Cantar BWAVmixdown in AVID to PT?

[soundworx]

Hi,

Client uses Cantar mixdowns during AVID-editing. If I import the OMF from his system, whats the quickest and cheapest way of replacing the mixdown with the mono BWAV's (6) from the harddisk I have with all the production audio?

TIA, Peter

[Frank Kruse]

The quickset (and therefor cheapest) would be a conform using Titan.

Go to the aaton website. there´s a workflow paper with details.

frank.

[bad jitter]

Even quicker and cheaper option next time is to not give any mixdown to editor, only the mono tracks. Or give both, but be sure that you get 6-track OMF (original tracks) back, when he/she is ready.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by bad jitter

Even quicker and cheaper option next time is to not give any mixdown to editor, only the mono tracks. Or give both, but be sure that you get 6-track OMF (original tracks) back, when he/she is ready.

If the editor works for free that might be the cheapest option yes.

If you give them only the mono-tracks you will receive an OMF with whatever they thought was best with again all other tracks missing. At least that´s my experience.

It´s almost impossible to drag all 6 tracks along while editing for an editor. Leaves almost no room for temp fx, music etc.

In the end you still don´t know what´s missing and what isn´t because not all takes are always recorded with full track-count.

You can then spend your time reading all the reports and comparing the OMF or start with a 100% complete conform from Titan ;-)

One note: The cantar does not write the track-name info into the bext chunk (only into the iXML but some AVID versions do not inject that into the avid files) so make sure the editor loads the productionsound using th ALE-file from the DVD instead. Otherwise you will end up with no track names in your OMF. Having the correct track names in the region is a huge help for dialog-work.

frank.

[bad jitter]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

If the editor works for free that might be the cheapest option yes. If you give them only the mono-tracks you will receive an OMF with whatever they thought was best with again all other tracks missing. At least that´s my experience.

No editor I know works for free. Some editors don't have any problem dealing with 8-track audio files, some even prefer that (believe or not). And there is the old school, who want maximum 2 tracks, even if their editing program can handle 24+ tracks.

Even if the editor will delete some tracks, it's the assistant editor's work to put the missing tracks back, before he/she makes OMF for sound post. That´s my experience, maybe I'm in lucky position.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by bad jitter

No editor I know works for free. Some editors don't have any problem dealing with 8-track audio files, some even prefer that (believe or not). And there is the old school, who want maximum 2 tracks, even if their editing program can handle 24+ tracks.

Even if the editor will delete some tracks, it's the assistant editor's work to put the missing tracks back, before he/she makes OMF for sound post. That´s my experience, maybe I'm in lucky position.

If the avid editor has 8 tracks of audio (per take) and he cuts A/B or A/B/C and adds some music plus temp-fx. you can easily get 30 or more tracks. And that with 3 elements of production sound! AVID will not play that back anyway so I really envy you for working with editors who are willing to drag all original tracks along.

Also what I wanted to point out is that an assistant editor will also cost money so it´s not "for free" that someone puts in the missing tracks manually.

Your initial point was that it´s cheaper to let the editor(s) do this. My point was that if an editor does it it will take time and therefor money. Once you have the workflow going it takes about 10-15 minutes to conform a reel with titan.
With this in mind I wondered how it would be cheaper to let an editor do this manually for hours or maybe days (unless he works for little to no money).

I wasn´t saying that this option is not doable. Just wondering why it would be faster and cheaper if someone else did it instead of a machine.

On the other hand: On some films it´s sad to realize that the machines are actually payed better than the people

;-)))

best,

frank.

[soundworx]

So that's it? Titan? Hmmm, that's 1500 euro isn't it...

I've heard people using a native Pyramix "light" version to do edl conforms, anyone doing this?

And another question; last time I did this manually (replacing mixdown with multiple originals). Pro Tools would let me replace some of the regions with right clicking and choosing an alternate and not so with others. What is that all about? (still PT 7.4 here)

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by soundworx

So that's it? Titan? Hmmm, that's 1500 euro isn't it...

I've heard people using a native Pyramix "light" version to do edl conforms, anyone doing this?

And another question; last time I did this manually (replacing mixdown with multiple originals). Pro Tools would let me replace some of the regions with right clicking and choosing an alternate and not so with others. What is that all about? (still PT 7.4 here)

Read the "Field recorder" workflow manual in your PT documentation folder and do a search for "expand tracks" on the DUC. There are plenty of postings about issues with "match clip" and "expand tracks". It can be done this way but it´s more or less a half manual process. Might be faster to do in the AVID and then OMF.

frank.

[jmattchan]

does anyone here have firsthand experience with this?

i am dealing with a show and we are about to begin this workflow.

- location sound delivers multi-mono bwfs and 2 channel guide track out of cantar
- telecine delivers clips with 2 channel guide to picture editor
- picture cut in avid
- edl and location sound into titan for conform

the trouble is that our dialogue editor says that the titan only conforms 2 channels of media. he says he hasn't been able to get it to conform 8 channels unless they are multiplexed and the avid database references these multiplexed files (instead of the 2 channel mixdown). we are trying to figure out the workaround. has anyone experienced this problem?

thanks,
matt

[Frank Kruse]

How was the telecine done? Were the sound-role infos loaded into the avid via a FLEX or ALE-file?

Titan will conform whatever additional channels it finds given that the correct references are in both the EDLs and the cantar-files.

Are you feeding Titan the original split-tracks form the cantar? They share the same metadata as the EDLs.

frank.