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By Todd Perry
Discreet Edit* 4.5
A Welcome Addition
N
on-linear editing has been around for quite some time (if you measure in
digital years anyway), and there is not a lot that distinguishes one system
from another. Lightworks, Avid, Media 100, Premiere, Softimage|DS and fire*
all do the same thing at different levels. What you are paying for is the
ability to edit offline or online or real-time or compressed or uncompressed.
So, when looking for a non-linear editing package, you should be looking for
the best results for the least amount of money.
I am here to run an overview one particular non-linear editing system, that
will, I feel, be a welcome addition to the array of platforms that already
exist - edit* 4.5 from Discreet.
Edit* is the child of a program that used to be known as DVision. It wasn't
as big as Avid or MedialOO, but it had features that its users enjoyed and
felt were productive. Discreet Logic saw the product's potential and purchased
the software to be developed under its wing and incorporated into its newly
arising New Media set of production tools. D-Vision became edit*, and took
its place next to paint* and effect* (a.k.a. Illuminaire Paint and Composite)
and light* (Lightscape). In its new position, with a company known for highend
compositing (flame* and inferno*), edit* received an overhaul, treatment that
Discreet hoped would bring it to the level of its competitors. When Autodesk
purchased Discreet, the last piece of the production puzzle was put into
place-3D animation. The Discreet package had become a full production bundle
-- Editing (edit*,) Compositing (effect*) Rotoscoping and Paint (paint*,)
3D Animation (3DSMAX) and Radiosity rendering (light*.) This team support
is what helps launch edit* to a position equal to, if not above, the rest.
Above:
This shows you the generallayout for edit*, although the positioning
of the windows is customizable.
If you want it to resemble an Avid? You can move the windows
around to reflect that.
Edit* arrives in one of five options depending on the hardware that is running
the system. For the Matrox Digisuite systems, there is option 1 (DigisuiteLE)
and option 2 (Digisuite) and for the Truevision cards, there are options 1,
2, and 3. The different options provide different levels of playback capability.
Max Ink Cafe has a Digisuite Option 1 package from IDM systems in New York.
The system has the DigisuiteLE with dual monitor support and a custom 36GB
RAID for media playback. We've been offlining the short film "Only Hope" as
a test bed for edit* and, really, the entire Discreet Suite. I'll step through
the edit* features that helped us get the film cut.
Originally, before edit* arrived at the studio, we had decided to offline
the film with Adobe Premiere and our DPS Perception Card. The budget for the
film did not have an allowance for weeks of Avid time - even if we didn't need
an operator. So, we spent our creative time on Premiere and once we were
satisfied with the cut, we rented an Avid Film Composer for two days and
put the film back together with an EDL. So, now we had locked picture but
we were dissatisfied with the playback quality of the AVR9 that the Avid was
outputting. Since this was going to clients, friends and festivals, we wanted
the quality to be optimal, so we decided to utilize the Digisuite and edit
to recompile the film at Beta quality for presentation purposes (until negative
was cut anyway).
Above:
The Capture window is the hub for gathering your media either
from a batch capture list, an EDL or by grabbing individual scenes.
Grabbing the Avid's EDL, we found that edit* took an instant liking to the
format. The EDL selection is robust enough to import from most systems (ASCII,
CMX, Grass Valley, Sony 900-9100 and United Media) so translation is pretty
painless. The Capture module in edit* took in the EDL and through AutoMASTER,
it created its capture list and asked for the first tape. The Beta deck, controlled
through the Sony RS-422 protocol, clipped through the footage and digitized
the necessary takes while edit* grabbed both audio and video. I was able
to tell edit* to allow for a one-second handle on head and tail, just in
case there was some discrepancy in the EDL and I hand to go in and tweak.
Once the digitizing was complete, edit* had already compiled a duplicate
cut that we had created on Premiere and the Avid. We have the DigisuiteLE,
so we were able to get a very high quality-but not quite uncompressed. The
result was a gorgeous picture that were we not used to seeing because we were
either watching a Perception playback with offline level compression (1.5MB/sec)
or an Avid playback with AVR9.
Above:
The source and record windows can be placed wherever you feel contortable
doing so.
Source shows the clip you are working with currently and record
shows the program.
It uses the same protocol for three-point editing like on Avid.
This procedure doesn't really give you, as the reader, a chance to peruse
the editing features of edit* because we had done all of our work previous
to coming into the edit* environment, so I will go over a rundown of the features
that may be unique to edit* or ones that make it comparable to competing systems.
