Edit Suite: Linear Editing: Ten Tips for Success (page 3)

As soon as you can spring for a second source deck, go to true A/B-roll editing for professional transitions between shots. Unless you have an edit controller to automate the process, the trick is to synchronize the tapes so that the transition occurs at the right spot on each. To do this:

• Set both decks at the transition point and null their counters. Back the A (outgoing) shot to several seconds before its start point and pause it.
• Back up the B (incoming) tape to exactly the same counter number as on the A deck.
• With the mixer feeding the A shot to the assembly deck, roll both source decks at once and then perform a normal source-to-assembly transfer.
• As the A and B source deck counters approach zero, perform the transition between them on the mixer and continue recording, now feeding the B source.

With a little practice, you'll hit it perfectly almost every time.

To overcome the limitations of analog audio editing, try premixing tracks that don't need perfect synchronization--tracks like music and ambient sound. To do this, make a copy of your edited assembly tape to receive the premixed tracks and cue it up in the assembly VCR.

Now run the music and background FX tracks through a mixer (or the sound inputs on your switcher) and use the audio dub feature to lay them down on the dupe of your program. When you're finished, you have a combined audio source.

Finally, put your original master back in the assembly deck, cue the dupe in a source deck, and feed its audio through your mixing system while you dub narration or additional audio.

Working manually, you may have to execute a complex effect several times before it works just right. Each try involves rolling three or more decks to their start points, setting (or checking) counter readouts, cueing up an effect or transition in the mixer and maybe presetting the output from a titler.

Which gets old, pronto. An edit controller can reduce the tedium by automating the setup and execution process. As you roll through the effect, the controller remembers all the tape positions and the start/stop points for all the effects.

If you need to adjust and re-lay an already edited sequence, simply change the numbers in the controller's memory, hit edit, and let the machine perform the edit automatically.

As devices for auto-assembling whole programs, I think edit controllers are oversold; but for fixing and relaying complex effects, they can't be beat.

As your sophistication grows, you'll come to demand frame-accurate edits every time. There's no way to get them in linear editing without the precision afforded by time code: a permanent street address for each and every frame of program, written directly on the tape itself.

Some Hi8 camcorders offer a form of time code and some VHS decks can record it (usually on one sound track). All mini-DV format digital camcorders generate time code.

Of course, the process of getting footage into a computer automatically gives you access to frame-accurate edits--with or without time coded source material.

Oops! That bumps us out of linear editing into the digital, nonlinear world. Ah, but there's good news! Standalone nonlinear systems like the Casablanca or Screenplay make it easy to get started and entry-level computerized systems are creeping up on true competence.

So if I had room for an eleventh linear editing tip, it might be to consider porting across to nonlinear.

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