Fairlight Tips & Tricks #6 Conforming Picture Changes On The Fairlight by Andy Somers Hello again and welcome to another collection of Fairlight Tips. One question I'm frequently asked is "what's the best way to conform to picture changes on the Fairlight?" You'll be happy to know that conforming is one of the areas for which the Fairlight is particularly well suited. There are several ways to get through the conforming process quickly and with little fuss, but I'll only talk about the most common methods. The technique you use is partly determined by the type of change notes that you get from the picture department (and if you're not getting change notes from the picture department, we have a way of dealing with that as well). First off, let's say you get a "traditional" change note, like that shown in Figure 1. Here, the first change indicates that we need to lift (delete) twelve feet and eleven frames, starting at 263 feet, nine frames Getting Started We'll assume that you're working on a film, so your Fairlight should be set to 30NDF (Caution: never use 29.97 with a film project because, among other things, the Fairlight won't display feet and frames accurately. 29.97 should only be used with NTSC video-only projects.) Next, set the display to Hours/Feet/Frames mode for either 35mm or 16mm, as appropriate. All of these settings are under the MFX key, on the right side of the console. To make it easier to enter numbers into the GOTO, turn the SUBFRAMES display off (<BLUE>+<subf> will toggle the subframes display on and off). TIP for advanced users: set an OFFSET for the DISK to the number of hours that correspond to the reel that you're working on. I.E., if you're working on reel 8 (with timecode set so that the reel starts at hour 8) set the DISK to an offset of 8 hours. This way, if you enter 263'+09, the Fairlight will position the cursor at 8 hours, 263'+09. As a result, you won't have to keep entering the hour every time you do a GOTO. (Note: Don't forget to clear your offset before you put your video online, or if you want to have your video online frequently, just give it the same offset as the DISK.) The final step to prepare your project for conforming: Make a safety copy. Do this either by making an extension of your current project (under the PROJ menu), or copy the entire reel to a point one hour earlier on the timeline (this is the recomended method). To do this, place the cursor (playhead line) precisely at the beginning of the reel. If it's reel 8, then you'll most likely need to place the cursor at exactly 8 0000+00 (for accuracy, you should use the GOTO command). Now, enter BLOCK-DUBBER mode and set your range to the end of the reel (the end of the range doesn't have to be exact, as long as it fully encompasses the reel. The beginning of the range however must be exactly at the start of the reel.) Now, place the cursor at one hour earlier in your timeline, (in the above example, 7 0000+00) and press the COPY softkey. Now you have an exact "clone" of your reel, should anything go awry while conforming (naw...that never happens...) Doing the Conform  To make the first change as shown in Figure 1, go into BLOCK-RAZOR mode and select the tracks you wish to conform. Then press <GOTO> and enter the footage where you need to start the lift, in this case, you'd enter 26309. Press <FROM>, then hold down the <TO> key, and you'll see that the softkeys change. Press the <TIME> softkey, then let go of the <TO> key. Notice that the first softkey, called <TIME>, is flashing. This will allow you to enter in the amount of the change, in this case 12'+11, so type 1211 and the plus <+> key, and you'll see that you've added 12+11 to 263'+9, so the total should be 276'+4. (TIP: if you make an error, just press the DOWN ARROW key that's under the <GOTO> key. That'll clear your entry and grab the current footage again.) Press <ENTER>, and you'll now have a range that's exactly 12'+11 long, and starting at 263'+9. Press the DELETE softkey, and you'll instantly remove the material in the range, and pull up the sync to the end of the reel. If instead you press the INSERT softkey, you'll insert 12'+11 of blank space (i.e. leader) and push sync down the reel by that amount. On the other hand if you need to do a LIFT AND HOLD, the procedure is a bit different. Set a range, as above, but then move the cursor to a point after the reel. This is where you're going to hold the material. Press the SPLICE softkey. This will lift the range, pull up sync to the end of the reel, and place the lifted material at the cursor. To replace the held section, select a range around the held material that's exactly the size of the held section (see Figure 2), place the cursor at the point where the section is to be reinserted, and again press SPLICE. Tips whenever using SPLICE to lift and hold, always conform the old guide track. You can then use the guide track as a place-marker to set the FROM and TO point of the range to the exact size of the section held. (See Figure 2) Place a yellow MARK at every conform point. This will assist you when you need to go back to finesse the edits. Remember that the Fairlight footage counter is always displaying the leading edge of the frame. Thus, a count written as 11'+15/0 will display on the Fairlight as 12'+00. That's it for this issue. Next time, I'll cover rebalancing, and working without change notes from the picture department. As always, if you have any questions you'd like me to address in this column, send me e-mail. All for now, happy cutting!   Andrew Somers is a member of the Guild, and, in addition to picture and sound editing editing, he provides training and consultation on the Fairlight MFX series of workstations for union editors and signatory facilities.   Reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter Vol. 19, No. 5 - September/October 1998   Guild Home | Newsletter Home | Top of Page   Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 776