The bin module of edit* is more than a container to hold your media. Its
really a sophisticated database whose foundation lies in Mircosoft's FoxPro
(which is installed during the edit* installation.) The setup is similar to
Discreet's other products like flame*, paint*, etc., where you can view the
media files by Picons (Discreet's term for its sequence is stopped, the keyframes
can be turned on in the timeline and then manipulated (or rubberbanded). Through
moving, deleting and creating, you picture icons). The Picon holds a low-rez
image from the clip as well as data about the clip. The information is duplicated
in a spread to the right of the picon area. One thing about the picons in
edit* is that you can't interactively scrub them like you can in the flame*.
I'm looking forward to future iterations of edit* that this will be implemented.
Double-clicking to open up a window with the media is great, but I feel is
less efficient than clicking and sliding to view the clip.
Below:
FXPanel shows the array of DVE effects that can he applied to the
media.
The second job that the bin has is to make your job in organizing and finding
media easier. The database structure allows for high-end queries about the
media to find specific clips or types of clip and have them presented to you.
The software's editing functions are complete with overrecord and insert
edit capabilities. Cut, copy, paste-all the essentials. You can drag and drop
clips to the timeline from your source monitor, the bin, or from other timelines-or
you may utilize the keyboard quickkeys, which I would recommend for any program.
IDM provided a custom keyboard with the quickkey strokes printed on it (which
lessened the angle of the learning curve). Edit* will snap the footage you
are moving around to the nearest cut point or where your timeline cursor
is parked.
The editor can do three - and four-point editing as well as a style called
Pro Style Editing - which is a carryover from DVision. In Pro Style, both the
source and record viewers are "interlocked", meaning that when you scrub one,
the other moves as well. This allows you to view what is going to be placed
and where it is going to be placed at the same time, as adjustments can be
made before committing the edit.
Above:
A necessity in all editing and animation programs, the keyframe
editor allows you to go into the
animation and make fine adjustments to the timing of the animation.
The interface itself is extremely pliable. The bins, source and record monitors,
timeline - everything - can be places exactly where you want it. And on a dual
monitor system, there is a lot of space. In a system like the Avid, the structure
is pretty well established and is great for most editors who have learned
on and gotten used to the system. Edit*, however, gives you the luxury of
moving the windows to wherever you feel comfortable.
The audio capabilities in edit* are also versatile. In "Only Hope", we took
the rough audio mix and dropped it into the sequence, but we had other sounds
and music that we wanted to cut in. Edit* allows for this with its 500 tracks
of audio and 48 tracks that can be monitored simultaneously (depending on
audio hardware limitations), as opposed to the two tracks available in most
systems. With this kind of latitude, we were able to cut in additional audio
that had not yet been prepared before our most recent audio cut.
Mixing the audio was easy and interactive. The playback of the scene is
started and as it plays, you modify the audio levels. With each modification
a keyframe is created. After the sequence is stopped, the key-frames can
be turned on in the timeline and then manipulated (or rubberbanded). Through
moving, deleting and creating, you can tweak the audio levels to pan, fade,
change levels, etc. Edit* also provides an audio meter for you to gauge the
levels with more precision.
Edit* comes packaged with a huge array of transitions, effects and DVE animation-far
too many to go into in this article. But, editors and post production can
be rest assured that they will have their main staples and fades, x-dissolves,
wipes, etc.
All the effects are key-framable, and once animated, the user can go into
the function curve of the animation to fine tune with either preset ease-ins
and outs to custom Bezier curves. And furthermore, to supplement the internal
FX, BorisFX is bundled with edit* to expand the palette for the editor. Each
of the effects render surprisingly fast which, as all editors and animators
know, is a key consideration for the software you look into.
Along with the effects, graphics and logos can be imported and viewed in
realtime (depending on the edit* option.) In case you want to watermark the
program, you can throw the graphic on top and run it out to tape without pre-rendering.
We used this function to create a 1.85 matte for our film. It provided for
us, in realtime, a mask that we could assess our compositions with and make
adjustments if we needed to. Adjusts were quick and easy with the transform
effect, and again, it is in realtime. I was able click and move my mouse
and the picture on the NTSC playback monitor would move into place-underneath
the black matte.
Overall, I feel that edit* compares with its competitors from a production
standpoint. All the necessary tools are there, with a few extra benefits.
However, with edit*'s reasonable price tag of $7,995 and the support hardware,
you can put together a system for as low as $50,000, which is significantly
less that an Avid or SoftimagelDS system.
Todd Perry is the CG and Animation Director of Max Ink Cafe which is working
on the visual fX for the upcoming series, "Black Scorpion " and the animation
and design for a five minute short called "Players. " He can be reached through
the company Web site, www.maxinkcafe.com.
source: dcc magazine | july/august 1999
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