The Don'ts of picture editing are fewer so they should be shared early--help out

When you see a red line over your timeline, watch out! Don't just render and think you can waltz your way to the finish. I did and now I have to re-edit my 100 minute movie for the third time.

You must import your digitized 35mm movie correctly. If it requires rendering, you won't be able to do color correction. So just because you can render and be able to see and work with your movie initially doesn't mean anything. You won't be able to finish your movie in FCP if you didn't capture it correctly.

Now, Ben King was willing to stay with me for over an hour, from the UK mind you, but in the end if I had imported my movie into FCP5 correctly the first time, I didn't have to convert the 23.98 fps-captured movie into 29.97 fps. The conversion process is very involved and time consuming, and chances are that I won't be able to do it.

That's why I'm posting this issue. I'm sure there are a few crucial points that should be stated for the benefit of anyone working on a feature length film in FCP5. These few points should be mentioned, because it would save a lot of people from never finishing their movies. There are thousands of ways to edit a movie in FCP5 and a general discussion in one thread would be impossible, but there are only a handful of warnings that will prevent editors new to FCP from making a fatal mistake in editing their projects.

I've run into one of these problems and I'm sharing it with you. Here it is: if you see a red line at the top of your timeline, look out, kid, don't just render!

I hope you'll share other pointers with me.

I'm going to cut the negative to my feature film in 35mm, make a print and telecine it as HD and SD, before I go back to capturing my movie into FCP5 again for the DVD version. This way I'll have both options open: to generate an SD version DVD and eventually an HD version DVD.

I appreciate any pointers. Thanks!

> Don't just render and think you can waltz your way to the finish. I did and
> now I have to re-edit my 100 minute movie for the third time.

Learn this old-school tip: When performing a time-consuming render, cancel the render every 10-15 minutes, save the project file, then re-initiate the render. Render files do get created on the fly and you don't lose them, but a system crash will result in those render files becoming useless because the project file hasn't been saved and will not remember the render files. Saving the project file preserves the project file's relationship to the render files created up to that point, and it does not slow down the overall render.

> You must import your digitized 35mm movie correctly. If it requires
> rendering, you won't be able to do color correction.

What are you talking about? Yes, you can. The problem with how you did it was that you didn't do the frame-rate conversion properly, and that somebody erroneously told you that your DVCam tape was at 23.98fps -- an impossibility.

When I tackled my first HD project, with down conversions, I refused to start logging before I got a wide array of opinions. Graeme Nattress, Shane Ross and Mitch Stanley all graciously pitched in, and Chi-Ho Lee told me that you can't remove pulldown frames on the fly with FireWire. That was probably your mistake -- you tried to capture straight into FCP as 23.98fps, and with FireWire and DVCam, you can't do that. You needed Cinema Tools to perform a reverse telecine, or a capture card that could do pulldown removal.

Glad to see you finally got to the root of your problem. Another suggestion would be to have ALL your FILM dailies (or select takes) TK'd to HD then downconverted to DVCam and load them into FCP to edit your movie. It seemed a bit pointless having a work print edited version of your film TK'd to be loaded into FCP for a re-edit. You are then limited to the footage you cut on the original edit with no way of adding different takes. Then once you are complete you can online the HD tapes to make your HD or SD DVD's from and if you need a film print for theatrical release, then you cut the negative. It's a much more efficiant workflow and the way it's been done since the introduction of NLE's. Lastly if you dont understand or a not sure about something, ask questions before doing the work, research, research, research. Remember Pre-production comes before post. You should know what you are going to be doing in post and how you will be doing it, before you shoot a foot of film.

A thorough testing of your workflow before you even started cutting your feature would've saved you a lot of trouble. That's the best advice I can give. There are so many convoluted workflows and ways to get from point A to point B and there's no one way to do it. It pays off to test the specific workflow so you can have a smooth ride from beginning to end.

