combinations of mismatched media attributes can cause trouble when the time comes to finish and output your project. This section illustrates how you should handle different combinations of clips in mixed-format sequences to avoid problems.
What is the best way to do format conversion using Compressor? If you have one or more clips in your sequence whose frame rates, scanning methods (interlaced or progressive), or frame sizes don’t match, you can use Compressor to do a standards conversion of the mismatched clips. Compressor can use optical flow analysis to create high-quality conversions, but you have to choose the appropriate settings for your preset in the Inspector.
• Reconforming Tape-Based Media • Reconforming via Telecine Retransfer • Reconforming to DPX or Cineon Film Scans Reconforming Offline Duplicates of Online Media This workflow is appropriate for projects for which you originally ingested high-bandwidth media (such as 8- and 10-bit Uncompressed or Apple ProRes 4444 media) for eventual HD, 2K, or 4K mastering.
Stage 1: Preparing Your Sequence for Media Management In general, it’s a good idea to do a certain amount of preparation to your sequence before using the Media Manager, in order to avoid retransferring media you don’t really need. One easy thing you can do is to move all video clips that aren’t being superimposed as part of an effect or compositing operation down to track V1.
Stage 4: Changing the Ingest Options in the Log and Transfer Window Open the Log and Transfer window and choose Preferences from the Action pop-up menu (the menu with the gear icon). When the Import Preferences dialog appears, choose the appropriate option from the pop-up menu in the “Transcode to” column corresponding to your format. When you finish, close the Log and Transfer window to save the new settings.
• “Include render files” checkbox: Off • “Set sequences to” pop-up menu: Typically, you should choose the sequence setting that corresponds to the format of the media you’ll be recapturing. • “Include master clips outside selection” checkbox: Off • “Delete unused media from duplicated items” checkbox: On • Use Handles checkbox: This setting is optional, although having 1-second or 2-second handles is always a good idea to prepare for possible last-minute adjustments.
Stage 1: Preparing Your Sequence to Export a Pull List There are a few things you can do to better organize your sequence in preparation for exporting a film list for retransferring and reconforming your program. • Manually remove unused clips from your sequence: Time is money during a film-to-tape transfer session, and the fewer shots you have to transfer, the faster the transfer will go.
Stage 3: Having the Film Retransferred The actual retransfer is fairly simple. This workflow assumes that each camera roll of film was originally transferred to a separate reel of videotape, with a marker frame assigned to each roll of film at a point before the first shot begins and a hole punch permanently identifying that frame.
Stage 1: Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence To ensure reliability when it comes time to reconform the offline edit of your project in Final Cut Pro to the source DPX media in Color, you need to be careful not to alter the timecode or reel numbers of the offline source media in any way.
To ensure a smooth reconform in Color, you need to request that the timecode that identifies each frame of negative (relative to the marker frame at the beginning of the roll) be converted to frames and used to generate the filenames for each scanned DPX file, and that the timecode also be written into the DPX header of each shot. The names of the resulting image sequence frames should take the following form: SequenceName_0123456.dpx.
The finishing process can also result in changes to sequence resolution that may have an impact on the different kinds of effects clips you may use in your program.
A sequence’s resolution is usually changed in preparation for recapturing or retransferring higher-resolution media; this change in resolution is necessary to match the sequence to the native resolution of the new online media. However, this also means that generators (such as title generators), still images, embedded Motion projects, and animation created using Final Cut Pro Motion tab settings are all scaled to the new size of the sequence.
• If you click No: The settings of the sequence that Color sends back to Final Cut Pro are identical to those of the sequence that was originally sent to Color, but the codec used by the clips doesn’t match that of the sequence, and the scale and aspect ratio of the rendered clips change to fit the original frame size. All clips conform to the original frame size, but clips that were rendered by Color may also need to be rendered in Final Cut Pro because their Scale and Aspect Ratio parameters are altered.
• Bring attention to specific elements in the frame • Make creative adjustments to stylize the appearance of the images In most post-production workflows, color correction is one of the last steps taken to finish a program’s visuals. Ideally, your edit should be locked before you move on to this stage, especially if you’re sending your sequence to Color.
Make Sure You Have the Right Setup for Color Correction If you plan to do your own color correction, it’s important to make sure that you have the right room and equipment for the job. Remember that you will be the last word in how the picture looks, and the audience is going to see exactly what you render. When deciding how to equip your room, keep the following essentials in mind.
Color Correcting a Program in Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro offers a considerable tool set for color correction. Although the Final Cut Pro color correction tools are not as feature-rich as those in Color, the Color Corrector 3-way filter, in conjunction with the many other filters and compositing tools found in Final Cut Pro, allows you to do a complete color correction job.
Tips for Color Correcting in Final Cut Pro In general, color correcting in Final Cut Pro doesn’t require a lot of preparation. Still, there are a few steps you can take to make things easier. • Move all video clips that aren’t being superimposed as part of an effect or compositing operation down to track V1. This action eliminates unused media from your program and makes it easier, organizationally, to work in the Timeline.
