Avid is the industry standard non-linear editing system used to cut the vast majority of professionally produced films and television programs today. Avid has won 2 Academy Awards and 14 Emmys for its products.

To earn my certification, I had to pass a number of exams as well as take a week long training course at Avid’s Burbank headquarters taught by Avid’s Training Manager. Avid wants to ensure that all ACI’s are both well versed in the software as well as skilled teachers, trainers and editors. I’m proud to join such a small group of well trained professionals and look forward to teaching many more classes at SCC.

The film is about a non governmental agency called PARSA that works to improve living conditions in Afghanistan.  Central to their work is providing educational and economic opportunities to women and children affected by the constant wars that have been fought in Afghanistan over the previous decades.

One of their earliest programs was finding, training and paying teachers who could work in underground schools to educate girls, a punishable offense under the Taliban. They have since started other programs to help war widows become economically self-suffient and to educate orphans, both academically and emotionally.

A big congratulations and personal thank you goes out to our director, Penelope Price, who worked harder than anyone to get this film made. It was truly a pleasure to be part of the film and I can’t wait to hear what audiences will say and think about this piece.

If you want to know more, here’s a link to website for Penelope’s production company where you can find more information about the project:

Odyssey film – Between Light and Darkness

When editing and delivering a news feature or segment, the delivery specs usually require the piece to be output with split tracks. What this means is the station or producers want a mono mix of all voiceover and non sync dialogue (for example, a dubbed translation) on channel 1 and a mono mix of all sync and natural sound, with no voiceover, on channel 2.

There are two reason this is asked for.  One is so the piece can be translated into another language.  Since the sync and nat sound is separate from the VO, it is simple to rerecord the VO in a new language, add dubbed translations over any sync dialogue and air the piece in a new language.  Second, should the station or producers want to use footage from the piece in another story they can lift that footage with the connected audio, separate from any VO that may be on the piece.

A side note on translations in news pieces.  If you have a interview with a person that needs to be translated, instead of subtitling it, it is usually dubbed.  In this case you keep the original sync dialogue on channel 2 and simply lower the volume a bit and have the translation read concurrently on channel 1.  Have the translation read by someone of the same gender as the subject being translated and who is different from the person doing the rest of the VO.  Remember to put the dub on channel 1 and when lowering the volume of the sync dialogue on channel 2, bring the levels down enough so that you can clearly hear the dub, but not too low that it cannot be brought back up should the piece be translated back into the original language spoken.

Here is how to create a split track sequence in Final Cut Pro:

1) Right click the sequence and under the audio tabs, make sure the output is dual mono and NOT stereo.

2) In the sequence, right click (Ctrl + click if you have a one button mouse) on each audio track to the left of the padlock icon.  You can choose here if you want that audio track to go to ch 1 or 2. If the only choice is Channel 1 + 2, you skipped step 1.

3) If tracks were brought in stereo, you may have to adjust the pan on the audio track. To do this, first highlight the audio track and under the modify menu, uncheck stereo pair. If you open the audio in the viewer, you cannot disable stereo pairing for that audio — in other words, click on it in the timeline, but do NOT double click it and inadvertently open it in the viewer.  You can then open each channel of the audio in the viewer separately.  There will be a slider at the top of the viewer where you can adjust pan.  The keyboard shortcut to do this is Option + L to disable the stereo pairing and Ctrl + . to adjust pan to center.

If they are not already a stereo pair (you can tell by seeing if stereo pair is checked under the modify menu or if you see a pair of arrows facing up and down on the two tracks in the timeline) be careful that you do not make them into one. Also remember you can highlight and adjust the status of multiple audio tracks at one time.

You may not need to adjust the pan and stereo pair settings, but you can get into a situation where the track is set to output only on channel 2 and you have it panned to only output on channel 1 and so won’t hear anything.

The final thing to check is to make sure you output the piece properly.  If you output this sequence as mono it will simply mix the two channels together again. Likewise if you output it stereo it will also mix a bit of one channel onto the other.  You want to output the audio as two discrete tracks.

Once you’ve followed these steps double check to make sure you see and hear what you should.  If your system is connected through a properly set up mixer you can simple turn the left or right channel off and you should hear only the VO or only the nat sound. Note I say a properly set up mixer — a lot of the edit rooms I go to have two discrete channels fed to the mixer that are then output center panned and hence mixed together.

Likewise you should be able to see the meters in FCP responding properly. Do you see channel 1 and 2 bouncing independently of each other? Do you only see channel 1 bounce when there is VO? Do you only see channel 2 bounce when there is nat sound?

