EDL to "Auto-sync" rushes in FCP

i;m going to be working on a feature film.

sound will be shot multitrack on a Deva (or similar)
and i believe we are also syncing a 2tk mixdown to our rushes in telecine.

this got me thinking

i'll be able to use Cinema Tools to make an audio EDL.

so is there some way to use that EDL info to help me sync the rushes?

not a manual job: there;ll be timecode slate if i wanted to do that

i'm thinking i could doctor the EDL somehow,
bring it into FCP as a sequence, (or a few sequences)
and then connect to the Deva files

what would i need to do that?
or is there some other software i could use?

some XML magic from Spherico?
(Andreas?)
or would XML Pro do the job?

i'm sure what i want to do is possible, but i'm not sure what i need to do it


thanks,
nick

That sounds like something Sean Cullen would be able to answer. I think they did this sort of thing on "Jarhead."

Michael, wasn't the Walter Murch meeting made into a DVD? Take a look, Sean might have explained how they did it.

I'm not sure how Cinema Tools would be able to help with syncing dailies, the audio EDL was designed to conform the sound after the editing is finished. However, filmmakers have found some other creative ways to use it.

Best of luck, Nick.

--Dan

Yes. I'm not sure but do you have that DVD Nick?

mike

I was the assistant editor on Jarhead in LA and I did all the synching of dailies. The film crew logged the film data into File Maker Pro at their film benches. I used FCP to 'pop' the BWF dailies tracks and copy and paste the time code into File Maker Pro. We then used XML-Pro to make XML files that were used for telecine and for syncing dailies on the KEM interlocked to Pro Tools.

The XML files were then used once again to relink telecine capture to the BWF audio.

It was quite a workflow - worked brilliantly, but required much manpower and insane attention to details. So much could go wrong if you lost track of anomolies. All told we had a crew of 4 (in addition to Walter and Sean) to pull this off. Plus, Sean Cullen is a genius and he developed a lot of special workarounds to solve specific issues with the integration of all the software tools.

I found XML-Pro to be a very useful piece of software. I believe Gallery Software pulled it off the market because it was buggy and hard to use. Too bad, if the cleaned it up and made it more user friendly ...



Mitch

oh that's strange, i wrote a reply this morning, but in my haste i must have not actually sent it.

it started with a big "thanks" and continued something like this:

Mike:
i DO have that DVD, but i dont remember Sean talking about the rushes syncing process

Mitch:
we wont have a film dept.
Neg goes to HD and that's that
so our work path is simpler,
but then again, we dont have four assistants on board!

Dan:
syncing rushes is the first "edit" that happens on a film
cuts are made, and decisions can be listed.


our process is something like this:

-Film rushes to HDCAM
-Sound shot on Deva (or similar)
-2tk mixdown synced to film in telecine.

this means we have the audio TC in our flex files.

so with that to work from, i want to wind up with an FCP sequnce w offline files for the audio
reconnect in FCP and you have sync rushes.

just need to figure out a way to get the slate & take info in the flex file to match with the sound file names,
and to expand the 2tk info to 6 or 8 tracks

this is probably hugely over-simplified, but the NUMBERS are there, and there's got to be a way to use them.

--------------------------------------------

so thanks again, all,
nick

i have also been discussing this with Andreas Keil,
FCP XML genius of spherico filmtools fame
[www.spherico.de]

------------------------------------------------------------

Nick:
because we are syncing in teleceine,
i will have the information about the audio TC.

the Slate & Take names will (hopefully) be the same for picture and sound,
but the sound will have extra info on the name about which track it is.

so picture may be 27-1
and the sound files could be something like
27-1_1
27-1_2
27-1_3
27-1_4 etc

there should be some way to automate a process that takes the audio TC info,
and the audio file name,
and makes something that i can then open as a sequence in FCP with an offline version of the clips all in place
i could then reconnect to the BWF file


Andreas:
Using a modified version of my BWF2XML you could create a small data base for every sound roll, which can be used later for synching the clips.
You would need BWF2XML anyway to connect the DEVA files with an offline FCP project, since otherwise the TC is lost and they would connect wrong

what would be better would be if you got an offline version which ALSO had the picture already linked.
Having the FLEX, the captured video and the sound data base, would allow to create a XML with linked clips which point to the correct path URL.
If the video is not captured, the XML can be used to run a batch capture.
Depending on how good the FLEX file is and how good the BWF data are, you may match those files before

----------------------------------------------------------------

Nick:
this sounds very promising!