Stage 3: Grading and Rendering Your Program After you send your sequence to Color, you can use its dedicated tool set, in conjunction with a control surface, a color-critical monitor, and an appropriately equipped system, to grade your program. After you finish, you use the Color Render Queue to render a new, color-corrected set of media files. Color renders one new file for each shot that appears in the Timeline.
• You should export self-contained QuickTime files for effects clips that you want to color correct in context. Color doesn’t support media like generators or embedded Motion clips. If you want to color correct these kinds of effects, you need to export self-contained QuickTime files and then reedit these into your sequence to replace the original effects. • All freeze frames should be moved to track V1. Color supports only freeze frames that appear in track V1.
Delivering a Program to Another Facility for Grading You can deliver your edited program to another facility for grading using third-party hardware and software. This can be advantageous because working at a facility with high-quality monitoring equipment in a specialized viewing environment lets you evaluate your program’s images with remarkable accuracy.
Final Sound Editing, Design, and Mixing Sound editing, design, and mixing comprise a series of activities that are geared toward polishing the audio of your program to enhance the final presentation. Never underestimate the power of a good mix. Audiences may forgive problems with a program’s picture, but they’ll never forgive poor audio.
Make Sure You Have the Right Setup for Mixing If you plan to do your own sound design and mixing, it’s important to make sure that you have the right supporting hardware for the job. You will be the last word in how the audio sounds, and the audience is going to hear exactly what you export. When deciding how to equip your room, keep the following essentials in mind.
Organize audio clips into tracks according to their type Audio editing and mixing is a lot easier if you organize the audio clips in an edited sequence into multiple tracks, based on their type. For example, it’s common to put all sync-sound dialogue clips into one group of tracks (some editors put each actor’s dialogue into a separate track), background ambience in another group of tracks, sound effects in another group of tracks, and music in a different group of tracks.
For more information about mixing your sequence right in the Timeline, see the Final Cut Pro documentation. Soundtrack Pro, on the other hand, is a dedicated environment for this sort of work and offers many more tools and options for sound design, noise suppression and filtration, and mixing. If you’re trying to decide whether to mix a sequence in Final Cut Pro or send it to Soundtrack Pro, consider the following questions.
Note: It’s typical for the sound mix and color correction of a program to be done at the same time. As with color correction, it’s most efficient to lock the edit prior to starting work on your soundtrack. However, reconforming a sound edit that’s in progress to match changes made to the video is a common occurrence, and Soundtrack Pro provides a powerful reconforming tool for streamlining this process using the Final Cut Pro XML Interchange Format.
Stage 4: Sending the Final Mixdown to Final Cut Pro When you finish with the final mix, there are two ways you can send the mixdown back to Final Cut Pro for use in your sequence. • Export audio media: You can export one or more AIFF or WAVE files of the master mix (or any combination of individual submixes) using the Export command in Soundtrack Pro.
Delivering Your Program Materials When you work with another facility to do the audio, you’re usually asked to provide the following: • A reference video: You need to provide a reference video so that the sound designer and mixer can time their work to picture. This can be either an exported QuickTime movie or a tape output, depending on how the facility is equipped.
Mastering 6 This chapter provides information about mastering your program. Proper mastering ensures that you provide all of the elements needed for delivery to a network or distributor. This chapter covers the following: • What Is Mastering? (p. 97) • Creating Versions of a Program with and Without Titles (p. 98) • Format Conversion (p. 99) • Subtitling and Closed Captioning (p. 100) • Delivering Audio (p.
• Subtitling and Closed Captioning • Delivering Audio Creating Versions of a Program with and Without Titles A common requirement, especially from networks and broadcasters, is that you provide separate tape masters of your program with and without titles (also called texted and textless masters). • A texted master is simply your program as you intend the audience to see it, with all titles, subtitles, lower thirds, segment and interstitial titles, and end credits intact.
Format Conversion Broadcasters and distributors usually request that you deliver tape masters of your program in multiple formats. Typically, the required conversions from your program’s original format include: • HD-to-SD downconversion: Although most broadcasters require HD tape masters, the reality is that there is still a huge audience that is limited to SD programming.
For more information about using Compressor to do high-quality format conversion, see Format Conversion When Finishing Mixed-Format Sequences. Also see the Distributed Processing Setup Guide, available in Compressor Help and Apple Qmaster Help, for more information about setting up an Apple Qmaster distributed processing system.
Handling Closed Captioning Closed captioning is a subtitling system designed to make television more accessible to the hearing-impaired. Unlike movie subtitles, which are intended to translate dialogue for people who can hear the rest of the soundtrack, closed captions need to convey all important sound effects, music cues, nonverbal expressions, and dialogue that occur as a program plays.
