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Workflow, Not Workslow
4Sound Editing Automation Programs Make Life Easier but Choosing Harder
by Michael Kunkes
Sound editors are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. It seems that finally, the bastard child of post-production is about to level the playing field with the picture department in terms of automating some of its most tedious processes.
The experience of Kevin Sellers was typical. “I was a sound editor on Star Wars: Episode I, and up until the last minute we were getting massive amounts of change notes from the picture department,” he says. “Effects and frames were being shifted around and we were doing updates for every single stem and session for the entire show nearly every night. I was faced with multiple, hundred-line change lists, and without an army of editors working overtime, it was becoming an impossible task to keep up with all the different versions.”
Sellers decided to see if there was some way he could automate some, if not all of the endless donkeywork created by the non-linear process, which has made the release version of a show a moving target for post in recent years. Using a database program called Panorama, he hacked together a macro and an AppleScript Quickeys script and amazingly, it worked, leading to the creation of Conformer, one of the earliest auto-updater programs.
Proving once again that necessity is the mother of invention, the idea of using computers to automate sound editing is heading out of the “garage band” phase and is catching on big time. Within the space of two years, at least four new programs have entered the marketplace (not counting an unknown number that have been cobbled together by other editors-turned-programmers for private use.). Two of them, Conformer and Change Note Assistant (CNA), are built around a “Hollywood” film-style way of working, while two others, Virtual Katy and EdiTrace, are geared more towards multi-format TV and video styles of post.
Each of these productivity tools has its own architecture, its own audience, its own market penetration. However, they all share the desire to make things easier for the sound department, to eliminate redundant tasks, and to free up more creative time. Sound editors are finally addressing the idea of workflow, not workslow. By taking this on, they might be forever changing the dynamic between picture and sound departments.
 Kevin Sellers, founder of Slothsound Software. |
Conformer (Slothsound Software, www.slothsound.com, US $99.95), which Kevin Sellers calls “an intelligent QuicKeys macro on steroids,” is available as downloadable demo shareware, with many features deleted or crippled before the customer decides to purchase––at which time, a serial number is issued that unlocks the full functionality of the program. In addition to importing Avid change lists and applying them to a ProTools session, Conformer optimizes lists by combining consecutive inserts and deletions, applies changes to any open session (manually or automatically), imports lists in feet and frames, skips over redundant changes, allows the user to conform entire or partial lists, supports Mac OS 9 and OS X, and supports ProTools TDM version 5.x, 6.x, as well as DV Toolkit.
The program’s most interesting feature is a remote window that floats over the ProTools application interface and allows editors to “skip through” each change to the list. “A lot of customers, especially dialogue editors, don’t trust a program that automates everything for them,” says Sellers. “You can end up with words or music cues being cut in the middle, and they would prefer to do that manually. The beauty of the floating window is that you don’t have to type in the footage for every single change. You can step through line by line; if the change happens in the middle of a line, you just nudge it over, so that it actually makes the cut ten feet down from where it was supposed to be, as well as combining changes into one single cut. Automatic conforming is great for chopping up stems, but sometimes your sessions require a bit more finesse.”
 A screengrab from SlothsoundConformer program. |
Sellers feels that Conformer’s low price puts the product within easy reach of low-budget producers and independent editors. His immediate update plans include a printing option for simplified change lists, as well as the possible creation of change lists in time code format. Some of Conformer’s credits include Hellboy (the directors cut), Titan AE, Adventures in Animation, and the upcoming Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
 Phil Benson, co-founder of Nonfiction Software LLC. |
A more feature-packed program is Change Note Assistant (Nonfiction Software, LLC www.changenote assistant.com, US $750.00). According to company co-founder (along with Seattle-based software developer/consultant Ken Woodruff) Phil Benson, a veteran supervising sound editor, CNA was designed from the ground up with the help of several Los Angeles-based feature sound and music editors with a Hollywood feature post-production workflow in mind. “Sound and music editors are often wary of requesting ‘non-standard’ or unfamiliar materials from the picture department,” he says. “This means simply that change notes are the critical document to support, and CNA supports the widest range of flavors of real world change notes.” (See Editors Guild Magazine review, Nov-Dec 2003)
CNA offers two different change note simplification modes: Basic, which combines consecutive inserts and consecutive deletes, and Aggressive, which further combines any changes that happen consecutively with a mixed combination of adds and/or trims. But with or without simplification, CNA will convert change notes to time code in any frame rate––to CMX 3600 EDLs for mix console automation conforming and/or any non-ProTools DAW conforming; to HTML for intranet use––and has full printing capability.
