Dialogue Editing

The Edit Decision List 59
The Edit Decision List
As a dialogue editor you can’t get away from edit decision lists (EDLs). When
you auto-assemble, recreating the picture editor’s cuts from DAT or other
linear sources, you have to understand and be able to manipulate EDLs. The
same goes if you’re using fi le-linking programs such as Titan to access all
recorded channels of a track that was edited in the Avid using only a mono
mixdown. Even the most basic dialogue editing skills—fi nding and using alter -
nate takes to lose noises, improve acting, or resurrect wide, off-microphone
shots from their watery graves—require that you know your way around
an EDL.
Dissecting an EDL
The industry-standard CMX3600 EDL (see Figure 5-2) isn’t the least bit diffi -
cult to learn, it’s just humorless and terribly monotonous. Plus, as a means of
describing edit information so that one machine can understand another, it
couldn’t be more ill-suited: It’s very data frugal, and parts of its information,
such as channel mapping, are amusingly cryptic. Fortunately, the CMX3600
won’t be around much longer, as the AAF Association is developing a new
format. For now, though, you can’t escape it.
Even though picture editors regularly cut to eight or more audio tracks, the
CMX3600 format can describe only four at a time. Films edited with more
than that require multiple EDLs, each representing a 4-track group. The EDL
in Figure 5-2 refl ects tracks 1 through 4 of a 12-track edit on a Final Cut
Pro.
An EDL Event Let’s look at one event from an EDL. Learn one line and
you’ve got the whole thing.
003 DVD09 AA C 13:38:11:02 13:38:12:23 02:00:24:06 02:00:26:02
* TO CLIP NAME: 24-07 OF 7 ANNOUNCED 6 JORDAN BORDER T131 MERGED
* COMMENT: 08-02-04
The top line describes the source of the audio (it could just as easily be video)
and its original timecode, plus its location in the edited fi lm. The comment
lines (indicated by asterisks) give the scene and take as well as other notes
from the picture department. Table 5-1 provides details on these and other
fi elds in this event.
In Figure 5-2 the title of the project is on the top header line. Beneath the title,
you may see FCM (“frame count mode,” meaning the way the EDL counts the
number of frames in a second) followed by NON DROP FRAME or DROP FRAME