Conforming to Picture Changes

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Conforming to Picture Changes

You are bound to want (and need) to make changes during your project. These changes can become necessary at the most inconvenient times. If the director makes any changes to the video edit, then the audio session must follow those changes. When these changes are required in the midst of audio post-production, conforming the audio to match the new video can be complicated. Each change can either add video to the timeline or take some away. If you have already edited dialog tracks and added effects and maybe music before these changes occur, you will have to conform all of your new tracks to these picture changes.

When a picture change is made, the editor will usually create a change note . This could be as simple as a handwritten note or as complex as a multi-page, edit-decision list that outlines each change in terms of time code. The change note will specify at what time code values the change takes place and exactly what was added or deleted. You can use this information to edit your session and match the new video edit. However, change notes are notorious for being inaccurate in some respect and may not always help in making accurate edits. Referencing the newly edited video is the only way to be truly accurate.

As evidence for this difficulty, sound effects editor John McKay, whose work can be heard on the first two Lord of the Rings movies, had this to say about how to deal with picture changes:

This question has occupied my working days for the past two years . I have been a sound effects editor on the first two Lord of the Rings pictures and this problem was evident from Day One. The picture was never locked, and, for instance, we went through 50 conforms for Movie One alone, with reel rebalancing also. We found Avid change notes to be variable in quality depending on who actually did them, and they seem to take an age to make. John McKay, Sound Effects Editor for the first two Lord of the Rings movies.

For the first movie, Fellowship of the Ring , conforming to picture changes was done manually. By the time the second picture, The Two Towers , was started, John had developed a method of utilizing Quickeys to expedite the conforming process. This process has been refined and turned into a stand-alone software solution called Virtual Katy. The software is capable of analyzing two EDLs and creating an accurate change list that describes the differences between them. This EDL can be used to auto-conform the Pro Tools session to the new picture changes. At the time of this writing, this software was in beta testing.

NOTE

QUICKEYS

Quickeys is a Macintosh program designed to make complex keystrokes and procedures accessible via a single keystroke. It can be useful for the automating of repetitive tasks such as conforming to picture changes. You can think of Quickeys as a macro editor.

Manually conforming to picture changes requires a new guide track as a reference. When you are given a picture change, you'll need to digitize a new video and import it into Pro Tools. Hopefully, a guide track will be included in the new copy of the video. Once you have imported the new video, import the audio from the guide track as well.

Using the change note, find the first change by time code location. Listen to your edited audio and the new guide track together. They should match one another until the first change occurs. The time code number where the new reference audio diverges from your edit should match the time code value listed in the change note. Make sure you are set in Grid mode with a value of 1 frame. Try to pinpoint the exact frame where the change occurs and create a marker there. You can listen to the audio and hear where it fails to match up or notice when the lip-sync is lost. The next part gets a little tricky.

These steps should be followed when the picture change has added a portion of video. The same principles apply when a change removes a section of video but the method would be different.

1. Save your session under a new name just in case you need to return to the unaltered original.

2. Create an edit group that contains every track except the new guide track you imported from the movie. Try clicking to the left of the ALL group in the group window, in order to select every visible track in the session. Then Shift+click on the guide track to de-select it and press Command+G to create the new edit group.

   NOTE

   PERFORMING LARGE EDITS

   When performing edits on large numbers of tracks, keep all tracks visible, as editing will occur only on visible tracks. Grouping is also affected. Edits performed on grouped tracks will only be applied to the visible members of that group.

3. Select this new group in order to edit all but the guide track at once.

4. In Grid mode, place the cursor right on the change marker you have created.

5. Choose Edit > Separate Region (Command+E). This will cut all audio tracks at that point, creating new regions if necessary, as shown in Figure 6.54.

   Figure 6.54. The Change Edit group contains all tracks except the new guide track. The Separate Region command has been used to cut all audio tracks exactly at the change marker.

   

   
   

6. Press Option+Shift+Return (not Enter). This command selects everything from the current cursor position to the end of the session.

7. Now use the Grabber tool and move the selection down the timeline to where the change note says the new edit should end, as shown in Figure 6.55. If you do not have a change note or think that it is inaccurate, move the audio far enough so it is beyond where you think the change should end. If the Markers ruler is included in the selection, you will receive an error message indicating that the operation is not supported in the Conductor rulers. It is not clear that Pro Tools considers the Markers ruler a Conductor ruler, but it is true for this instance. Choose to continue the operation without affecting the Conductor (including Markers) rulers, as seen in Figure 6.56.

