Following the success of Final Cut Pro, Avid introduced its own software-based prosumer editing tool, Avid Xpress (http://www.avid.com/products/xpressFamily/), which is available for Mac and Windows. (Avid also continues to make high-end, high-priced, hardware-based systems, which are used by major film studios and production companies.) Avid Xpress currently comes in three versions:
The base model, Avid Xpress, retails for slightly less than $700 and works only with DV footage. (According to the Avid web site,
www.avid.com/products/datasheets/xpressdv.pdf, Xpress DV requires Windows XP Professional to run on a PC and OS X 10.2.4, 10.2.6, or 10.2.8 to run on a Mac—OS X 10.3 and 10.4 were not supported at the time of this writing.)
Avid Xpress Pro, which retails for less than $1,700, offers a wider range of effects, an expanded suite of compression options, and most importantly, supports media other than DV (if you wanted to edit media shot in a professional format such as Betacam SP or Digital Betacam, you could do so in Xpress Pro but not Xpress DV).
Avid Xpress Pro HD enables users to work with High Definition footage. (For more information on HD video, see the sidebar "Standard Definition versus High Definition Video" in this chapter and "HD Aspect Ratio and Frame Rates" in Chapter 2.)
In late 2002, Apple released Final Cut Express (http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/), which, like Final Cut Pro (http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/), runs only on Apple computers. Final Cut Express is designed for people who want to do more than they can with consumer products like
iMovie, but who don't want to spend the money to buy a full version of Final Cut Pro, or spend the time it takes to learn the full array of Final Cut Pro's professional features. Final Cut Express retails for approximately $300, and newer versions work with DV and HD footage. Like Avid Xpress, Final Cut Express is not compatible with standard-definition professional media in formats such as Betacam SP or Digital Betacam (to edit these, you would need to work with Final Cut Pro).
Final Cut Express became a competitor of Adobe Premiere
(http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/), which had for years been the standard for affordable desktop video editing. Premiere, which has been around since the early 1990s as a tool to edit analog video and since 1998 as DV editing software, now comes in two versions:
Premiere Elements (http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/), released in early 2005, retails for approximately $100, and enables basic DV editing. Premiere Elements is not compatible with standard definition media.
Premiere Pro retails for approximately $700 and is compatible with a wider array of production formats (including HD and SD). Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro both run only on the Windows platform.
Some digital editing systems enable a filmmaker to output an edit decision list, or EDL, which he can then take to a high-end production facility and, with the help of the facility's staff, create a broadcast-quality version of his project. (EDL creation is described in more detail in Appendix A.) Generally, only people working on larger-budget productions take this approach, because the process can be very expensive.
Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro enable users to output an EDL. Final Cut Express and Premiere Elements do not. Avid Xpress DV, Avid Xpress Pro, and Avid Xpress Pro HD all support EDL output. (You can also edit a project at home using Avid Xpress, and then take it to a post-house to finish the project on high-end Avid gear.)
Avid Xpress DV, Final Cut Express, and Premiere Elements are all knowledge scalable. This means if you learn to edit on the lower-end versions and then move up to a more expensive version of the same product, your skills will transfer from one version to another.
9.1. Timelines, Frames, and Tracks—How Nonlinear Editing Benefits the Independent Filmmaker
The following sections describe the advantages nonlinear editing provides for the independent filmmaker.
Video editing was not always a flexible process. While 16 and 35 mm film production enabled editors to cut a shot from the middle of a sequence without disturbing the material around it, video was originally linear (see "Linear vs. Nonlinear Editing" in Chapter 1 as well as the section on nondestructive editing in this chapter). Editing linear video entailed placing one shot after another on a tape, in the exact sequence, and at the exact length that would appear in the finished product. There was no button marked "undo."
Because each shot appeared exactly after the last, there was no way to go back and make changes to the earlier parts of the tape without ruining everything else that had been added later. This led to high levels of anxiety in the editing suite, because edits were irreversible, and an increased tolerance of mistakes (it was so difficult to go back and make changes that people sometimes left bad edits in a program, even if they weren't satisfied, because it was so difficult to take them out).
Standard Definition Versus High Definition Video
High Definition video, also called HD video, is a collection of digital formats that offer higher resolution images and higher frame rates than traditional forms of analog or digital video. HD also employs a widescreen 16x9 aspect ratio that gives images a more cinematic look. (For more details on resolution, frame rate, and aspect ratio see Chapter 2.)
All video formats other than HD are referred to as standard definition video, or SD video.
Standard definition video includes all analog video formats, ranging from consumer hi-8 video up to professional quality Betacam SP, and many widely used consumer and prosumer digital formats such as mini DV and broad-cast-quality Digital Betacam.
