Dialogue Editing

84 BURN-INS, FILE NAMES, AND BACKUPS
Digital Picture Pitfalls
There are many ways that nonlinear video players can lead your sync
astray. If, for example, you’re working with Pro Tools on a Mac, onboard
QuickTime picture playback without an extra video card will inevitably result
in unreliable sync. Forget what the manufacturers tell you. As your session
gets heavier, sync becomes more erratic—sometimes spot-on, other times
quite loose. To achieve worry-free sync when working to digital picture, use
a separate video device as a picture player. This could be a video disk recorder,
such as the Pixys video recorder/player from Fairlight 4 or the V-Cube from
Merging Technologies. 5 Or turn last year’s computer into a virtual video
player with Virtual VTR. 6 You can also achieve excellent results using a separate
high-quality video card that provides reference-locked video playback.
Postproduction facilities may jump at the opportunity to trade in an expensive,
maintenance-heavy Betacam player for an extra FireWire drive and an
inexpensive video interface box. But editors pay the price of this cheapness,
always wondering about sync. If you have any infl uence over the purchasing
choices of the facility where you work, encourage the use of proper external
video recorder/players. Life’s too short to constantly worry about sync.
Use Smart File Names
The ease with which you can produce and compare endless variations of a
cut is one of the greatest blessings—and curses—of digital audio workstations.
There are countless reasons for different versions of an edit, and by the
end of the project you could easily have created hundreds, each represented
by its own session fi le.
• The picture editor makes some changes after picture lock, and you
have a new version.
• You decide to pursue a new creative path on a scene, so you create a
new version.
• You put together a dialogue cut for a temp mix or for a special
screening, and a new version exists.
• A couple of times a day you “save as” under a new name so that you
have a way to backtrack in case of fi le corruption and to protect
yourself from your mistakes and misjudgments. These fi les get new
names.
4 See www.fairlightau.com.
5 See www.merging.com.
6 See www.virtualvtr.com.