DEVA Dialog Assembly

[JKD99]

Hi
Here are the particulars for a 2 1/2 hour feature I'm doing:
1. Filmed in Cambodia, camera 24fps, DEVA 2 @ 25fps, 16 bit, 48K, BWF
2. Telecined at Technicolor Thailand to PAL Beta, OMF is at film speed, not PAL speed. Meaning, my OMF reference audio is at the same pitch as the production, and we're now cutting at 24fps.

I have all the DEVA 2 DVD-RAM discs for each soundroll. Some soudrolls are spread over 2 discs (example 11A & 11B). Each disc, when opened in the Finder has a folder called "ZFiles" (Zaxcom DEVA, one would assume). Inside the folder are the individual multi-channel BWF files, and a folder called "RESOURCE.FRK". The DEVA files are all named ZAX***.BWF, with the *** corresponding to the indexes on the sound reports, ie: ZAX001, ZAX002, ZAX003, etc.

SO
I'd like to assemble these using Titan, or possibly the new Assemblerator from Maggot software.

1)Given that the Avid EDL naming convention is using actual Scene/Take info, not "ZAX001", etc., will I need to rename all the audio to match the EDL before attempting to assemble it?

2) The first file on every disc is ZAX001, so importing multiple rolls without renaming would be bound to cause a name conflict.

3)Many of the soundrolls are spread over 2 discs on the DEVA but not in the EDL (ie: The EDL has "SR8" only, not "SR8-A" and "SR8-B"), with different file names but a "RESOURCE.FRK" folder on each disc,so I'm hesitant about combining the "A" and "B" discs into one folder.

4) What's in the RESOURCE.FRK folders, anyway?

Thoughts? Advice?

Of course, it could all be done manually, but it'd be nice to at least get it in the ballpark

Oh yeah; Many files have audio on all 4 channels of the DEVA, ie MIX on ch1, Boom Ch2. WireA on ch3, Wire B on ch4. How do I get all this info into PT when the Avid was only carrying the MIX channel from Telecine?

Thanks in advance everyone,

[Frank Kruse]

It looks like you are in trouble. The sound recordist obviously forgot to label each "roll" e.g. partition with an individual number. This is necessary to give each clip a unique ID. The EDL that will load into Tital will not contain any info on the sound roll. The ZAX prefix is the default roll-number when you don´t lable anything. A common numbering is to number each roll. Then your files on the DVD-RAM are called 001001.BWF for example. This way you have RRRTTT.BWF R=roll T=recording number.

It will be very difficult to teach Titan what clip came from wich roll. It could be done if the Avid editor logged the sound rolls with a FLEX file he received from telecine.

You will have to copy every clip to individual folders named after the rollnumber. Maybe there´s a way to do teach Titan to cope with this. Not sure.

BTW. I would do this with Titan because Assemblerator needs all files to be on their correct TC address on a PT track, wich is a manual drag and spot procedure (DIGI: Why do we still have to do this?!). Also you might encounter the 12hour-timeline border when the recordist used TOD TC.

good luck!

Frank.

[Frank Kruse]

You don´t need the RESOURCE.FRK by the way. This is some system file that the mac leaves on FAT16 volumes. You won´t need that.

frank.

[JKD99]

Thanks, Frank!
I knew that you'd be able to shed some light on this!
I guess I'll get started re-naming

Thanks again,

[Frank Kruse]

BTW titan will ID each clip by the TC and the sound roll number so I think it could be done by batch renaming the ZAX files with a tool like "R-NAME" and naming them like the telecine guy did. You need a list of the exact spelling the telecine guy punched into the log he gave to the AVID. then it could work.

Frank.

[Frank Kruse]

I´m not an expert-user of Titan though. It would be good to talk to a Titan heavy-user. Are you on the yahoo sound-design mailing list? there´s a guy called Jerome Boiteau who does 16bit OMF to 24bit Deva and Cantar conforming with Titan all the time. He could give you more speciffic tips.

Frank.

[JKD99]

thanks for the info, Frank, I'll check out the yahoo list:)

[The Cargo Cult]

I assume the soundroll names were not logged when the files were ingested?

if this soundroll info is already in the avid, you could have the EDLs exported using this field as the source.
...and then use assemblerator (of course).

would be a lot less work than renaming all your files.