Andreas:
The FLEX thing can be done,
but many of the code and interface is not Tiger safe anymore.
Testing should be done close to the given workflow and the given files.

Think about this thing like you have two data bases (or one relational),
one part holding the FLEX data the other one holding the BWF meta data.
Clicking one entry in the FLEX data will start a search in the audio data and if a matching file is found an XML node will be generated - otherwise an error will displayed to the user.

Holding both of those data set in a data base has some big advantages,
since you still can change or correct file errors like wrong times (which will probably happen), bad scene names etc. before bringing that stuff into CT and FCP

As mentioned, the best thing would be to have some real files upfront, so we can figure out what's missing or to organize different etc.


------------------------------------------------------

Nick:
what would be good would be if i got an FCP sequence with offline sound files for re-linking
and which ALSO had the picture already in place

Andreas:
Having the FLEX, the captured video and the sound data base,
you could create a XML with linked clips which point to the correct path URL.
If the video is not captured, the XML can be used to run a batch capture.
Depending on how good the FLEX file is and how good the BWF data are, you may match those files before

------------------------------------------------------------

Nick, I hate to go offline with this, but I think we would gain a lot more (and take less time) with a call. Perhaps in the interest of keeping the thread alive, I'll email you with my contact info, we can chat, and then you or I could update the post with a description of the proposed workflow.

Back soon

hi Sean.

thanks for stepping in.
sounds good.
i;d love to chat.
i agree we can achieve a lot over the phone.

cheers,
nick

Hi Nick,

There were some "Nick:" and "Andreas:" missing ;-)

Here some about the data base thing

As for the FLEX, you may get something like that:
012 Shoot Date 05-17-04 Xfer Date 2004-05-26
?
100 Edit 0003 Field A1 PAL
110 Scene Take Cam Roll Sound 22:23:40:03.0
120 Scrpt
200 16 25.00 000014 000783&14 Key EASTM KK674151 006771&19 p
300 Assemble 008 At 08:32:55:19.0 For 00:10:26:23.0
?
?

If we bring that into a data base we have access to each value

So scene, take, cam roll and sound roll are missing are missing for the above entry. This is not very professional, but sometimes happens.
But the FLEX also includes the shot and xfer dates.

For the BWF you can bring the metadata into a database as well. Maybe the sound recordist already edited them and did made some notes, which are important for production

Using both data sets:

So the values from the bad FLEX entry now can be compared to the data in the metadata of the BWFs first using shoot date
If you got the possible BWF files, you can search for a matching timecode and got the sound roll and if you goot a good sound recordist you also got scene and take automatically then.
If video is already digitized, you can go the video timecode and get cam roll and compare against BWF data, you even can check the synch upfront.

If the FLEX entry is okay it will find the sound roll without trouble and then look for the TC.
You can still double check the values and clapper.

Having gone thru the FLEX, you'll see possible errors, for example missing audio - maybe it's mute.
After verifying the FLEX, there will a connection set between the audio file and it's location (and maybe the video file location).
Also the FLEX should be ready for import into CT - if you want to use it.

The next steps depend on the way you want to go:
So if video is not digitized you may export an XML from that for video only and batch digitize and connect the file paths to the data base. Then export a new XML with picture and sound linked.
If video is digitized and brought into the data base you can export an XML right away.
Or make QT movies out of that - that has the advantage that audio (TC) will be never before video (TC), which otherwise may cause some trouble sometimes. This also may allow to set an AUX TC and reel.

