As the post-production world begins digesting things seen and heard at NAB ’94, the increasing importance of nonlinear, desktop video editing systems becomes more and more apparent. Manufacturers of these systems are in the ongoing game of persuading producers theirs is the most efficient system to use for an ever-growing variety of project types.

It has been popular for some time to proclaim your system’s ability to edit long-form, particularly feature films, with a degree of efficiency irresistible to producers. Montage Metaphore of Montreal got its first look at editing a feature earlier this year when it worked on Louis 19, a $3 million France/Canada coproduction from producer Jacques Dorfmann of Eiffel Productions, Paris, and Richard Sadler of Films Stock International, Montreal. (Louis 19, distributed by Malofilm Distribution, launched 35 prints in Quebec April 1.)

Michel Poulette, director of the comedy, says in using the Avid Media Composer digital nonlinear editing system, he was able to integrate Avid’s 24 frames-per-second film option into the posting process. Previously he used the Avid only on commercials. ‘It’s great to be able to edit at the same pace at which I shoot. Editing became more and more an important input in the making of my film,’ Poulette says.

Film Composer is the first editing system to support digitizing, editing and playback of images at 24 fps, eliminating the technical problems traditionally associated with editing film on a nonlinear system.

Before this innovation, nonlinear editing of film footage meant editors had to compromise precision for creativity. Film, which runs at 24 fps, had to be transferred to videotape, which runs at 30 fps, before editing. And that process introduces extra video frames into the footage to compensate for the difference in frame rates.

Poulette found the Film Composer especially useful in editing Louis 19 because of the need to link video material with film footage. ‘In this film, the main character is followed 24 hours a day by a television cameraman. Therefore, 70% of the filmed sequences are also on videotape. It becomes interesting to use this material to show what is seen by the television cameraman.’

To link the video and film footage together, Pierre Guerin, technical director for Montage Metaphore, developed a way to match any video image with any frame shot in film using the Film Composer.

The facility also developed software which logs directly from the sound synchronization list, enabling Montage Metaphore to automatically log large amounts of data, including key codes.