Fred Brennan has worked in every aspect of sound editing for more than 30 years. As a supervising editor, he specializes in dialogue and ADR editing. He has won Genies for his contributions to Max, Love Come Down and Sunshine. More recently, he was supervising dialogue editor on Fugitive Pieces and All Hat.

The advent of flash card recording technology in HD cameras is creating new options in picture post. In conjunction with current editing systems, these new HD acquisition formats give producers more choice to work ‘in-house’ in their own editing rooms instead of using a post house for key editorial functions.

‘There are pros and cons to working in-house, depending on the type of show and budget, says Doug Wilkinson (Adoration, Trailer Park Boys The Movie), a leading post-production supervisor, adding that ‘the technology is evolving all the time, and producers have to do the right thing for their projects on a case-by-case basis.’

Mark Arcieri (Family Biz, Degrassi: The Next Generation), a Toronto editor and post-production consultant, picks up on the case-by-case idea, stressing that ‘the post-production work flow depends on what format you shoot on and how you have to deliver your final show.’

Whatever the chosen approach, editor Paul Winestock (The Best Years, The Eleventh Hour) notes that ‘it means consulting with the editor in preproduction to ensure that the proper equipment and crew are in place to handle the workload.’

The new flash card cameras record in computer files that are compatible with the Avid and Final Cut Pro editing systems. For projects shot on these cameras, transferring the picture files into the editing system, syncing the rushes and creating a transfer log can all be done by assistant picture editors working on their own systems, in their own rooms at less cost to the producer than going through a post-production house.

The new generation of HD cameras that record on flash cards include the Sony PMW-EX1, a variety of cameras from Panasonic that use the company’s P2 recording format, and the Red One camera. The Red records at the highest resolution of 4K – virtually four times the existing HDTV standard – so its extremely dense files need to be down-converted to play on existing editing systems’ picture files. However, pictures from the rest of the new cameras play back in HD on both Avid and Final Cut Pro, and are compressed so they take less drive space than prior HD file formats.

The editing systems can be used both off- and online, because the computer files in the systems are the highest-quality version of the picture. A production could then take the high-resolution output it has created to a post-production house for online effects, graphics, color correction and the like.

These new HD cameras also record lower-resolution ‘proxy’ files that are useful in situations where smaller-sized files are preferable, such as DVD dailies and sending material via FTP.

The flash cards also record MXF information for each picture file, which includes scene, slate and take data, and other information entered by the camera crew that will be useful in post.

‘An assistant editor will nonetheless still need to confirm this information and add any further attributes an editor requires,’ Winestock notes.

Once the flash cards are recycled, the picture exists only in the editing systems, so backups are essential.

‘There are many ways of doing this with a sliding scale of cost,’ Arcieri explains.

As well as lower cost, another upside to using the in-house model is that the assistants doing the work are accountable directly to the picture editor for accuracy in the transfers, in syncing the rushes, and in doing the backups.

In-house assistants also follow a project from rushes to picture lock. This provides a continuity of knowledge that is valuable to a production and provides the assistants with important exposure to the entire picture editing process.

Nonetheless, the speed of doing dailies may be an issue with the in-house model.

‘At a post house, I get overnight service,’ Wilkinson explains. ‘I send them my picture and sound recordings. In the morning, I have my down-convert tapes with sync sound, my logs and my DVD dailies for the studio or network. This might be too much work for an in-house facility.

‘However, shows where there are no daily screeners required, or less time pressure, may be well-suited to the in-house model. This may apply to reality TV, animation, documentaries and certain drama productions.’

Arcieri agrees, yet adds that with sufficient crew, an in-house facility can keep up with the time demands of all of these types of production.

Going forward with the new flash card technology, Arcieri observes that ‘it’s no different than when we cut on film. Back in the day, we had teams of assistants, syncing, binning, logging. Now we have assistants doing the same thing except with technology like the new tape-less formats.’