playing with X demo. effect keyframes???

Not really Andreas - Ive tested it but that's about all. Most of my recent workflows are fast turnaround and there's not really time for the Prelude steps.

Maxim Jago has a course on it though. I've done his PP course and it was excellent. You can check out the Prelude one here [www.video2brain.com]

Prelude is designed for the phase prior to editing. Eg. copying cards, transcoding to offline or proxy rushes (uses AME), logging, and for preparing rough cuts/stringouts for the editor.

For the first 2 functions, it works a little like Shotput Pro, in that it does data verification. And you can set it to transcode while copying, so both transcoding and copying becomes a batch operation. You can also mark in/out and transcode just a portion of the clip, but that is usually useless because PPro is awful at offline/online workflows, also, it doesn't work like L&T in preserving the metadata, so you cannot right click in PPro and "batch transcode" offline media.

For the logging function, it writes the metadata via XMP which may be embedded in the media or as a sidecar, depending on whether the media format supports XMP. You can also create markers in the timeline and import them into PPro. However, I'm not too big a fan of the metadata functions, as markers in PPro is heavily under developed.

For the rough cuts function, there is a very simplified timeline, where producers can drag and drop clips into a timeline and after which, you can import the rough cut into PPro. Also not a fan of this function either, because I never found much point in producers doing rough cuts and also, because they are often slow at doing rough cuts, and also, this is much better handled by the editor.

What could actually work for the rough cut function, is an FCP X type of timeline environment, which is ridiculously easy to use, but I'm still not sure if you want to do a rough cut before you get into the edit room. Perhaps the pre-edits while on-location to make sure you have the footage you need. Also (with regards to this discussion on FCP X), PPro can do good with an "advanced grouping" function that works like FCP X's secondary storyline, in that you can ripple trim, or perform swap edits within groups of Brolls within a scene without affecting the rest of the timeline.

So yea, I've mainly been using Prelude like a poor man's Shotput Pro. It didn't copy the "DCIM" and "MISC" folders when I tried it on AVCHD footage, so that's a bit of a concern. Also, there isn't a status indicator or progress bar when copying. It would be a lot better if there was a batch window similar to Compressor or most transcoding softwares.

So as a card copying and proxy transcoding software, I think there is some potential here, especially when most copying softwares only support one type of file format (eg. Sony XDCAM Browser, P2 CMS), and not all of them have an option to transcode to proxies or keep source timecode/metadata. Not to mention, it comes with Production Premium, but can be installed separately on a field machine, and it integrates with PPro in the post production room, making it a pretty cool free little tool.

But my criticism is that this piece of software isn't designed with anyone in mind. Most story producers are creative people, and don't want to be involved with transcoding of footage, and they like working off proxies because they can carry the footage around with them on a USB drive, while the poor offline/online workflows in Adobe cripple this function. Also, where it matters to them, there isn't any proper script integration (great if you can attach clips to a script that the editor can import the script into PPro). Then, you have assistant editors and data wranglers, who are the ones handling offloading of footage and transcoding, and they don't give a hoot about doing rough cuts. So who will take the time and effort to learn to use this software?



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One more area to add:

The clips in the Event Browser does not contain clip relations.

This doesn't seem like a big deal for simple edits, but as I mentioned in Scenario 1, sometimes we edit timeline to timeline. In Avid, we'll load the timeline into the source monitor, and toggle source/record timeline. This lets us see the relationship between clips, and from there, we'll edit from that timeline into another timeline. In FCP 7 and PPro, I'll usually have 2 sequences open, and I'll copy and paste clips from one timeline into another. Sometimes that stringout timeline is 1 track, sometimes it's multiple tracks (if its multi cam). In FCP X, the Event Browser, is more developed than a traditional bin and the source monitor in legacy FCP and PPro, so this makes it less necessary to edit timeline to timeline. Only problem here is that it doesn't do clip relations, unless you create multiclips of everything. It would be nice if you can load a project into the event browser.



www.strypesinpost.com