Hindsight is always 20/20 ;-)



Kevin Monahan
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Thanks, Derek, that helped. Even though I don't understand every technical detail you mentioned, I understand where I went wrong. I must've captured via firewire at 23.98 -- in fact I ended up with 23.98. Ben King made me go through all my files and check, and sure enough he was right: it was 23.98.

Thank you, Frank, for suggesting this work flow. I'll have to research it as you say, because I need to be able to get back to the 35mm negative with edge numbers and all. So I'm assuming Cinema Tools -- as you've guessed by now, I've not even opened them -- will do the trick.

And thank you, Kevin, for pointing out that there are other ways to do this.

I'm researching a way to use my present edit, without color correction (the only thing I've not been able to do with my 23.98 project,) as a tool to enter the festivals. Then when accepted, I'll cut the negative and begin the process of finishing my movie in earnest.

Gentlemen,

I discovered something interesting. (I'm trying to get a DVD ready to submit to a couple of festivals whose deadline is in a couple of days.) I sent a QT movie of the whole 100 minutes to Soundtrack Pro and completed the sound track, then I exported the aiff back. I decided to put the new sound track in a new project, so I renamed the project and saved it anew. I started to make new color corrections and when making only a small change, such as dropping red a bit, there was no shift in the number of frames. The color correction did not overlap 4 frames at the end of the shot. I began to make small changes in many shots and everything is holding up. I just want to make a presentable DVD for submission purposes. I'll still have to go back and re-transfer the whole movie after negative cutting, etc. I just wanted to mention that in a 23.98 project (even though it was incorrectly captured), FCP5 allows for minor color changes without jumps.

Just wanted to add a small detail:

"and Chi-Ho Lee told me that you can't remove pulldown frames on the fly with FireWire. "

I should add that you can't remove *Standard* pulldown frames (2:3:2:3) via firewire.

BUT-

You CAN remove *Advanced* pulldown (2:3:3:2) on the fly via firewire.

-CHL

> I just wanted to mention that in a 23.98 project (even though it was
> incorrectly captured), FCP5 allows for minor color changes without jumps.

You can't make rules out of a workflow that was wrong to begin with. When your setup is faulty, problems do not happen consistently. Troubleshooting involves eliminating unknown and erroneous factors in the equation, and you still have footage captured wrong, which to me prevents any kind of systematic analysis of what happens.

Thanks again.

I wish I knew how to convert the 23.98 footage into 29.97; I've no reason to keep it in 23.98. I'm not going to blow it up to 35mm or anything like that; it's already a 35mm movie.

However, tomorrow is the deadline for a couple of festivals and I need to get a DVD out to them, that's all.

After that I'm going to follow the advice given in this thread in going back to my movie and re-capturing it correctly.

I do it all the time in After Effects. I build film-look projects in a 23.976 Comp then throw that in a 29.97 comp (or override the setings in the Render Queue) for final render.

I don't know what you mean when you refer to your project as "my film". Are you going to print the final on ACTUAL FILM? Did you shoot on 16? 35? I don't know what you are doing with your film...but if you are going to get a "film print" out of it, anything that has to do with interlacing is geared towards TV - not film. I build everything (GFX-wise) in Progressive Comps when it is to be printed on film (24 fps, not 23.976). I just finished with a client that wanted rendered TIFF Sequences from me...which woked out perfectly because their final delivery format is film.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thanks for the tip, Joey. Yeah, my film is in 35mm. I'm doing the sound in FCP ... and of course I'm going to DVD, so I want to end up in FCP5 and output to SD DVD. After the festival run, I'm going to start marketing the movie as a DVD title. This is a small non-union production which I shot myself -- solo -- I did everything; I always wanted to do that. The main reason I'm excited about FCP is that it allows me to make small movies by myself, without the pressure of investors and distribution, etc.

Naturally, I want to get the most out of the FCP editing resources. I want the film to have the best look as a DVD title. If, and it's a big if, there is some interest from a distributor to do theatrical, I'll cut the negative and make a release print or two for testing. At that point, of course, I'll have to finish it as a 35mm movie. I'll literally go back to my Cinemonta flatbed and Upright Moviola and finish the movie in film; but I'll transfer my soundtrack from Soundtrack Pro to my Magnasync Moviola recorder and make an optical track. I know there are some synchronization problems at that point, but I've dealt with synchronizing print to mag, so that's something I'll deal with later. I understand digital sound doesn't synchronize 100% with film.