 A screengrab from Change Note Assistant program. |
Change Note Assistant is in use by sound editorial departments at
Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount and Sony Pictures, as well as by companies
such as Modern Music, Liquid Music, Weddington/Technicolor, Fury and
Grace, Danetracks, Skywalker Sound and the Saul Zaentz Film Center.
CNA’s film credits include The Polar Express, Oceans 12, Flight
of the Phoenix, I, Robot, Chronicles of Riddick, Jersey Girl, Collateral
and Wicker Park.
“No software can replace an editor,” Benson says. “But
a computer can perform the changes accurately ‘by the numbers’
much quicker than a person. At the very least, the sound editor is
in a much better position to clean up and face the damage done by
the change note, rather than worry about whether the unaffected areas
remain in sync.”
For future versions, Benson and Woodruff are evolving CNA to support EDLs and cut lists in an effort to corral more TV post. “We’re taking a two-pronged approach,” Benson says. The first, in testing now, allows for conforming sessions based on the comparison of two standard TV show-style EDLs; the second, still in development, will generate a true film-like change note from EDLs of any frame rate. “We want CNA to have the same robustness handling EDLs as it now does for change notes,” he adds.
 John McKay, head of product development for Virtual Katy Development Ltd. |
The solution from the creators of Virtual Katy (Virtual Katy Development Ltd., www.virtual katy.com; US $3,495 for VK Premium, US $1,495 for VK Lite) was to revert to an older piece of technology, the edit decision list (EDL). The program grew out of the workflow difficulties encountered by New Zealand-based software creator and head of product development John McKay while working as a sound editor on Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. “When I started on LOTR, I was handed a piece of paper with over 200 changes on it, and I thought they were kidding,” McKay says. “We worked for eight months with a full sound crew, but we couldn’t keep everyone in sync with an ever-evolving picture that went through 50 versions in the first year of production. Doing a creative sound track became secondary to just keeping the movie in sync.”
A laborious process was conceived whereby change lists were deciphered to create a cut guide track template, which was then crudely automated by using QuicKeys to activate key commands in ProTools. This process helped keep up with the massive amounts of effects updates, but the problem still remained of losing audio that was needed for updated effects shots. This was because an old effects shot would have to be deleted before a new one could be inserted, but the sound department required the shots to be registered as constant.
“However, by comparing differences between EDLs, we could in effect produce our own change list, reducing reliance on the picture editorial team and at the same time giving the LOTR sound department a tool to keep pace with the ever evolving picture edit,” McKay added. “On completion of a cut, the picture editor would export an EDL from the Avid and e-mail this file to the sound department. Sound would then compare with the previous version and update sessions to reflect changes well in advance of the digitized picture’s arrival, and picture and sound were now efficiently kept in step. Virtual Katy evolved from this process into a program that could easily chart the movement of material between reels and recompile and conform it to the new location.”
Named in honor of Katy Wood, a meticulous assistant editor who created the cut guide tracks on LOTR, Virtual Katy’s (Premium edition) major features include “VK Analysis,” which compares the differences between current and previous ACLs/ADLs, identifies the necessary sound file changes and outputs the VK ChangeList EDL. Its “VK AutoConformer” automatically re-syncs the ProTools session according to the ChangeList EDL order, while “VK Update” allows sound editors to quickly update their materials to reflect changes in a list––up to 600 cues spread across five reels––and “VK Batch Import,” which compares and rebalances reels automatically. VK Premium supports EDLs in 24fps, 25fps, 29.97 fps NDF and 29.97 DF formats. VK Lite, a lower-cost version designed for smaller facilities, does not include the Update or Batch Import features. Both versions can run on OS 9, OS 10.3 or Windows XP platforms.
Virtual Katy has found most of its early success in Europe, New Zealand and Australia, but backed by an injection of venture capital and a strong reseller network, the company is making strong inroads into the US market as well. It has been used most recently on Thunderbirds and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.
 A screengrab from Virtual Katy. |
“An EDL is a snapshot of your movie as it exists,” says McKay. “And VK basically takes those snapshots of where your material has gone and places it all back into sync. It takes the mind-numbing tedium of manual updating away, which is what computers are great at. Humans are great at making the decisions about what should go into a program. Programs are pathways, but the human mind is a pathway with valleys. That’s what creativity is about, and VK is designed to release that creativity for editors.”
The only downside, says McKay, is dealing with the sheer volume of formats. “We’ve gone into this maze of format development; every permutation of how you get film onto video. But we are bringing more and more online all the time.” The next version of VK, due in early 2005, will include a version tracker that will instantly locate any connection between any two or more versions of the entire movie.