This process of splitting channels is also useful when delivering cuts to a composer. By creating a cut with the full mix on one channel and the full mix minus the temp music on the other channel a composer can take your output and easily switch between the two mixes as they work.

For every new project I start, this is the first thing I do. This is not the setting up of the project or the naming of the bins, which varies from editor to editor and project to project, but the creation of a basic timeline template that all cuts will begin with.

1) The first thing is to create a sequence with the working specs of the project.  Usually this decision is made when creating the project, but this the time to check and absolutely make sure those specs are correct.  Make sure the codec matches the footage being brought into the project and the frame rate, timecode type and aspect ratio is correct. An error here can cause weeks of delay and recutting later. Once you’ve created the sequence, throw some footage onto the timeline and see if it looks right, does not need to be rendered and plays smoothly.  These concerns are more important in Final Cut Pro projects than Avid projects but regardless of system, check them now, or face the consequences later.

2) Set the start timecode of the sequence.  Set the starting timecode at 00:58:30:00 (or 00;58;30;00, if drop frame). To do this in Avid, view the bin the sequence is in in text view. Scroll to the column labeled “Start” and click on the current listed starting timecode for the sequence (the default is 01:00:00:00) and change it to what you want it to be. If you put a colon between the numbers entered, the sequence will be non drop frame; if you put a semicolon between the numbers entered it will be drop frame (in other words 00;58;30;00 OR 00:58:30;00 is drop-frame and 00:58:30:00 is non-drop frame).

3) Next we are going to put the elements that we want to be at the head of all our sequences:

00:58:30:00 – One minute of bars and tone

00:59:30:00 – Ten seconds of black.

00:59:40:00 – Ten second slate.  Sometimes I will break this into two five second slates for ease or need.

00:59:50:00 – Two seconds of black.

00:59:52:00 – Countdown, also called an Academy Leader

00:59:58:00 – Two pop.  Should be part of the countdown.

00:59:52:01 to one frame before 1:00:00:00 is filled with black and should be silent. This also should be part of the countdown.

01:00:00:00 – Program Start.

The above list is a good general setup of elements to come at the head of all sequences.  The countdown is simply a progression of numbers appearing on screen counting down backwards. The first frame (at 00:59:52:00 exactly) is labeled “Picture Start.” Then the numeral “8″ is displayed starting at 00:59:52:01 and ending one frame before 00:59:53:00 which will display a “7″ until one frame before 00:59:54:00 which will display a “6″ and so forth until 00:59:52:00.  This is where the two-pop (or 2-pop) occurs.

The two-pop is the sync point at 00:59:52:00 where the numeral “2″ is displayed for exactly one frame and is accompanied by exactly one frame of tone. By having a single specific frame of picture always aligned with a single specific frame of audio, your sync point is created.  This is mostly used when sending and receiving audio from a mixer or composer but is also useful as a quick and easy way to check to see that sync hasn’t slipped while cutting.

In a related note, I recommend adding a tail sync point or tail-pop to your project when sending to a mixer.  To make a tail sync clip, take your academy countdown and run it backward (i.e. the number count will go from 2 to and change the frame that says “Start Picture” to “End Picture.” When running the academy leader backward for a tail-pop, make sure that the black (which is exactly 2 seconds minus one frame) that normally appears between the two-pop and the start of the picture is included, and appears between the end of picture and before the sync point that is your tail-pop.

This tail pop makes laying down audio much easier.  If the two-pop and tail-pop are in sync with each other you know the audio you received from your mixer is the right length and nominally complete.  Some audio mixers may mix audio at a different frame rate than your project runs and forget to convert it back before sending out, causing the audio to be sped up or slowed down. If the pops are in sync you can be confident that a lot of the things that can go wrong in an audio export from your mixer did not go wrong.

The slate is crucial for all cuts leaving the edit room. I ensure that nothing is exported from my system without having a proper and correct slate on it, and this has saved my bacon more than once. Particularly when a project nears completion, you may export three or four different versions of a cut in a day that need to be seen by multiple producers, your mixer, your colorist, your effects people and the director.  By making sure your slates are correct, you do not have to worry about your effects house sending you a shot that is too short because they looked at the unlabeled cut that arrived at 1:30 instead of the unlabeled cut that arrived at 2:30.

Some of the standard information for a slate is the title of the project, your tracking information (i.e. Act 1, Cut 3, Version 2), the date, the TRT, the aspect ratio, the frame rate, and the audio setup. Particularly for 5.1 mixes on a quicktime or tape output make sure to label the audio channel mapping (i.e. Channel 1 & 2 – Stereo Mix; Channel 3 – Lt Front, Channel 4 – Center; Channel 5 – Rt Front, etc.) since there is no standard for how 5.1 audio is mapped to audio channels.

