The Fast Silver Editing System

It’s powerful and easy to learn, and offers
background saves and renders.

by Juli Vizza

PC loyalists now have a worthy alternative to popular Mac-based editing programs. FAST, a digital video editing system that runs on Windows NT 4.0 or 2000, is organized well and has an effective layout, good selection control and can be completely customized. Though it is missing some features that we’ve come to expect, it is a viable alternative to other professional editing applications.

The FAST editing interface. Functions can be accessed through on-screen icons or with contextual menus brought up with the right mouse button.

FAST offers four products that share the same user interface. Their consumer-level system, StudioDV3, starts at $1000, with a choice of desktop or laptop versions. Higher-priced turnkey systems are named after colors. The base model is called Purple, a native DV system that costs between $4,000 and $10,000. Silver uses MPEG2 video, with an option to work in uncompressed standard definition, and starts at $20,000. Blue starts at $45,000 and can work in a variety of native digital formats, including DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO50, IMX (a Sony format popular among broadcasters), MPEG2 and uncompressed video.

Silver and Blue offer eight real-time audio channels, while DV3 and Purple (surprisingly) have 16 real-time audio channels. All the versions have unlimited video and audio tracks in the timeline and work in NTSC or PAL. Standard input/output choices for Silver and Blue include SDI, S-Video, composite and Firewire; Silver also has a component option, and Blue can use the SDTI protocol for faster than real-time transfer of digital video. Studio DV3 and Purple are DV only. All run on either Windows NT or Windows 2000, except for StudioDV3, which runs only on 2000. FAST is engineered in Germany and has achieved a strong following in Europe. The company was recently purchased by Pinnacle, which produces Cinewave and Commotion, and it is being re-introduced here in the U.S.

I did my tests on a Silver system, version 2.55. The next release, called Version 4 to keep consistent numbering across all versions, is already available for Blue and will be released shortly for the other systems. The set-up I tested came with a 3D effects option, which costs extra but does not require additional hardware. The system supports SCSI, SSA or Fibre Channel storage and can import or export AVI, QuickTime, and WAV files. Included with my system was an external deck controller, which although easy to use, has a bulky footprint.

I wanted to concentrate on using the system as I would for a narrative project, so I did tests with footage from a friend’s DV feature.

Interface

The FAST interface arranges source and record monitors and the timeline in what is now the standard configuration, and it can also be customized. Clip information is displayed above the

Figure 1. The Properties window provides complete information on any clip, including thumbnails for marked frames. Note the tabs for each track.

monitors, but the information is limited and cannot be customized. Instead, the system offers a handy Properties window that displays all the information available for a clip (see Figure 1).

Like all PC programs, FAST is based on a two-button mouse, and the system relies heavily on contextual menus invoked with a right-click, which I found to be an advantage, making navigation quick and painless. Wherever your cursor is, a right click will show you your options.

The Project window is laid out in panes. The left side displays a list of “racks” or bins in the project. The right side shows the contents of a selected rack, which can be viewed either as frames or text. The default text list contains every column of information, but it can be customized. The setup is simple, but it makes it difficult to see more than one rack at a time. The only way I was able to do that was to create shortcuts for each rack on the desktop.

The Timeline was familiar and easy to work with. It offers duplicate clip detection and sync marks for out-of-sync material. But it can be difficult to get a good sense of where you are in a sequence unless it is fully compressed.

The program can be extensively customized, but I found that this can sometimes be too much of a good thing. You can use the system’s own defaults or reconfigure the keyboard so that each program mode has its own user-defined set of shortcuts. This last option is powerful, but it means that you must remember every assignment for every set-up. I found it simpler to create a universal set of shortcuts, so that the keys would be the same for each window.

Logging and Digitizing

The logging tool is functional and easy to set up, and it provides a lot of useful information. During logging, the system captures the first frame of a logged clip and displays it in the rack, before the clip is digitized. Modifying information for a non-digitized clip is actually superior to Avid’s modify tool, because there are more attributes that can be changed, including tape, timecode and track information, and all the options are available in one window, rather than via pull-down menus.

You can subclip during the logging process, before or after a clip is digitized. Unfortunately, the system does not provide a way to sync dailies (this is to be addressed in Version 4). If a clip is digitized out of sync, there’s no way to permanently slip it.

The batch digitize tool is separate from the logging tool, and you must close the logging tool in order to batch digitize or do anything else with the system, a disadvantage. If you inadvertently select a clip that has already been digitized, the system does not recognize this fact and redigitizes it, unless you go into a dialog box and tell it not to. It also doesn’t give any indication when it has finished digitizing.

I used “NDQ 50” compression, which is 2:1, and the images looked great. But I found drive management options to be poor. The system simply fills media drives one by one and doesn’t allow you to organize clips by type. (Like many other features, this will be improved in Version 4).