In 1995, at my first job editing video, I worked with an analog editing device connected to two decks. (This was a standard operating procedure at the time—if you watch reruns of Mad About You, you can
sometimes see one of these old editing systems in the background of a shot. The main character is a documentary filmmaker.) I played the footage on deck A, found the section I wanted, and then set the in point to mark the beginning of my selection. Next, I set the out point to mark the end of the shot. I then had two choices—I could hit a button marked "preview" or another marked "edit." Hitting the preview button displayed a safe preview of what the edit would look like but did not commit the actual edit to tape (this left me room to change my mind). When I hit edit, the controller would play the footage on deck A, also called the playback deck, and then record the footage onto deck B, the record deck. Figure 9-1 shows a similar setup.
Figure 9-1. A three-quarter inch tape-to-tape analog editing system.
Because I was paid by the hour, my boss specifically instructed me never to hit preview. This was high-stakes editing. Not only because I wasn't previewing my edits, but because analog video editing didn't allow going back to make changes. If I got to the end of a show and then realized something was missing from the beginning, there was no way to insert it without redoing a day's worth of work, or more, to fix it.
(I won't even tell you about the things I left out.) Today, to the joy of editors around the world, adding or removing a shot requires nothing more than a few keystrokes or a mouse click.
Digital editing systems display an editor's arrangement of shots onscreen using a series of frames in a timeline (Figure 9-2). Material at the start of a sequence appears at the left end of the timeline, and later shots appear farther down the timeline to the right. Spaces in the timeline are measured in frames, based on the frame rate of the source material (for example, 30 frames per second for NTSC video or 25 fps for PAL;
see Chapter 2).
Figure 9-2. Clips in the Final Cut Pro timeline.
If an editor wants a shot to appear earlier or later, she can simply move the shot to another part of the timeline. This provides an editor with infinitely more freedom, and the ability to experiment with different changes without risking disaster. If the editor doesn't like what the change looks like, she can just hit
"undo." (This is referred to as nondestructive editing, and is explained in the next section of this chapter.) Timelines also use a series of tracks, arranged vertically in the timeline, which enable an editor to place more than one audio or video clip on the timeline at the same location. Editors often layer audio to create intricately faceted compositions from multiple sounds; for example, the voice of a film's protagonist layered with ambient sound and perhaps some music (see Chapters 17 and 18). A skilled editor can also layer multiple shots of video to create complex title sequences and sophisticated composites (see Chapters 11, 12, 14, and 15).
9.2. Making the Most of Nondestructive Editing: The Difference Between Project Files and Media Files
Editing systems like Avid and Final Cut Pro did not provide filmmakers with their first introduction to nonlinear editing. Editing reels of 16 mm and 35 mm film has traditionally been a nonlinear process, but unlike digital editing, it's a destructive one.
Filmmakers often refer to editing as "cutting a project together" or simply, "cutting a project." To a person working on a nonlinear editing system, the idea is metaphorical, but traditional film editing involved physical cutting and splicing. Film editors literally cut a piece of film to select the segment of footage they want (that's where the term clip comes from) and splice it into a sequence of other clips. The problem is, after a few cuts, editors quickly find themselves with a room full of very short leftover clips, called trims, that are notoriously hard to manage. If you trim say two frames off a shot, you then have to keep track of those two frames, because you might need them later. Editors who physically cut film knew not to throw anything away, because then they'd be stuck if they tried to reedit. Rather than leaving things on the cutting room floor, editors hung strips of film on individual hooks in large bins to keep them organized. At the end of the day, assistant editors spent hours restoring trims, or pasting very short clips back onto the longer shots they came from (otherwise, you can only imagine where they might have wound up).
Note: When something is shot, but doesn't end up in the final edit, it is said to "end up the cutting room floor," even sometimes still in video, when nothing actually ends up on the floor. Example, "My
performance was great, but that director hates me. I ended up on the cutting room floor."
Editing film by hand was a labor intensive physical process that could strain the organizational skills of even the most meticulous editor. Today, the process is very different. When you edit a sequence of shots together in Final Cut Pro or another nonlinear application, you're not editing the actual video clips you captured to the computer. Instead, you're creating a series of instructions, telling the computer to play designated portions of the clips one after another. As a result, you have two sets of files; media files, which are the actual video and audio clips that the computer stores in their entirety, and project files, the
instructions you create as you arrange different clips in the timeline (some systems, such as Avid, refer to these as pointer files).
The main benefit of programs that use separate media and project files is you can edit without fear of destroying your source footage. If you make an edit you don't like, it's no big deal, your source footage remains unchanged so you can try out different ideas. You can also create multiple versions of a sequence to see which one works the best. You'll never know how two shots work together until you place them in the timeline side by side, and with nondestructive editing, you can experiment without consequence.
Each time I begin a new pass, or a new attempt at editing a sequence, I save a new version. I label each sequence numerically, for example classroom01, classroom02, etc., so I can easily identify the newest version (I also save the older versions so I won't be stuck if I don't like the newer changes).