 Mark Franken, creator of Sounds in Sync's EdiTrace. |
EdiTrace (Sounds in Sync, www. editrace.com, price US $21.00 per trace; EdiTrace Auto, Free with website registration; ETA Pro, US $550.00), was created by Australia-based dialogue, effects and music editor Mark Franken and released in 2003, after its baptism in 2002 on The Quiet American. It functions a lot like Virtual Katy but has the distinction of being the only web-based updating and conforming platform Using the online software, previous TV or film EDLs are generated and can be stored and shared by editors anywhere in the world on any operating system (OS 9, OS X, Windows XP), allowing sound editors in far-flung locations to select which version they wish to conform from and to. EdiTrace loads EDLs or cutlists but will only generate an EDL or offset list.
EdiTrace can also add “handles” to conform a ProTools session, allowing an editor to “checkerboard” tracks and extend out from each edit point, creating the ability to save fades which would otherwise be lost. EdiTrace can also generate an offset list, a good feature for composers and music editors who don’t need to perform an edit at every picture change point. Editors can also “trace” between reels to automatically accommodate for rebalancing or scenes swapped between reels. The new change EDL is then downloaded to use with the free EdiTrace Auto (ETA) software, a copy of which can be copied to all ProTools stations that need to use it. All change EDLs created on
 a screengrab from its program. |
the EdiTrace website have a valid “Document ID” that fully enables the software.
The company has just released a stand-alone version of ETA, called EdiTrace Auto Pro (ETA Pro). Whereas ETA Free can only load EDL files created using the website, ETA Pro can load any CMX or GVG EDL, save EDL files once events have been sorted, deleted or filtered, can load an audio or picture EDL to conform source recordings in a ProTools session, can conform or ripple ADR cue sheets, post-production notes or music cue sheets, as well as update or ripple the time code values of any database.
“Ultimately, the version you use depends largely on how you wish to pay for the service,” says Franken. “A small production might have only a few versions, so you might want to just pay for a single trace EDL. ETA Pro does not require the EdiTrace website to load an existing EDL file; however, if you want to compare changes between versions, you will still need to use the website.”
EdiTrace has been used most recently at Skywalker Sound by sound designer Erik Foreman, as well as on Australian Idol, the down-under version of American Idol.
Whether change note or EDL-based, none of these automators actually tap into the ProTools file format. For the most part, they take control of the user interface but don’t actually modify the session itself. While some programs read and write ProTools session files––most notably Synchro Arts’ Titan3––none of the packages described here are (as yet) third-party developers for Digidesign. The reasons vary, but for now everyone seems content with consolidating the huge strides they’ve already made over the last couple of years in a part of the business that accepts changes in technology very slowly.
“Gaining more access to ProTools’ file format so that we could actually change a session at the file level might be a far more elegant solution to what we do,” Sellers notes. “ In other words, using the source session, the program would apply a change note to the session, so that you could then open up the output and have everything all conformed and pretty. Speaking as an editor and not a software designer, I have to say that it would be great if Avid and ProTools could talk to each other and be able to do all that automatically, without having to go through change lists.”
Franken says he opted to go down the path of EdiTrace Auto’s sending keystrokes to ProTools instead of rebuilding session files off line because, “It can actually be quicker to let a program send keystrokes to ProTools rather than closing a session, opening up in another application, creating a recut session, and then opening the recut session in ProTools. Not only that, there’s a lot less time spent in development with what we are doing.” Still though, he hopes to become a ProTools developer. “One feature that all the re-conforming programs miss is the ability to recut information from several session files or different reels, to create one session or reel. This would obviously require an off-line re-cutting approach. When I do become a third-party developer, I will definitely look into this.”
McKay is confident in the choices he has made with Virtual Katy. “Becoming a third-party developer is something we would like to take further with Digi,” he says. “However, our interest at the moment is in promoting the advantages of a slightly less automated concept––one that enables editors to have greater interaction with the outcome of the conform. For example, the ability to apply handles will create a more intelligent conform.”
So why do sound editors have to come up with their own solutions? “Post-production, especially audio post, is in a state of chaos, but chaos is only that which exists before form is provided,” adds the ever-philosophical McKay. “What we have been missing until now are tools that can actually enable us to keep pace with evolving soundtracks through the maze of versions. Sound post should not be a complete race to the finish line. By using an updating program, we can manage our post much better and release time for productivity.”
What will sound editors do with all this extra time? “Make better soundtracks,” suggests McKay.
Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor and writer specializing in animation, production and post-production.
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