TECH TIPS
Beautiful Streamers
Automatic Wipes Aid ADR Cues
by R.J. Kizer
The Colin Broad Electronics Video Streamer and its companion VS-Link software provide a way to have electronically generated streamers triggered at the beginning of ADR cues, music cues or Foley cues by importing a cue list created by an editor. This has been in use at various London postproduction sound facilities for many years, but I was first introduced to it in 2003 when I went to London to supervise the recording of automatic dialogue replacement (ADR) for the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Like the Lartec system used in Los Angeles, the VS-Link software is a means of taking an ADR cue list created by an ADR editor and importing it so that ADR mixers do not have to spend his or her time entering in number after number. (This can be quite a savings on a show with hundreds of cues.) The extra benefit of the software is that the video streamers would be triggered automatically for each cue. After a couple of rehearsals, I saw that many actors could run several cues together and thus be able to hit sync plus deliver a more natural-sounding performance.
The downside (and thanks to the first law of thermodynamics, there is always a downside) is that using the system takes a bit of preparation on the part of the ADR editor.
Let's look at the basic structure of a data file for the VSLink software. It uses five fields: Edit (the ADR cue number), Record Time In, Record Time Out, Character and Comment (the Dialogue or Notes). To get your data into the system, you must export your ADR programming into something that could create a simple tab-delimited text file.
Continuing with my experience on Master and Commander, what I found I had to do was export the ADR programming from my FoxPro application to a Microsoft Excel file. I would open the file in Excel and then clean up the data. That is, I would delete the fields that I didn't need and re-arrange the fields I did need into the order mentioned earlier. Then I would sort the data so that the file would be in character order first, followed by record-in order. From that sorted file I would make several sub-files, each with one character per file per reel. So I would end up with a series of Excel files like R1_CAPT, R1_PULLINGS, R1_MOWETT and so on. Each of these files in turn would be saved as tab-delimited text files. (And that I would do within Excel, using its File Save As menu.)
I sent these text files via e-mail to the ADR stage in London. They in turn used the Import menu of the VS-Link software to load the material into their system. Once loaded, we open the appropriate file for a given reel and actor. The system would play three beeps at the beginning of a take while a video streamer would moved across the screen at the same time. As long as the system was still in "record," the video streamers would be automatically triggered for each cued event.
Now the VS-Link software allows for all kinds of sorting of information. Once I got to London, I discovered that I did not have to break down my reel files into such finely parsed character files. But not all ADR mixers working with the system are adept at operating the sorting features, so my "overkill" preparation was not in vain.
The video streamer (or wipe) looks like a yellow vertical line that starts on the left side of the screen and "wipes" across to the right side. It takes about two seconds to make its transit, but the software gives the operator a lot of leeway to control its speed. While the wipe is on the screen, another vertical line is superimposed on the righthand side. This line is broader and is a neutral density gray. The frame at which the yellow streamer meets the gray vertical line is sync.
The software even allows for the assigning of events to different groups and each group can have its own color. One possible application of this feature would be to have two characters looping together; character 1 could have a yellow streamer, while character 2 could have a red streamer.
Starting in 2004, a few stages in Los Angeles have installed the Colin Broad Video Streamer system. One of those is the Marilyn Monroe stage at 20th Century Fox, where I most recently used it on War of the Worlds. Following are some pointers on creating the data files to be used with the system.
First and foremost you must present your material as a tabdelimited text file. As mentioned earlier, if you can export your ADR programming to an Excel file, you can then save the material as a tab-delimited text file (a simple database/spreadsheet structure in which the data is in basic ASCII characters and the fields are separated by a tab indicator; it was an early way of moving basic data back and forth between different types of software).
Your tab-delimited text file should follow the layout of the VS-Link software; that is, five fields each separated by a tab: Edit (cue #), Record-In, Record-Out, Character, and Comment (Dialogue).
If you want your file to upload effortlessly, then you have to take care that the information in your file is formatted a certain way. There should be no spaces in your cue numbers. Numbers like TH 3001 confuse it. It should be TH_3001 (the underscore connects the two parts and thus the software sees the whole thing as one entity not two).
The same thing holds true with your character names. They shouldn't be separate words or have punctuation in them. For example, MRS. APPLE should be reformatted to look like MRS_APPLE (no period and no space), ASHLEY'S MOM should be ASHLEYS_MOM (no apostrophe and no space), and COP #1 should be COP_1 (no # and no space). Record-In and Record-Out addresses should be in timecode (trust me, it's a lot easier). The format for the timecode should be all colons (:), 02:03:04:26--no semi-colons (;), periods (.) or commas (,).
The dialogue can be in upper and lower case, all upper case, with quotation marks or without quotation marks. You don't have to include the dialogue at all if you don't want to. It's there as an additional reference for the mixer in case he is trying to figure out which event cue is which.
You don't need to keep a "header row" in your tab-delimited text file. In many ways, the import procedure is easier to execute if you don't have one. (A header row is the row that contains the labels for the data columns, such as "Cue #," "Record-In," "Record-out," "Character," "Comment," etc.) I found that if was creating separate files for individual characters, the system behaved better if I provided a final cue in the list beyond the last line of dialogue for that character in the reel. I used the "last frame of action" timecode address as my last event.
Beyond the preparation of the data file, the editor must also find out what medium the ADR stage uses to import into the system. Some stages can handle 3.5-inch diskettes, others can only use CD-ROM disks. Some can accept the file via e-mail, others can't.
The video streamer box itself needs about a second-and-ahalf between events in order to successfully generate the wipes. If the second event follows too closely to the first event, then no wipe occurs for the second event.
In conclusion, the Colin Broad Video Streamer is a very useful tool that allows the actor to loop multiple cues together. Yes, it has its quirks and it does take a bit of preparation on the part of the ADR editor, but with a show that has a lot of cues per character, it's well worth the effort.
For more information, visit the Colin Broad Electronics website, www.colinbroad.com. j R.J. Kizer is an ADR editor currently working at 20th Century Fox. His recent credits include War of the Worlds, Hide and Seek and The Terminal. He can be reached at rjkizer@aol.com.
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