Dailies and audio sync workflow?

[GlennChan]

Im curious what the Red team is thinking for making dailies, and syncing guide track audio for dailies.

In a film workflow, many facilities sync audio to the film as they transfer to tape. (Although there are variations, where they sync audio afterwards.) Oftentimes, there are bound to be problems with audio sync not matching up. How will Redcine sync guide track audio to the dailies (supposing they shoot double system sound, and dont have wireless sending guide track audio into the camera).

1b- Is it possible for Redcine to pop up a window showing the waveforms where the "playhead" is. Im assuming Redcine will have a built-in player that will let you scrub through footage and do things like find the point where the slates clap is (and hopefully the slate is in frame; what if it isnt). Being able to see the waveforms (without having to wait for them to be generated) might help check audio sync. Perhaps if redcine were to only build waveforms for a small slice in time (+-15 frames?), it could avoid the delay in building waveforms.

2- Perhaps this is a crazy idea, but what if Redcine could render both the offline copy and a MPEG2 (for DVD screeners) at the same time? Perhaps a simple system would be to output offline copies into a watch folder (i.e. Procoder watch folder), or output QT refs pointing to the offline copies.

[Finner]

It seems like you are making it way to complicated Glenn. I would say you just simply slate it. If the slate is pulled out of frame before the clap the Camera Op just calls second Sticks and the 2nd assistant just re claps it in frame just like on any other film set.

[Trevor Meier]

I would be interested to know if RedCine will include the option of syncing audio, and what ideas RED's got on how that will work... probably a lot of people (myself included) will still be shooting double system.

[Rob Lohman]

No options for syncing audio. Audio either comes in with the recording (and then it will be in sync automatically) or you load it up and sync it after REDCINE.

[Christian Berg]

Rob, could this syncing in Redcine be a feature for the future? It would be really nice if this was done in redcine on auto. Just point to the folder with the clips witch contain timecode. It syncs up automatically... on the fly... while you encode yor files to some quicktime.
Sounds easy...hehe...

Good luck with the software!

[GlennChan]

It seems like you are making it way to complicated Glenn. I would say you just simply slate it. If the slate is pulled out of frame before the clap the Camera Op just calls second Sticks and the 2nd assistant just re claps it in frame just like on any other film set.

In an ideal world, they would notice this and actually do it right. Not having the slate in the shot means that you'd have to manually sync up the sound, which would be pretty easy if you were able to jog through the footage and be able to see the audio waveform + hear the audio (i.e. find a part where the speaker's is saying a plosive, this causes the waveform to dip to zero).

It syncs up automatically...

Again in an ideal world, that would always happen. But sometimes the clocks drift and therefore the audio doesn't stay in sync.

[GlennChan]

To add-on, would it be possible to configure Redcode to do a TC burn of:
1a--Timecode
1b--Timecode converted from 24p to 60i (may or may not need this, have to think about it; some people shoot 24p and HAVE to deliver 60i, so you need to watch TC issues there)
1c--Unique, unambiguous reel name or Red media identifier. So you know exactly where the shot came from.
--positioning of text can be controlled
--text size changeable

1a would be helpful for dailies, so that people can talk about particular shots at timecode ___.

The rest may be helpful for the offline --> online process, assuming that the online system works best when ingesting EDL + material over SDI (and that you lay Red footage onto tape so the online system can ingest it; i.e. not a data workflow). In your cutting copy, it would help if the original tape timecode is there + reel identification burned into the picture. If you could somehow configure Redcode (or Redcine) to burn this information in, it could be helpful.

[Rob Lohman]

Christian: perhaps, we'll have to see. It's definitely in the back of my mind!

Glenn: redCINE (not code) will do 1a & 1c up to a certain degree, it might do 1b but I'm not sure at the moment (so don't count on it).

