Workflows – or the dull art of planning ahead.

Now you have worked on your personal projects it might be a good time to reflect on your media production working practice.  We could refer to this as ‘The workflow’ of a project, primarily in post production.  Why now and not before you went into production?  Well it’s hard to understand why you need to think about this until you discover its importance.

At first glance it seems over-complicated and time consuming.  You can make it as complicated as you like – that’s your choice.  If you get stuck during post production, you might decide that a little planning might actually save A LOT of time!  (To say nothing of the stress and frustration.)




What format are you shooting in?  What camera will you be using?  What arrangements for sound will you make?  What control will you want to exercise over the material?  There are consequences for all these decisions.  Just deciding to shoot on the ‘best’, most expensive, highest quality camera is not necessarily the obvious choice.  You need to work it back from the ‘deliverable’.  What does the client want?  What have you been asked to provide.  This will suggest the minimum for the project.  If you think there is an advantage in ‘future- proofing’ your work then you might want to increase the technical spec of the project.  Mixing formats, codecs and frame rates is possible on one Premiere timeline but it’s worth trying to avoid this if you can.  At least minimise it.


When you create your Premiere project make sure that your Timeline uses the settings that match your shooting format.  (Tip:  The first time you drag a clip into the Timeline if the settings of the clip don’t match the sequence settings Premiere will ask you if you want to change the sequence settings.  Yes, you so do!  GOTCHA! If you use a keyboard short cut to place the clip it doesn’t offer you this option.)



Once you have decided on the camera, frame rate/size and codec it’s worth thinking about the organisation of your project.

This seems rather dull in comparison to being on location or editing.  But it can have a huge effect on the ease with which you complete post production.  How complicated can it be to find something on a computer?  Answer – very!

Macro level – file structure

When I work on a project I use a pre-created folder structure and I then stick to it religiously.  Because everything has a place – the same place for each project – I can always find things.

Here is my Folder Template

Here is a link to the folder.  Download a copy if you want.

I don’t use every folder in every project but it covers most of the situations I meet.  If it didn’t I’d adapt the template.

There are moments when this approach really shines; when you move or copy the project.  You get ALL the files.  Also when you are sharing post production.  Your colleague can follow the pattern and everyone can save and file things logically.

Notes and paperwork and should be stored too with the project.  CS6 offers a wide range of applications that you might use on your project.  All these different application files need to be stored together.  These programmes generate supplementary files.  Make sure these too are stored in the place you want them.

Micro level – naming conventions

Is that all it takes?  If you just did that, you would find things much easier.  But you can take it further.  When you look for a file on a computer you start by looking where you might have put it.  If it isn’t there you do a search based on titles or words.  Deciding on a ‘naming convention is a small housekeeping step that can have a large effect.

I name my project folders using the US date format plus a logical title.

See how the use of the date has automatically organised my projects in date order.  You need to use the MM-DD-YY date format.

When you are shooting a narrative based film deciding on your naming convention and using it on location will mean that you can find the material based on useful criteria. For logistical reasons most films are not shot in story order.  Therefore slating a take using

Scene:Shot:Take (00:00:00)

means that when the shots are logged or subclipped, the result will be that all the takes automatically end up in script order (and take order).

If you are using ‘dual system audio’ using the same convention with the addition of an A (00:00:00A) for audio will result in the video and the audio of the same take being listed with the video first and the correct audio immediately below.

You can customise your naming convention to include information that will help you later, and that’s the key.  You need to PLAN AHEAD.  You might want to add a camera operators initial, a camera number (for multi-cam), or location tag or similar.  You are effectively adding your own ‘metadata’ in the file name.

Organisation = time, on even a small job this might make the difference between breaking even or making a profit.  The bottom line is that organising IS editing!  The ‘Pareto Principle’ can be applied to editing – 80% of your editing time will be taken up with the last 20% of the edit.  So once the rough edit is complete you will probably need 4 times that time to complete the edit!

Exporting

The care and attention you have spent on your production workflow and edit can all be undone by sloppy exporting of your project.  When this happens it’s possibly a result of rushing, and therefore bad planning, or a lack of understanding of the source and output settings in Media Encoder.  Play spot the difference – then figure out if the differences are what you want!

If you export using the sequence settings you will get a rendered output file that is identical to the sequence.  However it’s more likely you have a particular use or format in mind such as YouTube, Vimeo, disc, USB etc.  Whatever settings or pre set you use (and the Media Encoder’s are good) the rendering and compressing can take quite a while.  See the example above the frame rate is identical but the frame size is reduced and compressed using the H264 codec.

It’s worth selecting a short section that best represents the encoding challenge* and just exporting that.  Then check the playback and framing, before exporting the whole sequence.  You might also want to experiment with a variety of settings.  Label these carefully and store with your project.  You may want to refer back to them again.

* What would be an ‘encoding challenge’?  Think about the process of compression and the answer is quite logical.  Any changes in frame size, codec and frame rate (particularly an increase) will require the computer to perform calculations.  The compression algorhythm has to interpolate and generate frames so the amount of compression can hugely affect export times.  Pick a section that includes rapid change from one frame to the next.  If movement is predictable it requires less compression than movement or change that is really random.  Think water or smoke verses movement from left to right.  Rapid lighting changes or any section that involves graduated change.  Artifacts are often very visible at these moments.  If the effect is bad you may have to adjust the output settings.