The minute of bars and tone exists to allow you to do very quick QC or troubleshooting on a cut wherever it may be shown.  It’s tempting to leave this off, and it is probably the most expendable of the head elements but it is good practice to always put at least a few seconds of bars and tone at the head of a cut.  I’m actually finding bars and tone becoming more useful. Now that cuts are being watched on monitors ranging from old computer CRTs to projection televisions driven by netbooks and 10 year old media centers it’s useful to have color bars to somewhat objectively grade the monitor and know whether it is worthwhile to have conversations about the sharpness or contrast of a specific shot. The audio tone allows you to quickly know that the playback speed of the cut is correct, that the volume is set properly and has the added benefit of making an audience quiet down before a cut is shown.

Having a properly set up sequence differentiates the work you do as a professional.  When I get a project with a proper setup, I fell fairly confident that the editor before me knew what he was doing and had some experience in the professional filmmaking world. Likewise, when you deliver cuts and projects that are properly set up, you give the colorists, mixers and effects people who need to work with your cut after you the tools they need to do their job.

Especially if you are using the software professionally, and even more so if you are coming from another program like Final Cut Pro or Premier, there will be moments when you know exactly what you want the software to do, and you know the software can do it, but you simply cannot figure out how to make those two resolve.

For the simple issues, you can check the manual or do a web search. Oddly enough, sometimes the more difficult the problem, the easier a solution is to find.  If you frequent the Avid or Creative Cow forums, you will quickly see that it is the challenging problems that are more likely to be solved.  Meanwhile, the in-between or mid-level user questions languish without answers.

Often this is a case of vocabulary.  You may know exactly what you’re searching the web for but may not be using the right vocabulary to describe your problem or perhaps the solution is posted somewhere online, but the author of the fix is not using the same phraseology as you.

I bring this up to talk about a problem I have had on and off for the last year.  While working at a local advertising agency, the producers would often have me open old Avid projects to update two or three year old commercial spots to run in a new market or air with updated graphics.

The projects predated my arrival at the agency and although the footage was almost always there, the media that originated as a Photoshop document was nowhere to be found. The first time I rebuilt a project I thought no sweat, I can simply make a new Photoshop document (which I would probably have to do anyway since that was often the element I was updating) and copy the effect from the old to the new.

However, no matter what I did, I could not get this to work.  From Avid 101 I clearly remembered how to copy effects. Simply drag the icon from the Effect Editor window into a bin to create an effect template with the parameters set to what they were on the originating clip. Then drag that effect from the bin onto the clip you wanted to apply it to and the effect would be applied WITH the parameters from the source clip. This worked great with basic footage that had effects I applied, but not with Photoshop originating media.

In Avid when you bring a Photoshop document in as a sequence of layers, it makes each layer a clip with a Matte Key applied to it. When you try to copy the Matte Key from the Effect Editor window, it defaults to bringing the source with it. So my problem was trying to figure out how to copy the Matte Key effect from a Photoshop layer, without bringing its source clip.

Under deadline I simply used a work-around.  I brought in the new Photoshop file and rebuilt the effects applied to the old clip by hand. When I had time I searched the web and posted onto forums for a soution to the problem and had no luck.

Months later I did find a solution. To make the Matte Key effect of a Photoshop layer an effect template: instead of just dragging the icon from the Effect Editor to a bin, you must hold down the Option key (Alt key on Windows) while dragging.

That’s it.  Simple as can be. So how come I couldn’t figure it out?

Well for one, I could of figured it out.  I should have remembered that holding the Option Key (Alt on Windows) while dragging an effect icon from the Effect Editor window to a bin, created an effect clip with the source media tied to it, designated by the (with src) Avid adds to the name of the effect in the bin. Knowing that Option dragging an effect icon from the Effects Editor added the source, I could have deduced that Option dragging from the Effect Editor window when the source was tied to the effect might remove the source.

In fact, to some degree this is a good rule I never seem to remember: for computer interfaces in general, and more so for the Mac OS and Apple programs, especially Final Cut Pro — the Option key, when added to a command or keyboard shortcut, often does the opposite of what that command or keyboard shortcut does without the Option key pressed. It’s not an absolute rule, but when trying to figure out how to do something, often you will get lucky.

Another big reason I could not figure out this command was the terms I was searching the web for to get assistance.  I searched for terms along the lines of: “copy effect in Avid between Photoshop layers”  and had no luck.  The majority of searches were answers to much simpler problems, like copying a basic effect from one clip to another, or dealt with how to bring Photoshop files into Avid.

