Workflow - multiple editors - 1 session

[abayman65]

Hey

im interested in any interesting workflow ideas for people working with multiple editors on different rigs but ultimately with 1 master session that is updated a few times per week. Ie - not the luxury of eventually having 6 Pro Tools rigs for final mix!
For me there is no nice and easy way - editors work on different areas of the film, and update the main session by importing tracks in and dragging audio files into relevant tracks/timeline area of master session. It can be a laborious pain in the a*s with the way Pro Tools is now, after a weeks worth of work and various of us editors having to update a master session. Reason we do this, is its a way that the supervising editor can then continually premix/tweak the mix as a whole before going to stage.

Basically, I wish that Avid would please please implement import session data by time boundary - ie you could select to import material from in between 2 timecodes and match tracks - would make workflows very easy!

Be interested to hear ideas

[rhumphries]

I've been struggling with this on a series I'm working on now. It's just me and a freelancer that I've hired to help me out-- so it's not as complex as the situation you've described. For the two of us, I've been able have the freelancer only work on specific tracks during a day, usually on a specific task; i.e work on BGs today, or clean up PFX today. Then at the end of the day I can just import those specific tracks into the master session and make a copy for him for the next day. It's not ideal, but it's the only way I've come up with that makes sense on the types of projects I work on.

-R

[Newpostguy]

I understand the importance of a master session and everyone working in it to further make sure the tracks have a relationship. We do it a little differently and perhaps a slightly more laborious way but it keeps things clean.

ONLY the supervising editor has and deals with the master session. Only one exists and its his/her responsibility to keep it updated. Everybody else works in a their own respective sessions, most probably created and originally sync checked by the dialogue team and supervising editor.

Dialogue guys work in separate sessions and spit out daily reference tracks to other departments so that their tracks have a relationship with it

FX guys also in separate sessions working to reference tracks spit reference tracks for FX and so on for other departments, music, Foley etc. everyone gets to have to most updated content to work against in the form of 2 or 6 channel bounces.

When the work needs to be edited by supervisor or ready to go for mixing, then an PT session can be carefully imported into a master session for tracklay and preparation of final mix.

Just yet another workflow suggestion, works for us. take it as you wish

[mikevarela]

Best to have one editor at a time on the session...

Or, distribute the jobs by stems and give each the video and guide and have them work for the couple days... So Dx, Foley, ADR, Fx Hard, Fx Design and then Mx. Then, as the sessions become finished, bring in the PT session EDL and import the tracks the master re-recording session.... just make sure that every room is calibrated near the same and that the gear is similar, so no wild differences in levels become apparent.

We worked like this for a long time. We also used a SAN and had drives allocated per room, so the assistant would load the blank sessions, video and guide to each partition and then when ready to consolidate, the mixer would load all the partitions and bring in the session data.