Preparing Reels for Dialog Editing

Part 2 - Using Titan to Conform and Fix Sync

by Douglas Murray

In the last issue, I outlined some of the basic steps an assistant editor goes through to prepare a reel for a dialog editor and explained how to sort an EDL and load and name the audio from original masters. In this installment I’ll explain how to conform to the EDL using Titan, a utility that will make the process much simpler.

Titan is made by Synchro Arts, a company started by an American programmer named Jeff Bloom. It will auto-conform the picture editor’s guide tracks so that each region of sound is separated from the rest of the track and named according to the EDL. Titan calls this “Flash Conform.” It can also automatically “Fix Sync” by phasing the master dialog into perfect sync with the guide tracks.

Launch Titan and switch to its Flash Conform mode. Click on the “Open EDL” button to point Titan to the EDL that the picture assistant gave you, and also click on the “Audio Folder” button and direct Titan to the folder containing the sound files you have digitized.

Your EDL must be in CMX 3600 format and in A mode (sorted in show order). The clip names (scene and take) in the Avid must appear in the EDL as comments. The normal standard for scene and take names is to use a dash as punctuation, but because of Pro Tools’ bad behavior with region names you should use a slash instead.

In the “In/Out” panel, the setting for “Load Stereo” and “Report” should be on, while “Checker Board” and “Name Using EDL” should be off. For a feature film shot at 24 fps, the frame rate for both the EDL and the Session should match the original DATs. In the “Settings” panel, the defaults usually work fine for most situations (Figure 1). (If you select “Use Actual File Length,” Titan will properly work with takes digitized in ProTools’ destructive record mode.)

Figure 1. Titan’s Flash Conform default settings for autoconforming an EDL. The options allow flexibility with a range of possible Pro Tools region definitions and file folder organizations.

The result, if all goes well, will be a Pro Tools Session file with all the appropriate regions in the right places on the right tracks to match the picture editor’s work. To see how well Titan did, look at the report it generates in a text editor such as BBEdit or Microsoft Word. The report will contain a list of files found in the Audio Folder, followed by a list of events and any errors in the auto-conform. You can then compare this list of errors to a print out of the EDL.

The digitized guide tracks you use should be the same as what’s on the picture editor’s system. On Avids, editors typically cut four or more tracks of sound, and that’s how many individual guide tracks you should get. The picture editors should output their tracks to DA-88 (eight tracks in one pass) or onto DAT in several passes. You can also use an OMF as a perfect guide track, even if the Avid audio was digitized from a low-quality source. Either method is much better than taking audio from a videotape output because the tracks are kept separate, and digital tape or OMF will be much quieter than audio on video. Phasing the auto-conformed material against the guide track will be quicker, easier and more reliable whether it is done by hand or with Titan.

When a time-stamped piece of audio is transferred from one frame-rate to another (30-fps audiotape to 24-fps Avid to 30-fps EDL), sync is subtly disrupted, and the problem is compounded with multiple transfers. The cumulative offset you’ll see can be as much as a couple of video frames, but is usually less than one film frame.

To avoid sync problems, we have to laboriously resync the auto-conformed tracks against the guide track by shifting the position of the master clip until the doubling of the sound is replaced by the distinctive phasing of the higher frequencies canceling each other. In Pro Tools, you can use waveforms to facilitate the process and move clips into perfect alignment visually. Actually listening to the track becomes optional. But to do it properly can still take about half a day per reel.

Titan performs this task automatically in minutes! To set up Titan, switch to the “Fix Sync” mode, click the “Open” button to select the conformed Pro Tools session, and then indicate which tracks are the guide tracks and which are the auto-conformed tracks. Set the maximum search amount (the smaller the search, the faster the processing) and click the “Process” button. The default settings on the “In/Out” panel are good: “Move Audio,” “Insert New Tracks,” “Autoname” and “Report” should be selected (See Figure 2).

Figure 2. After autoconforming, ‘Audio 1’ and ‘Audio 2’ will need to be phased against the guide track (or ‘Work Track’ here). With these default settings, Titan’s Fix Sync will create new tracks with audio regions nudged into precise sync with the guide track.

Fix Sync works flawlessly for most material, but you should always audition the output session. Two types of errors can occur. If the picture editor has used a piece of very quiet fill or soft breath or cloth movement, Titan may have trouble finding enough detail for proper line-up. Also, if a clip is very low, Titan may throw it further out of sync. I consider this a bug in Titan, but one that is manually correctable.

Another problem occurs when the guide track is a mix of more than one source — either an Avid “mixdown” or a single track turned over via videotape. Titan can’t properly adjust the

To avoid sync problems, we have to laboriously resync the auto-conformed tracks. Titan performs this task automatically in minutes.

sync of one sound against a guide track that contains two or more sounds.

In order to deal with these errors, the assistant must carefully tab through each track of adjusted clips, paying particular attention to low level sounds. I usually have three tracks displayed on the screen: the guide track, the Titaned track, and the un-Titaned conformed track. When Titan makes an error, usually the un-Titaned track is in better sync than the Titaned one. Select the un-Titaned clip and control-nudge it by a quarter frame or less until it is in precise sync with the guide. Then control-option-drag it onto the Titaned track, duplicating it over the error and fixing the problem. This may take about half an hour per reel — still a fraction of the time it would take to fix sync by hand.

Finally, I should mention a very useful additional feature of Titan: “Flash Cutter.” It is much easier to match the picture editor’s work and to find missing audio if the clips in each guide track are separated, defined and named as in the editor’s system. (Remember hand-marked mag film guide tracks?) This may seem like a novel and unnecessary requirement, but it can be extremely handy, especially if your guide track is a mix of two or more tracks in the picture editor’s system. In “Flash Cutter” mode, Titan will edit and name the guide tracks into regions that correspond to the EDL. When you compare the Flash Cut regions to the Flash Conformed regions, you can instantly see if there are any missing clips and know what track they are from, what they are called and what they sound like.

Titan can play three very important roles in prepping a reel for the dialog editor: auto-conforming, tightening sync, and making the guide track more readable. Assistants can focus on getting the right tracks loaded and named, finding and loading alternate takes and checking that everything is ready before handing over to the editor. In short, Titan is a superior tool for a superior turn-over. Synchro Arts also sells other handy sound tools, including VocALign (formerly Word Fit), which can micro-adjust sync on ADR lines and match them precisely to the guide track, and ToolBelt, a program that, among other things, can generate long chunks of very smooth fill from tiny bits of dialog “air” too short and loopy to use otherwise. I hope to cover their use in a future article.