If I had used the proper vocabulary I probably would have gotten an answer fairly quickly. Instead of the term “copying effect” I should have searched for “creating an effect template” which is the proper term for what you create when you drag the effect icon from the Effects Editor into a bin.   Instead of mentioning Photoshop which did not narrow the search results but multiplied them, I should have used the terms “Avid Effect with source” or “Avid Effect without source,” which was more specifically the problem I was trying to fix.

I think a lot of very good editors are self-taught, myself included.  However, the above incident shows why it is not a bad thing to possibly sit in on an Avid course now and again, or perhaps read a manual.  Had I done that, I would have either already known the solution to my problem, or at least known the vocabulary to figure out the solution to my problem with a web search.

The film is directed by Dan DeVivo, whose last film, “Crossing Arizona” went to the Sundance Film Festival, and Valeria Fernández, an independent journalist who has received many national recognitions, including the National Association of Hispanic Publication’s award for “Latina Journalist of the Year” in 2004.

I’m excited to begin work. This piece has more than 200 hours of source footage, including one on one interviews with Sheriff Joe going back three years, interviews with just about every major political figure in Arizona including former governor Janet Napolitano, author of SB 1070 Russell Pearce, Editor in Chief of the Phoenix New Times, Michael Lacey and many, many others. I’m somewhat daunted by the shear volume of footage but am excited to be working on such an important and timely project.

Check back in February for updates about the rough cut. If you’d like more information about the project, check out the “Two Americans” website.

There are various plugins out there that return some html functionality back to a WordPress install, but I dislike this approach. I worry about having too many plugins on one site as well as the difficulty of updating them and worries about compatibility among the plugins I might be using. It’s not that I’m against plugins, but I try to avoid them when there might be simpler or more elegant solutions out there.

Case in point: the line break.

If you use html on WordPress, you’ll quickly learn that the <br> or <br/> tags do not always work as they should – particularly if you want to use them to make multiple line breaks.

If you Google you’ll find a number of solutions. One is using a series of periods to create the line breaks and then making those periods the same color as the background, hence hiding them to anyone who does not highlight the text. Obviously this does not work for any pages with non-solid colored backgrounds.

Another method is to use this piece of code to create a line break:

<p>&nbsp;</p>

This works well with one caveat. If you use this code in the html view section of a page or post and then look at that same page or post in visual mode, WordPress will strip the code and the line breaks out. This usually does not present a problem to me as I work predominantly in html view and if one does not switch to visual mode the code will not be stripped.

It is also worth noting that this is not the only piece of code that WordPress will strip when switching between visual and html view.  Something to remember to check should a page not look the way you know you coded it to look

Of the five films chosen as finalists, “Suicide Dolls”  had the lowest budget and shortest production and post-production schedule.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the film, but most especially Keith Shaw, our fearless director.  This was one of the smoothest productions I have ever worked on and I’m certain this was solely because of Keith.  He went above and beyond the already impossible job of directing and producing a feature film, so that all I had to worry about was cutting the best film possible.

If you want to know more, here’s a link to the St. Louis Film Fest’s Site:

St. Louis Film Festival Awards Page

I was very impressed by the school, both its facilities and the students. The production program at SCC includes shooting 35mm film and the school has more camera equipment and better facilities than most 4 year schools I’ve visited.

I got a chance to hear about some of the students projects and even see some raw footage.  I forgot how much I enjoyed film school and how much fantastic work gets done when one person is shooting, directing and editing a film about anything they want.

In the end, I think I might have gotten more out of the experience than the students.  In putting a lecture together about my philosophy of editing, I revisited a lot of the ideas and theory that should permeate my daily work but too often doesn’t.

More importantly, seeing the excitement about filmmaking these college kids had, reminded me why I chose to be an editor in the first place. After spending so much time worrying about invoices and schedules and other non-filmmaking tasks, it’s important to remember the enjoyment I had sitting in the editing lab cutting my first film.

The film, originally titled “Pagasa” is the story of three students at the Sisters of Mary School in the Philippines. The school’s goal is to end poverty by giving impoverished students a free education, vocational training and job placement. The program exists in five countries and has proven to be immensely successful.

Christian spent more than a year at the school and at the homes of the students the film chronicles. He then spent more than a year in post-production and definitely deserves any praise the film receives. I’m excited the film is starting to get some recognition and feel lucky to have been a part of its creation.

For a full list of all the winers at the Cincinnati Film festival, check out the Cincinnati Film Festival website.