In addition, I periodically back up my project files onto an external disk drive, or onto removable media such as a zip disk. Because project files take up very little memory, a complex hour-long project might require only a few megabytes of storage space (duplicate media files, on the other hand, quickly fill up a hard drive at the rate of one gigabyte per five minutes of video). If you archive your project files, you can easily use them to rebuild your project in the event of a computer crash. Rebuilding a show from project files is infinitely more pleasant than trying to reproduce weeks worth of work, and infinitely more practical than saving duplicate versions of an edited show with all its media files. (Jan L. Plass, who chairs the doctoral program in Educational Communication and Technology at New York University, jokes that there are two categories of computer users: those who have lost everything on their hard drives, and those who will.)
9.3. How Timecode Makes Nonlinear Editing Possible
Timecode, which was briefly introduced in Chapter 8, identifies each frame of audio and video in your project. Timecode measures a tape in hours, minutes, seconds, and frames, placing a unique timestamp on each frame of footage. This means that if you're shooting video at a standard 30 fps, timecode can accurately identify the location of recorded material down to 1/30th of a second. Timecode appears in a standardized format, written as hours:minutes:seconds;frames. For example 01:15:20;05 means 1 hour, 15 minutes, 20 seconds, and 5 frames from the start of the tape. See Figure 9-3.
Figure 9-3. The timecode field in the Final Cut Pro timeline.
There are two timecode formats: drop frame and non–drop frame. NTSC Figure 9-3. The timecode field in the Final video, the North American broadcast standard, uses drop-frame timecode. Drop-frame timecode is made to conform to a broadcast hour and, using a complicated series of calculations, periodically drops a series of frames to run at 29.97 fps instead of an even 30 fps. Drop-frame timecode is written with a semicolon separating the seconds from the frames (HH:MM:SS;FF); non–drop frame timecode, as in the example in Chapter 8, uses all colons (HH:MM:SS:FF).
In the past, independent video producers often used non–drop frame timecode, because it was very hard to calculate which frames to drop, if they weren't using a computer. Digital editing systems now perform drop-frame calculations as part of their general functions, so working with drop-frame timecode is not only a simplified process, it also makes your show broadcast friendly in the event you're invited to screen your work on television, because drop-frame is the standard broadcast television frame rate.
As described in Chapter 8, timecode helps keep audio and video synchronized during recording and editing: when the timecode of a video frame matches the timecode of an audio frame, they're in sync.
Timecode also enables the random access that makes nonlinear editing possible. Because timecode uniquely identifies each frame of footage in your project, you can instantly access any part of your captured material just by typing in its timecode. Instead of slogging through hours of footage to find a 20 second shot, timecode enables you to navigate to the precise location of the shot's first frame. The ability to identify and find a single frame is described as being frame accurate. If you're working with a 12:1 shooting ratio, meaning you shoot 12 minutes of footage for every one minute that winds up in your finished project, you can imagine how much tape you'd have for a two hour film and how much time you save by navigating directly to the frame you want (see the sidebar "All about the ratio" in Chapter 1).
Timecode information doesn't change. The timecode on footage you record with your camera stays the same when you capture the footage to your computer's hard drive, and still stays the same when you edit the material into a sequence. In addition to making nonlinear editing possible, this consistency enables nondestructive editing. Earlier I described project files as a series of instructions telling an editing application to play particular sections of various media files in a designated order. Timecode is what enables your editing application to identify each section of the media files. No two timecode locations on any tape are alike, and even though two tapes can contain the same timecode, editing applications allow you to name each individual tape to avoid confusion. (Chapter 10 explores techniques to help you mange your footage and prevent problems.)
As a result, the project files for your film are essentially a list of the beginning and ending timecode locations of all your shot selections, arranged in the order you specify and updated every time you make changes. Once your project is finished, you can use this timecode information to create an EDL, as described earlier, to create a high-quality broadcast master. An editor who shoots film can also use
timecode information to strike a film print for theatrical release by matching the timecode of material in the master to keycode information on the original negatives. Both processes are described in more detail in Appendix A.
In the past, editing an independent film or video project either meant paying studio rental fees, or working in the middle of the night while somebody you knew wasn't using his editing suite—digital editing systems were simply too expensive for most individuals to purchase. Today, buying the equipment to build your own postproduction studio is not only a possibility but, in many cases, proves more economical than renting. Once you make the initial purchase, the cost-per-use of your editing system lowers each time you sit down to edit. Depending on the number of projects you work on and the payment terms you negotiate with your clients, your digital editing system can even become a revenue source. (If you work the balance correctly, you can not only do what you love, but you can make a living at it—how great is that?) Chapter 10 walks you through the process of configuring your own studio and gets you ready to edit.
Chapter 10. Setting Up Your Digital Post Facility