   Figure 6.55. The selection has been moved to where the picture change ends. The blank area is now available for new audio that goes with the inserted video.

   
   

   Figure 6.56. You might get this error message if the Markers ruler is part of your selection. Continue with the operation without affecting the Conductor (and Markers) rulers.

   
   

8. Assuming that you are very familiar with the material you're working on (and I bet you are by now!), watch the video and listen to the guide track through the change period and notice where it returns to the original video edit. Try to be frame-accurate if possible, but don't sweat it. You'll be able to check this afterwards and make adjustments. Create a marker here for reference.

9. If you have not lost your selection of audio from the previous step, move all of the audio to the end mark you just created. If you lost the selection, get it back by clicking on the first frame of the remainder of audio and using the Option+Shift+Return command.

   NOTE

   LINK EDIT AND TIMELINE SELECTION

   A very useful but seldom-used feature in Pro Tools is the ability to link or unlink the edit and timeline selections, using Operations > Link Edit and Timeline Selection (Shift+/). You might have discovered this option by accident , as the key command is easy to hit inadvertently. I've had many calls from engineers wondering why they can't locate to a new position the way they normally do when this option has been changed.

   In the default setting, the edit selection and timeline selection are linked. That is, whatever selection you make in any track is duplicated in the timeline selection at the top of the Edit window, in the ruler section. Figure 6.57 shows the start point, end point, pre-roll, and post-roll markers that define the timeline selection. When they are unlinked , you can select areas in tracks, but the play cursor will not automatically locate to the start of that selection. It will remain wherever it was last set up in the ruler. To change the timeline selection, you must click inside the ruler and drag from the start point to your end point. Or, you can manually enter values in the counter windows . This way, you can move around the timeline without losing the selection you have in the tracks area.

   The pre-roll, start, end, and post-roll marks are visible at the top of the ruler section.

   
   

10. Now play from before the change start and listen. When the original audio returns, is it in sync with the guide track? This should be obvious. If not, try soloing the guide and dialog tracks to eliminate any effects and music from the mix. You can pan the guide tracks hard left and your edited dialog tracks hard right to get a better idea of how the two are syncing together.

11. If everything is in sync, congratulationsthe change note was accurate and you are lucky. Save your session and go take a break while the rest of us figure out why this thing won't play in sync!

12. If things are not sounding right and the sync is off, try nudging the entire selection by 1-frame increments until you have lined it back up. Always use grid and nudge values of 1 frame to ensure that you are staying on frame boundaries while editing.

13. Hopefully, by nudging around a few frames you will be able to find the correct spot where the edited audio will line up in sync with the new guide track. Once you have found this spot, save the session.

Okay, now you have created space where video has been added. The next step will require an accurate EDL of the source tracks for dialog and any other sounds the picture editor used. This might require creating a new session for conforming just the picture-change portions of an EDL and then importing them into your master session. Doing this can save much time and confusion without loading up a large session with conforming tracks.

NOTE

DIFFERENT DIALOG TAKES

Be aware that a picture change may also affect the dialog takes that overlap the change area. Different takes might have been used. You will need to check the new EDL thoroughly to make sure you have the correct audio files.

Once the edit is complete and you have all new dialog tracks conformed to the picture change, you will need to edit any other tracks, such as foley and music. The hole created by the picture addition must be filled with the necessary sounds in order to make the transition across the edit a smooth one. You might have to eyeball these things, as the foley studio might not be available at the time or the film composer could be booked on another gig. If the change is minor, fudging it around might just work fine. Major picture changes require major additional work for the sound designer.

The Fellowship Of The Rings went through 50 revisions of the film before it was finalized. Each sound editor had to conform to each one of these versions before continuing his or her editing. John McKay developed a whole set of Quickeys that helped automate the conforming process. This system evolved into software called Virtual Katy that can analyze a new EDL compared to the old EDL and create an accurate change list. Then, software such as Titan can use the Change List EDLs to create a re-conformed sound edit for each new version of the film. This saves an incredibly large amount of time on a project of that scale.

With the inaccuracy of change lists, conforming to picture changes is a difficult and arduous task. If pre-production is planned out well, these changes can be kept to a minimum. Constant communication, again, is the key to a smooth post-production process.

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