Designing your workflow

This is where you plan your entire production process from shooting right through to delivery. It's worth investing some time on this during pre production to make sure that your proposed post production workflow meets the Technical Specifications. As always, your starting point should be: "What am I being asked to deliver to my broadcaster?"

Knowing your delivery format and frame rate will to a large extent dictate how you design your post production workflow.

Here are some important factors to consider:

What is my source material?

You will of course have your rushes which will hopefully all have been shot using the same format and frame rate ie. all 720p25 or all 1080i50 etc. See Frame Size, Frame Rates, Progressive or Interlaced. If not, then you will have to think about converting some rushes to match the others. Converting frame rates can be difficult and can also affect your picture quality.

Converting from a PAL compatible to an NTSC compatible frame rate or vice versa is particularly tricky and can create motion artefacts on moving objects so it's important to discuss this with your post production facility as soon as possible. They will be able to advise you on the best way through this process. 

You may also have archive and library footage in a mixture of formats, which may have to be up converted from SD or film negative to HD. Again, involve your post production facility in this.

Is there any 'off speed' footage?

If you have any off speed material shot for instance on the Panasonic Varicam, you'll need to put this through a frame rate converter before digitising. If you're editing in an Avid system, you'll need to use the Panasonic AJ-FRC27 frame rate converter. Alternatively, if you're working with Final Cut Pro, AJA make a capture card which incorporates a frame rate converter and can digitise off speed material straight into FCP.

Do I want to edit at full resolution or DV resolution?

If you have the money, then the safest option is to clone your rushes from HD to Beta SP or DVCam to create a cutting copy and digitise those.  But if money is an issue (and cloning on a high shooting ratio film can be costly) then digitise your HD rushes at DV res or similar into your editing system and store your HD rushes somewhere safe and separate from your edit suite so that if anything goes wrong, you could if necessary start again from digitising the rushes.  On some high budget HD films, storing the HD rushes separate from the edit and any cutting copies can be a requirement of the Production Insurance.

Sometimes it is appropriate to digitise your HD rushes at full res and edit in HD which means that you can go straight to the grade and online without the need for a conform. This might be suitable for a quick turnaround low shooting ratio film, which has few rushes to digitise; it might also be a client requirement on a commercial so that they can view any cuts in HD in the suite when they come in for approval viewings.  Avid and Final Cut Pro both have platforms capable of accepting uncompressed DVCPRO HD 100Mbps. If your rushes are HDCAM then they will have to be compressed before digitising but both Avid and Apple have developed good compression codecs to achieve this with minimal loss of quality. These are still very large files requiring a lot of storage space so think about how suitable or necessary editing at full HD res is for your project before you commit.

You could choose to digitise at DVCAM or even DV res which means you're working with smaller files so need less storage space which should give you a cost saving, although you will need to conform after you've picture locked.  This is a good idea for high shooting ratio series which need to share footage across several edit suites.

Will I grade and online on the same system?

If you choose to offline edit at less than full resolution (and most do), you'll need to conform your picture locked programme and then take the full resolution version to a grade.  This may be part of your online suite, or if you have the budget and time in your schedule, a bespoke grading tool such as the Nucoda Film Master or Avid Symphony. 

If you digitised your rushes at full resolution into an editing platform such as Final Cut Pro or Avid, then you'll can add titles, effects and colour grade within the same platform - it's all a question of budget, schedule and getting the right tool for the job as well as right skills from your editors.  Not all offline picture editors are adept at onlining and grading, so make choices in preproduction that give you the best possible quality to your film by the time you deliver.

Is my film stored as data files and transferred between sessions or will I need to playout to tape between sessions?

This has an effect on your schedule and budget. If you are working with a central shared storage system such as Avid Unity or Apple ProServer, then all your media is held on this central server and you can transfer your picture locked programme from an offline edit to an online session without the need to playout to tape.

The online platform, for example Avid Symphony, will access your media from Unity using the meta data in your EDL.You can then conform, grade and complete the online in Symphony and the completed programme is then stored at full resolution on the Unity ready to playout and create the set of deliverable masters as required.

If your offline and online edit platforms are not connected to a shared central storage system, then you will have to playout the conformed programme to tape. This tape copy is then taken to the online suite for grading where it will need to be ingested prior to colour correction and may need to be played out again to tape and ingested again if your online packaging suite where you add effects and titles etc. is separate again.

How many versions am I delivering?

Your Broadcaster will have specified a set of deliverables which may include several versions of the master tape. For example: HD master with and without text, Standard definition sub-master 16x9 with and without text, possibly 4x3 with & without text, and a master with makeweights or snap-ins.

Good planning means you should be able to make a single master from which you can make all the other versions in an efficient and cost effective manner.