Anyway, I appreciate the tips regarding interlacing and the 23.98 vs 24 (to tell you the truth, I'm not sure how it works in practical terms, although I'm aware that it has to do with the fact that film runs at 24 frames and video at 30 frames per second and the way the two are shown...)

The cuts (and I have a lot of them in my 100 minute movie) look ugly the way my movie is now. There is a frame between every two shots joined together that is half a frame from one shot and half a frame from the other shot -- with diagonal stripes running across it. Every cut that passes in front of my eyes as I edit, looks like a jump cut. Plus I have splices and scratches and dust and china marker marks ... I see effects like that on TV -- longitudianl scratches and dust on B & W film that's supposed to be cool :-) But in my case, I'm going to get a black eye over it.

Anyway, my sound track is the best part of the movie -- thanks to Soundtrack Pro. I just finished removing clicks and pops from my sound track. It took 2 hours to do it, but the sound track sounds great now.

Please, keep the tips coming. I'm sure many of us will be spared future headaches as a result of this thread.

What's the A E program like, how much does it cost? Is it Adobe After Effects? What do I need to run it? Will it run on the G5 dual processor computer? I assume it does, but any helpful hints will help.

What are some of the cost effective programs for me to think about in completing movie projects for DVD release? I'm asking within the topic of this thread. Will A E allow me to edit in 23.98 format and not have the kind of problems I'm having? It should be possible to edit a movie in 23.98 if I want to retain the look of 24 frames per second film, right? This is what I'm gathering from what you posted, Joey.

AE = After Effects Professional v.7 ($999)

This is my bread & butter along with Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, FC Studio, Avid Express Pro & Cinema 4D. Read up:

[www.adobe.com]

AE is not an editor...it is a compositing & FX program. I use it for editing sometimes because my specialty is short form (commercials). I use FCP & Avid for editing / export to DVD Studio Pro / iDVD. I wouldn't recommend it for feature length projects. You can edit in 23.98 in FCP.

BTW...AE runs BEST on a Quad Core G5 with at least 4 Gigs of RAM (or more to run multiple programs at the same time) / NVidia GeForce 7800 GT Video Card or higher.

- Joey



Post Edited (06-08-06 15:38)

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

It should be a lot easier next time as the 24 fps functions of Cinema Tools are being integrated directly into the interface of FCP 6. No more Cinema Tools.

Dave

grafixjoe wrote:


>
> BTW...AE runs BEST on a Quad Core G5 with at least 4 Gigs of
> RAM (or more to run multiple programs at the same time) /
> NVidia GeForce 7800 GT Video Card or higher.


Or natively in Windows XP on a Macbook according to Creative Mac dot com.

:-)

These are some really hot tips, thanks, fellas.

Joey, you have a terrific setup. I admire the kind of approach you take to editing movies. It's a lot of money there...

I'm still eyeballing my $100 bill, Koz. LOL

Maybe a Nattress tool kit. ... Until I sell my movie, then I'll think of new toys, and maybe a pony. LOL

Sorry, Mike...I am not there yet (Universal)

Not for a while.



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I finally was able to finish my movie and get a DVD out to the festival, but... LOL

it was terrible quality. These computer monitors are different from the regular TV monitors. The color correcting was awful -- it looked great on my computer monitor though. Oh, well, back to the drawing board. I guess I'll have to post a new topic about monitors and color changes, etc.

I'm now going to re-capture and re-do the whole movie ALL OVER AGAIN.

> These computer monitors are different from the regular TV monitors. The
> color correcting was awful -- it looked great on my computer monitor
> though.

Wait, wait, wait. Are you checking the output on a calibrated broadcast monitor? If you're checking the colours and lighting on a regular TV, that will give you just as misleading an image as a computer monitor.