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With Support from Apple(Page 1 of 2 pages for this article 1 2 >) Filed under: Post Production • Reality TV Post with Final CutMedia Management in a shared environment
In the first of a two part series on how Final Cut Pro is being used in two of the biggest reality TV shops in the country, Mark Raudonis, VP, Post Production for Bunim Murray talks about the challenges of posting up to ten hours a week of finished programming. With that much media moving through so many post-production steps, it’s critical to understand media management and to have a simple standard operating procedure that is followed throughout the process. Raudonis shares his hard-won knowledge of how to take advantage of Final Cut’s media management strengths and how to stay away from its weaknesses in this interview. Q: Tell me about the hardware set-up over there. Mark Raudonis: We run Apple’s XSAN shared storage system. We have two of them, actually. It’s a classic Apple designed installation with a primary and a secondary failover server and most clients connecting via fibre channel. The storage is Apple’s X-RAID, the fibre switches from QLogic, and the Ethernet connectivity is integrated into our regular IT infrastructure. Q: And what are the seats? MR: We used to be an “all Avid, all the time” shop up until about four and a half years ago, but now we’re all FCP everywhere. When we were a smaller company we rented all of our post gear, but then as we grew we were fortunate enough to be in a position to buy our own equipment. At that point we made the decision to go with Final Cut as opposed to Avid. We have three different kinds of “seats”: Off-line editing, story editing, and on-line editing/grfx/coloring. So, depending on which room you’re talking about we have either a full blown Mac Pro tower with two monitors, NTSC monitors, etc. or just a simple iMac. Q: And how many seats are you running? MR: It’s around 100, spread over two X-SANs in two different buildings. Not every seat is connected via fibre, however. Our story departments “reshare” via AFP over our regular gigE network. Q: And how many shows are you producing in a given week/month or year? MR: On average we’re doing anywhere between three to six shows simultaneously. And each of those shows may have anywhere from six to eight episodes in progress at a time. Most of those episodes are “hours”, so we’re probably pumping through three to ten hours per week of finished programming.
Q: How much time is spent on posting a show? MR: It’s weeks in the off-line and probably like a week in on-line. Q: What other apps are you running to do these shows? MR: Adobe After Effects is probably the most used app aside from Final Cut. Many of our interviews are shot in front of a green screen and we’ve found that the keying in After Effects with Ultimatte’s “Advantage” plug in is unbeatable. Our GRFX designers also use AE for most of their design work as well. Our audio mixers use protocols.
Q: Can you describe a little bit about who the personnel are involved in posting the shows? Their responsibilities. MR: The high volume of shows we produce requires a team approach to the post process, with people assigned to specific tasks. It starts with the digitizer. It’s an entry level job, but they need to know the basics of Final Cut, and more importantly, be very detail oriented. Then, you have an assistant editor who will coordinate the flow of material from production to post, organize the media on the SAN, and do basic media management. Our editors work very autonomously without a producer in the room, focusing on getting the story right. Depending on the nature of the show, our editors will coordinate with our grfx team for specific design elements like main titles, lower thirds and transition elements. Once the picture is locked, the project moves on to our on-line editor, colorist and audio mixers and. Finally, the delivery masters are cloned and captioned in our dub room. Q: Are you using Color for color correction? MR: Yes, we use “Color” whenever we can. We have six on-line rooms. They’re all equipped with the JLCooper Eclipse CX, scopes, monitors, etc. However, sometimes we’re working so close to deadline that we simply can’t lock picture soon enough to work with Color. In those cases we just use the Three Way (FCP’s built-in color correction effect). Our preference however is to use “Color” whenever possible. Q: Do you use any software for media management: File Maker? MR: We use a program called PilotWare for external logging, which is an independent logging program that lives on top of Filemaker Pro. So our logging teams will basically be working on PCs or Macs either to tape or to digital files and they will be logging everything that we shoot. It’s a massive amount of material. It’s a large number of people working at least two shifts a day. And they go through every frame that we shot. Q: What is the standard operating procedure that the loggers and digitizers are using to handle media management? MR: Media management is simple if you use common sense, and stay organized. For us, it starts with a simple reel numbering scheme during production. We make sure that everyone in production knows that scheme and sticks to it. With nearly 6500 tapes on any single show, it’s critical that every tape be labeled correctly. As for digitizing, we simply add a “red dot” to the tape label after it’s been digitized. Looking at all the masters on the shelf it’s very easy to spot what’s been digitized and what’s not. Our loggers will add their initials to the tape label once they have logged the tape. As we move into a more file based workflow, some of these “physical” checks are being modified. For example, our logging program “Pilot ware” will have a metadata column for logger’s initials, or file based media will be backed up into a folder rather than put on a shelf with a red dot. Many people “freak out” about media management, but the secret is to have a system and stick to it. Have a specific person designated as the conduit between post and production. Have a system in place for tracking shipments, checking in tapes, and monitoring the process. Most importantly, have enough digital storage to be flexible with your digitizing process. There’s nothing more frustrating or confusing than to have to “bounce” media from drive to drive due to space considerations. This frantic moving of media is often the root of media management problems later on. A dollar spent on extra storage up front will pay back ten when your project gets to the end and it grows to a size that no one ever anticipated. Q: Are all assets going in to a specific place? MR: We digitize local and move global. We do that for a couple reasons: convenience and organization. Working this way gives us another chance at getting it right before it goes public - before it goes on the SAN. You can pull out corrupt clips. You can make sure that the numbering system is correct and you can double check media before it goes up on the SAN - aspect ratios, that sort of thing. We also are bypassing Final Cut’s propensity to create a new Capture Scratch folder every time you start it up. Our editors never see something called Capture Scratch. It’s organized by show. Each show has a slightly different organization depending on what makes sense for that show. But sometimes we’ll organize by day of shooting. Other times by episode. (Page 1 of 2 pages for this article 1 2 >) 
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