Cutting

The program proved to be a good editing tool. All the basic options are present — insert, overwrite and three-point editing — and all are easy to use. The system replicates Avid’s JKL play-pause-reverse function, and it worked effectively. I cut a sequence that was more than an hour and a half long and the system was responsive, playing the sequence immediately with no lag.

There are 40 levels of undo, but the list of previous actions can only be accessed by holding down the Control and Shift keys while clicking on the onscreen Undo button, a process that I found awkward. FAST improves on the Avid by offering something they call InstantSave. You are never interrupted by an autosave, and if you crash or pull the plug, the program will restart exactly where you were, with all of your work preserved up to the moment of the crash.

There are two ways to trim clips: either via the Trim Mode window, or directly in the timeline, using the keyboard or the cursor to drag the cut in either direction. I found both methods easy to use. You can trim multiple clips by selecting the cuts with the cursor while holding down the Shift key, or by using the lasso function, and it is possible to trim two ends of a clip at once.

In the Timeline, the cursor performs two functions. If it is highlighted, it grabs clips and acts as a cutting or trimming tool. If it is not highlighted, it acts as a pointer for positioning within the sequence. You toggle between the two functions with the Alt key.

One quirk I found was that going to the last frame of a sequence does not take you to the end of the Timeline. As you build a sequence, the program adds space at the end of the Timeline so that you can keep working. As a result, you are never looking at the last frame of picture (and have no visual reference to the LFOP), unless the cursor is sitting on the exact last frame. The system offers a “snap to a cut” feature similar to Avid’s, but it is frustratingly inaccurate.

Match frame works via a contextual menu. When the cursor is on a clip, clicking the right mouse button brings up the match frame menu. This works as you might expect, but invoking match frame on a clip with a motion effect loads the proper source but doesn’t find the exact frame you’re looking for. There is no match clip available on the source side, which means that it’s impossible to trace back through the hierarchy of a clip.

FAST allows you to nest a series of cuts in a group referred to as a Container, so that they look like a single clip in the timeline. But this feature can be frustrating, particularly when one needs to cut one sequence into another. Loading a sequence into the Source Monitor causes the sequence’s video and audio to be grouped together. You can then cut the old sequence into the new one, and finally, select the grouped clip with the highlighted cursor and choose Dismantle Container. This separates the tracks into their original states. There is no way to see a source Timeline.

When making an EDL, FAST does not recognize empty space as black — you must create a black clip in the Color Editor and drop it into the sequence. There is no group-clip function, and there are no multi-cam capabilities.

Effects

FAST offers some real-time effects, including dissolves and fades. Some of the terminology is unfamiliar. For example, a superimposition is called a transparency. There are a few ways to create basic effects, including an FX menu in the Project window, a 2D or 3D Editor and contextual menus.

The CG tool, used for titling, needs work. I found it poorly laid out and difficult to navigate. But with patience, you can make use of some nice features, such as the ability to do a crawl.

Motion effects are created with the Speed Control, where options are limited to changing the speed by percentage, type of rendering, and strobing. Any additional effects, such as motion blur, have to be added by opening a separate Motion Editor and working on the clip there. This will be improved in Version 4, and additional effects will be added.

The best feature about the Effects tool is its background rendering. You can continue to edit, make new effects and even log clips while your material renders. FAST also supports work brought in from Adobe After Effects or Pinnacle Commotion.

Audio

Audio performance was excellent. Waveforms are displayed in the timeline by default without an appreciable performance penalty. This makes it much easier to cut sound precisely. You can also rubber-band volume levels and add simple cross fades without rendering, and you can listen to tracks live as you mix them. Subframe audio editing is not possible.

Importing music from a CD must be done with a separate program. I used Windac and had no problems converting a file.

The inputs and outputs for the system are limited. It supports two to four channels of analog I/O, depending on the breakout box that you have, and two channels of stereo digital via AES/EBU, or four channels when embedded in SDI video.

Output

The Output Tool is straightforward, but seems less developed than other areas of the system. It works adequately, but it would be better if it were more flexible.

You can import or export EDLs, but the only formats supported are Sony 9100, CMX 3600 and GVG. The EDL tool only allows you to view, print or save the EDL. You cannot choose what fields to display in a list.

Currently the program does not allow you to consolidate a sequence. Expanded options such as consolidation and decomposition are another promise for Version 4.

Recommendations

The program is an excellent choice for editing video-originated projects. It’s responsive, easy to learn and provides a great deal of flexibility and power. But it offers no film functionality. To work on a film project you must use a match-back program such as Slingshot. Overall, I found it very user-friendly and fun to use. PC users will be glad to have a system that works on their preferred platform, but Mac users should not be scared away. There is a learning curve, but it is not steep and I found myself enjoying the system much more than I expected.