Capturing Video with Closed Captioning Using Final Cut Pro If you’re using a video capture card that supports the preservation of closed captioning, closed captioning is preserved during capture in one of two ways: • The Apple ProRes codecs support the capture and preservation of either line 21 or VANC closed captioning data, including both the CEA-608 (for SD) and CEA-708 (for HD) standards of closed captioning. • Apple’s 8- and 10-bit Uncompressed 4:2:2 codecs preserve line 21 closed captioning.
• For MPEG-2 elementary stream output: Compressor embeds CEA-608 closed captioning data in an elementary MPEG-2 video stream so that it can be used for authoring in DVD Studio Pro. DVD Studio Pro retains this closed captioning data when the video stream is added to a track of a standard definition NTSC DVD project. You can use Apple DVD Player to play the resulting DVD Studio Pro build files to verify that the closed captioning data is present.
You can also use a third-party utility. Most subtitling utilities take advantage of the Final Cut Pro XML Interchange Format to automate the process of creating subtitles to match a timed script that you provide. Some subtitling utilities provide an interface for actually assembling the script, whereas others require one that’s premade. Most of these utilities use one of two approaches.
Delivering Audio Because of the variety of ways that audio can be mixed into various multichannel configurations, there are numerous methods for delivering your program’s audio to the distributor or broadcaster. Programs that will be aired internationally have additional deliverables that must be taken into account.
The most common surround sound formats are described below. • Dolby Digital (also called AC-3): A surround encoding format developed by Dolby Laboratories that contains up to six discrete audio channels. Although typically used to encode every channel of 5.1 surround, it can also be used to encode any subset of these channels.
• If you’re delivering your video master on an HDCAM SR or D-5 tape, you may be requested to output all six discrete surround channels, plus stereo downmix channels, onto the tape master itself. HDCAM SR supports 12 audio channels, and D-5 supports 8 channels. • If you’re providing a Dolby E mix, distributors often ask for both stereo and surround mixes output to the same videotape master, because most professional videotape formats support at least four tracks of audio.
• Fully filled international tracks: Often, key production sound effects (for example, a door slamming or footsteps) occur underneath sections of dialogue. If you’re asked to provide “fully filled international tracks,” that means all sound effects lost when the dialogue tracks are isolated need to be re-created by recording Foley effects and doing additional sound design to “fill in the holes.
Output and Delivery 7 This chapter discusses how to manage the final output and delivery of your program, including the eventual long-term archiving of your program’s assets once the project has been concluded. This chapter covers the following: • How to Output? (p. 109) • Doing a Negative Conform (p. 115) • Long-Term Archiving of the Finished Project and Media (p. 115) How to Output? You’re almost finished with the post-production of your program.
Although these formats are the most common, some networks request masters using other tape formats. Check ahead to see what’s required. The only application in Final Cut Studio that’s suitable for outputting to tape is Final Cut Pro. If you’re outputting a tape master, there are nearly always strict guidelines about when the program should begin relative to the timecode on the tape, as well as about the type and timing of leader elements that appear before the beginning of your program.
• You can encode your program into MPEG-2 media using either Compressor or DVD Studio Pro. If you use Compressor, you have more options for adding closed captioning, making adjustments to the MPEG-2 encoder settings, and adjusting other properties of your program prior to importing it as an asset for your DVD Studio Pro project. The ability to use Compressor with Apple Qmaster for distributed rendering can also speed up the process.
Compressor can work with an Apple Qmaster cluster to use multiple processing cores on a single computer and multiple computers on a network to process a single batch of media files. This can speed up your compression workflow substantially. For more information about setting up a cluster for distributed processing, see the Distributed Processing Setup Guide, available in Compressor Help or Apple Qmaster Help.
Printing to Film In any digital intermediate (DI) workflow involving Final Cut Studio, the final deliverable is typically a single, continuous DPX image sequence of your entire program. Because it’s an uncompressed RGB 4:4:4 format that’s capable of containing 10-bit log data, DPX is usually the preferred data format for delivering image sequences for film printing.
Render speed effects as self-contained QuickTime movies before sending to Color Although speed effects are compatible with Final Cut Pro–to–Color roundtrips, they should be exported as self-contained clips and reedited into your Timeline to replace the original effects, as described in the previous section. If you’re preprocessing slow-motion clips, you’ll achieve a better result by sending these clips to Motion and rendering them using the optical flow analysis features in Motion.
Doing a Negative Conform If you’re finishing a film program by conforming the original negative, in advance of doing optical color timing and film printing, you should have started out by importing a telecine log file into Final Cut Pro (or into Cinema Tools). The telecine log file contains the data necessary to maintain the correspondence between the edge code from the original camera negative and the timecode used by the telecined video clips that you’ve been editing.
• If you’re not using Final Cut Server: In this case, you need to gather all of your program’s assets manually. It’s usually best to move everything to a particular set of volumes in preparation for archiving, but the most efficient way to do this depends on the amount of hard disk space you have and how your media is organized. When deciding how to archive your program and its media, you have two choices.
