How to generate a music log from a studio show (PT & EdiLoad)

[noiseboyuk]

EDIT - with many many thanks to Peter Gates, there is now a new, better method which does not require EdiLoad. Scroll down to Post 6.

After many years I'm the script supervisor's best new friend, as I've finally cracked a way to generate a complete music log of everything in studio recorded show. This is for any show recorded with an audience on one day, it will be more complex over multiple days, I'll let someone else figure that out! It is also assuming you have conformed media including a clean track of music played into the show.

For this you will need:

Pro Tools (almost any version I think)
EdiLoad from Sounds In Sync
The daily log from SpotOn studio playout software (or equivalent)
MS Excel (I suspect Google Sheets could do all this too mind).

The end result will be an Excel spreadsheet with 2 tabs. The first will be a complete music EDL of everything in show whether played in or added in the edit / dub. All studio play ins will be labelled Studio Music, everything else will be labelled by file name. To find out what studio music is what, the second tab will have a list of Time Of Day music cues, and the PA / Script Supervisor can cross reference each timeline cue with the stated Time Of Day.

1. Get the SpotOn log, import into Excel (delete obvious crap from rehearsals etc)
2. Export your regular music tracks in PT as a text file in the usual way, and tidy up in a new Excel file, sorting by Start Time.
3. Delete any leading zeros that PT has generated from the timecode INs using Replace in Excel.
4. Get your conformed studio music track in PT, and in a copied project delete every other track (just for speed this - Ediload takes ages to load a full project)
5. PT - Strip silence (Edit menu)
6. Save this project and import into EdiLoad (make sure prefs are set to original time code not user time code)
7. Export as a text tile from EdiLoad, import into Excel as a third sheet
8. Find a sample cue, and cross check source timecode with the SpotOn log. Likely it will be slightly out - calculate the offset, then paste special and subtract to all Spot On timecode values so they match exactly.
9. Append the Studio Music conform to the Pro Tools Music list, sort all the columns so they tally with both, then do a sort so everything is listed by timeline Start Timecode.
10. Copy the SpotOn log into a 2nd tab in Excel - done.

Once I'd figured out how to do it, the whole process takes about 20 minutes and cuts hours / days off the script supervisor time. They Will Be Very Grateful.

[minister]

Hi,

I always appreciate when people share workflows, so, as you say, "cheers". I don't work on Studio Shows with music playback, so I am not sure exactly what the end result is or what it is used for. But that's my ignorance. I often have to generate music cue sheets so some of this is familiar.

I have one tiny suggestion if it helps:

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

4. Get your conformed studio music track in PT, and in a copied project delete every other track (just for speed this - Ediload takes ages to load a full project)

An easier way is to select the track in the PT session you are working in, then go:
File/Export/Selected Tracks as New Session

This creates a new session with JUST that track. No need to do the "in a copied project delete every other track"... This does this for you. Then just put the newly Exported track in EdiLoad. For that matter, you can also

File/Export/Session Info as Text... Deselect everything except "Include Track EDL's" and choose the option "Selected Tracks Only".

that way, you can have a Text file. i think you can import that into EdiLoad.

[noiseboyuk]

Thank you Tom, useful tip!

A big public thanks also to the amazing Peter Gates who got in touch after my post. He's just released 1.9.41 of the free PT Session Utility which has - ta da - the ability to export source timecodes alongside final show time codes from PT session files as PDFs, Excel files etc - http://petegates.com . This would negate the need to use EdiLoad as part of the process, and save a few other hurdles along the way. I need to do a bit of experimenting with muted clips, which at the moment via this method don't come through as muted. I'll update this again later this week (additionally with Tom's simple time-saver), or maybe a new thread without EdiLoad in the title as some who could benefit from this might think it can't apply to them.

Just some additional background for those confused about why Source Timecode is critical in this workflow....

On a studio show, music is of course played in on the day in front of the studio audience. Depending on the sort of show that it is, there can be a lot of music, last minute changes etc. Of course none of this information gets passed on through the edit and into Pro Tools - even if you conform the clean tracks of studio music, it can only ever be a dumb wav with no useful file names neatly labelled as separate cues, as a normal music log export gives.

The poor PA has the job of creating a complete music log, so has to figure out what track is what, what made it through the edit, what got replaced etc - it's a horrendous paperwork nightmare. The only way to do it is cross-referencing each cue on the timeline with the time of day it was played from the studio music playout machine.

This sort of workflow has been a long time coming.

[Pete Gates]

Just to clarify something that I didn't explain very well to noiseboyuk, PG PT Session Can optionally ignore muted clips on import with Session Text import AND direct ptx import. What it can't detect yet are inactive tracks with ptx import. Also, I'll add a feature in the next release that even if you import muted clips it shows the muted state in the text and Excel files.

Pete

[noiseboyuk]

Excellent stuff, thanks Pete.

[noiseboyuk]

With huge thanks to the immortal Peter Gates, this process is now several steps simpler, and does not need EdiLoad. Peter has written a modification to his free PT Session program so it can now display Source Timecode as a field, and it really does speed things up. I'll be also using this program now for regular music logs as its much better set up than just taking the raw export .txt file from PT.

So here's the new crib sheet to generate one single Excel spreadsheet for a studio show, with all the info in one place, across two tabs. As before, this will still require a log from the studio playout machine, in this case SpotOn.

---

1. Get the SpotOn log, import into Excel (delete obvious crap from rehearsals etc). Name it as a tab.
2. In your Pro Tools, get your conformed studio music track, and unmute everything that was used in the show. Then Strip silence (Edit menu)
3. Export all your music tracks in PT as new session (Export Tracks).
4. Import this session into PT Session - I have all import options deselected. Select all tracks. Export options - Only box that I have checked is Export Sorted (tracks merged) Music Excel file. Then Export selected - put this in your root logs folder.
5. Open in Excel. For a basic tidy, do a simple A-Z sort so each track comes in order. Replace all clip names in the Studio Music track as "Studio Grams" (a ubiquitous but UK-specific term I think) rather than the meaningless PT name. Delete all Source Timecodes from all the other tracks, which are junk. Then re-sort everything by Start Timecode, and delete the Track Name field which is no longer needed.
6. Copy everything to a new tab in your original spreadsheet.

That's about it - a chronological list of every music clip in the show, whether or not it was played into the studio or put on in the edit or dub. One other thing I do is a time check between the source timecode in my timeline tab and what SpotOn logged in the studio, which is not linked to timecode. It's often a minute or so out. I calculate the offset, and then Paste Special as a subtraction, then all the source timecode entries should tie up exactly. The script supervisor's job is now merely to cross reference each Studio Grams entry in the timeline with the studio log.

Here's a snip of the timeline tab:



So for the fifth cue, you'd look up 14.03.41 on the 2nd tab. Lo and behold:



The script supervisor loves both Peter and myself very much. Again, huge thanks Peter, its a HUGE help to what is usually a spectacularly tedious process for the script sup.