ISO an NLE - cont'd

Log and Transfer in FCP 7

I am working on a show that is a reality show shot on 5DmkIIs and it's killing me.  Especially in an FCP7 environment, dual-system audio WITH Multicamming is the most inefficient workflow and a huge waste of time and space.

I spend a TON of time freeing up space on HDDs - dragging and dropping trying to outmaneuver the Log & Transfer window and get stuff off the HDD before it fills and the transfer stops.  I suppose it's a fun game to play while working but it's only fun the first time.  Every other time it's
what drive has 100GB+ free RIGHT NOW!  It's a horrible game that must be played while working in FCP7 with DSLR footage.

And then there's the workflow issue of "what do I do now that I have both cameras and audio in the system?  Gotta create merged clips with the DSLR footage and the external (zoom) audio. 9/10 on this show they're not using a slate with any info on it -- they're clapping on screen.  That's fine for picture because I can see who's in the shot, at what location they are, and pretty much what scene it is.  But on the audio side, I get files that make no sense.  Maybe they're dated and timed, but depending on the audio guy, I'm not getting the metadata I need to help me on my end.

I have tried to use pluraleyes, which I love for music videos and the like, but it's much harder with run-and-gun reality show footage with 4+ hours of footage a day across 2 DSLR (no timecode) cameras and 65+ clips per camera.  PluralEyes and DualEyes were not meant for this workflow.  It was meant for a workflow where you know what video syncs with which audio -- not the case on this show.

This ran for a few hours yesterday and did a pretty crappy job and even then, I didn't have an option to merge clips and multicam within the sequence so I ended up doing it old school -- marked an in-point on all the clips across both cameras, and an in-point on all the audio clips, sorted by time shot (at least the clocks were all set on the equipment) and manually merged and multicammed from there.

I am not sure that my workflow is the RIGHT workflow but like I have said before, I take pride in my binning and my binning makes sense enough that if any editor sat down in my project to take over, they could find anything they needed without wondering where something is, where the multicam is, where the master clips are, etc.  What are your multicam / DSLR / dual-system audio workflows?

FCP 7 and Audio Output Settings

I am wrapping out a show today that will go out to FX Monday morning.  Each network has their quirky delivery settings.  Theirs is to take the beautiful HD project we cut for them, was approved by them and for the client, and output to an anamorphic DigiBeta (SD) which they, in turn, up-res for air.

As weird as that sounds, it's something we have to figure out how to do best for them.  While we have that down, we also need to adhere to their audio configurations.  I have a lot of fun with this part of the process because it's so damn technical and full of those things you didn't know FCP could do when you were in college because nobody needed a split track audio output.

These are our FCP 7 sequence settings for these FX deliveries.  The word goes out to the audio mixer and the layoff facility that our sequences need to have these settings to go to air.

While in 2 years (really, it should be this year) we will no longer be delivering tapes and we can send a split track QT file to the client based upon their compression settings, we will still have to deliver these QT files with these audio configurations.  So, I need an NLE that can handle this and I need to know how to do it in Avid, Premiere, and FCP X.

Time to poke around and see what we can't figure out!