Digital Video - January 2008 - (Page 43) goal, again, was to keep things as real as possible. What software plug-ins and filters did you use in the restoration process? Poole: CHV-Electronics makes a really good plug-in dropout remover that allows you to go in and isolate a dropout and pull from another video field to fix it. In some shows we had to move nearly frame-by-frame, fixing hits. It varied by show, but in some shows there were hits everywhere. And you never knew where the hit was going to happen; it’s not always in a specific area of the frame, so you can’t automate the process. We’ve been using Final Cut’s 3-Way Color Corrector to baseline the color and fix shifts. I did use Color to work on some shifts and color casts with varying success. But we generally just used the 3-Way filter on this project. Conry: On the audio end we pretty much exclusively used the Waves Restoration Bundle, specifically the excellent Decrackle plug-in. It’s also an EQ thing, that’s probably where most of the de-noising happens. And for that we used the Rennaissance EQ. I like the sound and functionality. Can you explain how you chose to lay out your Final Cut Pro project files and organize media and shows? Poole: Since we were having two rooms editing at the same time, we decided it would be best to have one show per project file. Also, they tend to get a little big, so we kept it all one show per project. That way, I can work on something and then quickly switch it over to someone else. The First Season restoration, we put a bunch in one project, and found that it was a bit overbearing. www.dv.com I understand that, historically, Broadway Video has been considered an Avid shop. What drove the addition of Mac editing systems here? Bosze: Basically SNL is working these systems over at NBC, and again, it’s a way for us to share files. We’re working on the same show, and it helps to efficiently trade information back and forth. It also helps with budgets and deadlines on these projects. There are many more options than in the past. Poole: When you finish a product, you put it in Compressor and tell it “I want this kind of file, and this kind, and this kind,” and it outputs it. For this project we make a final 10-bit uncompressed file, put that file in Compressor, burn in time code for the close-captioned people, and then make the MPEG-2s for the DVDs. It’s really nice that one application will do it all. Did you have any unforeseen software issues crop up in the process? Conry: Audio-wise, we pretty much got away unbruised. We did have some issues early on with the new version of ProTools coming up with some anomalous volume changes, seemingly on it’s own. We still don’t know why or what circumstances pro- WE’RE ALL FEELING A LITTLE PRIVILEGED OR HONORED TO BE WORKING ON THIS THING IT’S VERY CLOSE TO MY HEART. duced that particular event and have been unable to duplicate it in any on-demand way. That was the only real hiccup we had in the audio department. After that it went swimmingly. All the audio was processed at 24-bit/48K. Poole: We’ve been using Final Cut Studio 2, so it’s brand new, and there’s a render issue where it will lose renders every once in a while. Just they go away. Another problem is since we use FiberJet, the way it works is that one person has access to a drive and the other person only has read access to that drive. So if a project has previously been rendered on one drive, and now you only have read access, Final Cut is attempting to grab those render files that are locked, and it wants to throw those renders away when you do a destructive edit. It can’t since you’re on a locked drive, so every once in a while you’ll dv january 2008 43 http://www.dv.com
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