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 The Avid Handbook (fourth edition) Intermediate Techniques, Strategies and Survival Information for Avid Editing Systems By Steve Bayes Focal Press 375 pps, paperbound, $39.95 ISBN 0-240-80553-4 |
The Avid Handbook
A Guide for Overworked Editors
by Ray Zone
Avid editing systems are complex because they deal with complex, ever-changing, and unpredictable situations,” writes Steve Bayes. That pretty much also describes the work of the motion picture editor. This fourth edition of Bayes’ book, published just six years after the first edition, is intended “for overworked editors, assistants, or post-producers who find themselves needing to know more than they really have any chance of learning through their limited experience.”
The rate of technological change in the 21st century for people working in the entertainment and communications industry is staggering. Change is simply in the nature of the editor’s job, what Bayes characterizes as a “constant and never-ending process.” The upside of this continual evolution is that there can be a secret pleasure in finding and simplifying the tools used in a complex system, rather like an Easter egg hunt which yields faster and quicker ways of achieving one’s goals.
Before becoming one of its principal designers, Bayes taught Avid editing around the world for five years. Now, 12 years later, he has shared some of the procedures, basic functions and survival tips that will assist the editor in planning for and staying calm during the “inevitable chaos” which is a part of the job. “I had to throw away a lot of preconceptions and realize that the more I learned, the less I knew,” notes Bayes.
The book doesn’t focus on menus or buttons because they change and go out of date very fast. It does, however, deal with the entire editing process and where Avid fits in. For convenience, Bayes includes modifier keys for both Windows and Macintosh computers and devotes an entire chapter in the book to making the two platforms work together.
The chapter on “Workflow of a Nonlinear Project” provides a great overview of the NLE process, along with some invaluable “nitty gritty” survival tips. The main steps in the entire procedure, of course, are input, editing and output. But Bayes stresses the importance of assiduous preparation at the outset of the process to streamline editing as well as preventing disaster at the end.
“Logging is your link between production and post-production, so don’t treat it lightly!” Bayes emphasizes. Eliminate hand entry and duplication of effort to input data to the Avid system, he advises. Film based projects will provide initial logging during the film-to-tape process when the transfer house creates a transfer log file or database such as a FLExfile. “Use the transfer log file from the telecine session and convert it to an ALE file (Avid Log Exchange) for importing into your project as a bin. Use the free Avid ALE program to do this. Do not skip this step to save money!”
The start point for the 2:3 cadence will be shown in the bin created from the ALE file on any NTSC project. This is usually an A frame as well as the keycode relationship with the original film. Two well-drawn graphics illustrate the video fields created from film and video frames during the telecine process for 24p to both a tradition 2:3 pulldown cadence as well as an advanced 2:3:3:2 pulldown cadence. The Avid system strips out the extra pull-down frames, leaving the original 24 fps.
Without the ALE, the A frame will have to be identified by eye by jogging through the tape frame by frame and manually entering the keycode for the film frame into the Avid bin. Current Avid versions detect the 2:3 cadence automatically so the ALE is no longer needed for capturing, but the other important function of ALE is to track what video frames correspond to the original film frames. Without this key code information in the bin, it will be extremely difficult to make a negative cut list or match the negative to the transfer.
No mistakes must be made in the film transfer to avoid disaster when it comes time to cut the negative. Some telecine facilities are now transferring directly to hard disk, and the drive is connected directly to an Avid system, skipping the entire capture process. The 2:3 pulldown has been removed during the transfer to disk and what remains is the original 24 fps. “Don’t forget to get the telecine log file anyway!” emphasizes Bayes. “Although it may seem tedious at this stage to think deeply about logging, you will find that the more thought you put into the creation of an edit session at the beginning of the process, the more efficient you will be for the rest of the job. If you are going to cut the material together, then you should be looking at everything during the logging process.”
Expert advice about timecode breaks is also provided in this chapter along with critical information about the differences between drop-frame (DF) and non-drop-frame (NDF) acquisition. Some editors work with mixed DF and NDF on a single project and need to catch the timecode change when logging different tapes.
The author provides some other tips from his years working as an editor––such as the dangers of showing a first cut to a producer or client. “I am tempted to not show my first pass to anyone,” he confides. “In particular, I don’t want to show it to producers who are not familiar with the possibilities of nonlinear.”
This book is filled with common sense. “There is no way you can know everything,” Bayes writes, “but you should know how to find what you need.” Here is a useful field guide to that information.
Ray Zone can be contacted at r3dzone@earthlink.net.