Having the data base approach is also a good additional backup.

Regards
Andreas



Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Dan Fort respnded offline to Nick and I feel it should be posted here for all to see.

Hi Nick,

I'm starting to get the idea. You've got telecine log files that you can run through Cinema Tools and would like to replace the audio from the rushes with the Deva (or similar hard disk recorder) audio files.

You probably already got the information you needed from Sean and Andreas, but here is how to do it with Cinema Tools, which is what you were probably looking for in the first place.

If you haven't done so already, download this free conversion tool:

[www.dharmafilm.com]

I used it on several jobs and it saved me lots of time. The last time I used it was on "Casshern" which was a crazy audio conforming job.

I haven't tried it myself, but this is how it would work:

1. First of all, import the telecine logs into Cinema tools.

2. Export a FCP batch capture file and take it into FCP.

3. Batch capture the videotape.

4. Next, put all the clips on a timeline and export an audio EDL.

5. Import the audio EDL into FCP.

You should now have a sequence of all the captured clips with the
telecine audio and another (offline) sequence with the audio that will sync up with with the first sequence.

6. Now comes the tricky part. You need to convert the broadcast wave files from the audio recorder to QuickTime files. That's one of the jobs that sebskytools should be able to do. Now you've got QuickTime files that will match the timecode in the offline audio sequence.

7. You will need to change names and source (tape?) fields in either the offline clips or the converted QT files so they match.

8. If you have more tracks (you said expand to 6 or 8) simply duplicate the offline clips, change the name/tape to match the extra tracks and add those to the audio sequence. This is pretty much the process that I went through to conform all the stems on a re-cut of "Casshern" and it worked great.

9. Finally, reconnect the audio clips with the QT audio and paste them over the audio in your captured dailies sequence.

10. From this point you can make subclips of the synced shots. The subclips will carry the timecodes from the video and audio properly so you don't need Cinema Tools to make any future audio EDLs. Of course you're working with production quality audio so you probably will be using OMFs instead.

Some caveats--there used to be lots of trouble with subclips in FCP. Hopefully Apple fixed these, but I haven't used the latest release so I can't guarantee it. Sebsky tools is a nice little utility, but it might not work on your files. Time stamping a batch of QuickTime files worked great, but it didn't properly convert some of the audio files that I tried. Another thing is that I've been working on Avids doing animation for the past few years so my FCP experience is somewhat dated.

Hope this helps.


--Dan

thanks dan.

i believe we will be using XMLPro to help us get the BWF files into FCP.
although apparently it had issues with 5.04 (some tests alreaty done)
4.5 needed to be used jsut to import the XML file.
the 4.5 project is opened in 5.04

this issue *may* be fixed with 5.1, which is what we will be using,

we'll test again with XMLPro & BWF2XML.

in the "thought experiments" id done so far,
i;d gotten the EDL from cinema tools,
and into FCP

the "expanding" from 2 tk to 6 or 8 tracks would be easy,
but the renaming of the clips....
that;s the killer.

this would work great for stems, but for thousands of slates...
it;d be quicker to just sync them!

gotta have the right names to reconnect,
& there's no way to batch re-name things in FCP,
so it's got to be something else.

i thought of some text editor to batch re-name the clips in a group of EDLs
this assumes the Slate & take names of the logged clips can be usually converted to whatever names the BWF files have.

(I think this will be the main gotcha)

i didn't have a clue how to do that, mind you, or what to use, but figured it was possible,

but then figured, it was also too hard!
and thought XML would be better.

again,
i dont know what tools to use (if they exist)
or if it IS the right way

Andreas has some interesting ideas,
but i always have to wait till morning to understand them!

or maybe there is some existing spread-sheet / file-maker magic that can work for this?

Mitch may well be right in thinking it's more than one app involved.
i remember creating printouts of Cinema Tools cut lists that had both ink AND key numbers PLUS log notes from FCP
had to use all sorts of things to do that!

thanks again,
nick