Monthly Archive for November, 2009

A while back on the DUC Abayman65 asked…

Wondered if anyone could help. Have mixed a project, now the editors gone back and made a load of picture cuts. Was mixed entirely in the box in a big HD6 pro tools session.

I have now been given new pics, new OMF and an EDL.

Is there a nice easy way I can auto conform my Pro Tools mix to match the new picture using any software? I downloaded a demo of Titan, but not sure it can do what i need here? Otherwise I guess ill have to go through and picture match/use guide tracks from OMF to chop which will take ages.

Any suggestions/help really appreciated.

Frank Kruse replied…

do a search for “conformalizer” “virtual katy” or “editrace”. It has been covered quite a few times here.

Postprosound added…

Or ask for change notes, and do it manually.
And if that doesn’t work… put both old and new pix in your session, and go cut by cut…
Right now I’m working on a film cut on a Lightworks. Lightworks, unfortunately, doesn’t play well with others, so a lot of extra work is involved. Change notes are made by hand by the picture department. Otherwise, we do it blind.

Noiz2 chipped in…

I’ll second Conformalizer. Done it blind, done it with notes, that’s why I paid gladly for Conformalizer and have been happy ever since. And it keeps your teeth white!

Floydio responded…

Virtual Katy works well for this kind of stuff. But, in the end, ask the editorial dep’t for change notes. Even if you don’t use them. If they don’t know how, tell them you need them in order to get it done on time. Then use another conforming method and just toss their notes when they arrive. Make them work for making your life hell. Hahah.

But, yeah, having had to do “match up the guide tracks and roll stuff until you hit a change and then re-sync”; software is where it’s at–when it works.

This is the last in this series on working with video with Pro Tools

Digibase & Pro Tools LE
You can use Digibase with Pro Tools LE but you won’t be able to make or use searchable catalogues. You can, however, search filenames from the Workspace window, so providing your sound-effect filenames have suitable key words in them, you can search for files that way. Failing that, use a separate database like Filemaker Pro to handle the search and then navigate your way to the correct location from within Pro Tools and drag the chosen files from the Workspace window into the Edit window. Apple’s iTunes makes an excellent free ripping software package that puts each CD into a nice convenient folder for you.

M&E tracks
In audio post-production it is usually necessary to provide two mixes: a main mix, which is a mix of the all the elements for the programme, and an ‘M&E’ mix. M&E stands for Music and Effects and is similar to an instrumental mix for a vocal album project. The M&E track is created to make foreign-language repurposing as easy as possible and so is a partial mix, which contains all the music and effects elements but not the dialogue or any commentary. When it comes to producing a foreign-language version, you have a mix of all the universal elements and all that is required is to add the dialogue and commentary elements in the desired language. Moving material onto specific effects and music tracks makes it much easier to create these M&E mixes.

From this window I can search for a suitable sound effect, for example for the opening shot in the Session described here. Click on the magnifying glass button on the Catalog window and ‘Find’ row will appear towards the top of it. You can do a search in any of the fields. On my system, the sound effect details are in the ‘Database Comment’ field, so I enter a suitable set of keywords in this field (in this case I chose ‘lorry pass’), hit Enter and Pro Tools searches my catalogue of 20,000-plus sound effects and comes up with 19 items. Now I can audition any of these possible candidates in two ways: clicking and holding on the ‘speaker’ icon for that file plays that item from the start, whereas clicking and holding anywhere in the Waveform section plays the file from that point. Once you have identified a suitable file, you can drag it from the Catalog window across into a suitable track on the Edit window. Note that as you drag it around the Session, the video will scroll backwards and forwards, so helping you place or ‘spot’ the sound effect more accurately even though the region is still an ‘outline’. Once you let go, Pro Tools will then automatically import and convert the file in the background. Whilst it is doing this it shows the region in light blue. Once the conversion process is finished, this will change to a normal region with name and waveform. At this point, I rename the region with an appropriate name for the Session.

Thanks to Digibase Pro I have been able to search for, audition and import a sound effect into my Pro Tools Session all without leaving Pro Tools or my seat! With sample CDs, I would have to had to switch out of Pro Tools into a separate sound-effects database, in my case in was Filemaker Pro, search for an effect, get the list of 19 effects, then get up and pull the appropriate CDs from the shelves, listen to each track to decide which one was right, and finally load that into Pro Tools, and it would have been so much slower.

Post-production facilities have libraries of sound effects. These will be a combination of their own specially recorded sound effects and commercially available libraries from companies like the BBC that you  can buy from Sound Ideas or Canford Audio, Digiffects, Sound Ideas.

A growing third source of sound effects is on-line downloadable libraries like Sonomic  and Sound-Effects-Library.com  (there are some 200-plus of my own sound effects available on the latter here! ). These sites allow you to search for a particular sound effect, audition it, buy it and download it to use it in your project.

In the early days sound effects were stored on vinyl and quarter-inch tape and you searched through books for a particular sound effect, then went and got the tape or disc off the shelf and played the effect from that. Then CDs came along, first with paper directories and then searchable databases, but now the most common storage technique is to keep them on hard drives, either as MP3s or WAV files, and use dedicated software such as Soundminer  or Mtools from Gallery Software to search, audition and import them directly into Pro Tools.

Alternatively you can do as I do and use Digibase Pro from within Pro Tools TDM. This enables you to search and audition your sound effects library without ever leaving Pro Tools, but isn’t available on LE systems. I have all my sound effects (over 40,000 and growing!) on one drive and I have used Digibase Pro to catalogue them all, so from the Catalog section of the Workspace window I can select my Sound Effects catalogue and open it in another window.