As always things are subject to change, hehehe :)

[Nick Shaw]

Glenn, sorry if I'm being dumb here (I'm in the UK, so all the film originated footage i've ever cut was 25p so I'm not that familiar with the issues of 24p) but why would you want to convert 24p to 60i in REDCINE. Surely it is better to stay 24p all the way to the final master, and then add pulldown to produce a 60i sub-master from that. Wouldn't converting to 60i before editing simply increase the file size for no reason, and make editing and match-back more complex than it needs to be?

Nick

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I understand that every item that gets hung from the camera adds hassle factor but, IMHO, the sheer simplicity of sending a wireless audio feed back to the camera is darn attractive if you want a fast and easy workflow for dailies.

Red has always promised a robust metadata header for the footage. I have to believe that with a little planning in pre-pro that punching in enough info to make tracking the footage through post viable should not be that tough.

[GlennChan]

(By 24p I really mean 23.976fps, and by 60i I mean 59.97)

A situation where this might help is if you shot both 24p and 60i footage, or if you shot 24p and need to master in 60i (the broadcaster can say they want their master in 60i, since the timings will be dead on and it's easier for them and it's in the production's contract).

Yes your footage may be 24p, but you may want to work in a 60i timeline/project so that your timings will be dead on. The broadcaster will want their 60i master perfect (i.e. with perfect timings), and the production may not really have a choice.

In a HD workflow:
Your master tapes are 24p.
Downconvert to miniDV, with a window burn that shows both 24p and 60i timecode. Where the 60i timecode is what the 24p timecode will be, assuming a particular method of conversion / mapping of the timecodes. You need to pay careful attention to whether it's 60i DF or NDF, and where the starting timecodes are (where they both line up, and afterwards you drop particular timecodes if it's DF). It's confusing, and things can easily screw up. This is why you burn both timecodes in.

The offline ingests from the offline copies, i.e. 60i DF DVCAM downconverts. The offline is cut in a 60i project. The EDL and the offline cutting copy are both 60i.

In the online conform, you set up the HDCAM deck to add pulldown. Paying careful attention to the starting timecode, DF versus NDF, and deck control (24 sense or not). So you bring up the offline cutting copy, and check that everything came in right. And if something screwed up, you have those timecode burns to help you out. You can read the TC burns and see that ok, from __ to ___ timecode in the program should be X from the source tapes (from 24p timecode ___ to ____). Red would be nice here since you could also burn in a unique reel identifier (and it shouldn't ever record with TC breaks). Sometimes the reels are improperly named (i.e. BREEL, or any reel name with a B after it is ambiguous) or there are timecode breaks on the reel. In EDLs, that's ambiguous and the assistant editor has to figure that out.

(Or, I might just be confused.)

1b- In a Red workflow:
People have to figure this out. It depends on how you propose on getting Red material into the online system. You want to handle the situation where you shoot 24p, and you want to online in a 60i project.

If Redcine can add pulldown, this may be nice. And if it can do this, then it should be able to burn both timecodes into the footage (with a choice to not have this of course).

2- The alternative is to work in 24p, make a 24p master, dub that adding pulldown onto a 60i work tape, and then do the packaging based off the 60i work tape. This may not be as efficient as working in a 60i timeline, although it is if you have a linear edit suite to do the packaging (but most linear bays don't do SD, so for HD you run into weird situations).

3- Blair, it is definitely easier to have wireless sending guide audio into the camera. In practice though, would people end up with situations where this wouldn't happen? (i.e. steadicam, rigging the camera into particular rigs like cablecam) And then they realize Redcine doesn't sync audio.

[Nick Shaw]

I would certainly prefer to work 24p and add pull-down during mastering, unless as you say the edit is a mix of 60i and 24p sources. I can see some of the benefits of working in 60i, but far more problems. You need to set your timeline format to be interlaced, and then all effects get field rendered. Time re-maps and image scaling will then suffer because of this. If you need to produce a letterboxed sub-master it will look far worse.

Nick

[GlennChan]

If you're doing a documentary, you'll likely have a huge mix of sources.

Sometimes series shoot both 60i and 24p, where the 60i stuff is for a 'documentary' look and 24p for 'film look'. Because, to some people, 24p = film look.