This article details a recent Avid conform case study. The project involved a series of short films destined for online use. The main post-production challenge was the enormous volume of large raster media involved.
Avid conform case study
The supplied media contained over 14 hours of 3200 x 1800 aspect-ratio footage and over 4 hours of 2048 x 1152 aspect-ratio footage, all shot at ProRes4444. Total footage, including sound, came to 5.3 TB. My client needed 9 x 30-second videos as the final deliverable. That gave a shooting ratio of 250:1, which is exceptionally high. Much of the footage had also been shot at 50 frames per second, adding further to the already massive volume of material.
Working as an Avid conform editor
The project had originally been edited at a lower offline quality of Avid DNxHD 36. The offline to online route was most likely chosen because of the huge storage demands of the high-resolution footage. As well as the limitations of the original editor’s computer. When I began the conforming stage, I could not get the supplied media to relink to the original master files.
Because of this, I decided to transcode all the media. This seemed the quickest viable option. I then manually edited in each individual shot, matching it precisely against the original low-resolution edit. Under normal circumstances, an Avid conform is a partly automated process. The high-resolution media relinks back to the final offline edit through metadata references using the Avid relink option.
What is a post-production conform?
In digital media post-production, a conform is the process of taking a low-resolution or offline edit and increasing its resolution to the full specification required for delivery. Productions with high shooting ratios often edit at a lower resolution first. Films and programmes can also originate from very large, high-quality raster sizes such as 4K or 8K at ProRes4444 or RAW. Where computers and editing systems lack the memory or storage capacity to handle large raster camera files efficiently, transcoding to a lower resolution offers a practical solution.
Shooting ratios
A shooting ratio describes the relationship between the total amount of filmed media and the duration of the final deliverable. A high shooting ratio might be 50:1, 100:1, or even higher, as in this Avid conform project. A ratio of 100:1 means that for every single minute of delivered content, one hundred minutes of footage was actually recorded.
Consider a celebrity reality or documentary programme. One or more cameras may film almost continuously throughout events. This ensures the production team captures every possible moment of unrepeatable action. The final programme uses only a fraction of what was recorded. A skilled editor then identifies and assembles the best visual and audio moments from everything available.
Transcoding vision to a lower resolution
Challenges can arise when production films at a very high shooting ratio or uses very high acquisition quality. The post-production team may choose to edit at low resolution first and then conform to full resolution later. The process of reducing camera master files to a lower resolution is called transcoding. Transcoding all the filmed media to a lower quality takes up considerably less space on a RAID 5 or broadcast-specification storage system. This keeps overall storage requirements to a minimum throughout the editing process. This matters because professional broadcast-standard storage is expensive to rent or purchase.
Vision-only conforms
The audio storage requirement of any edit is minimal compared to the vision. For this reason, high-quality programme audio normally transfers with the camera media at the offline stage as the footage transcodes to low resolution from the master camera files. The final Avid conform stage generally takes place after the low-resolution edit has received sign-off, preparing the content for a possible colour grade and any further delivery stages such as reversioning. The standard process involves making a copy of the final low-resolution edit and removing the associated audio tracks, so only the vision elements conform to full resolution.
Early digital conforms
My first experience of Avid conform work came during my time as an assistant Avid editor at the BBC in the late 1990s. Post-production was transitioning from tape-based workflows to digital, and complex conforms almost always required investigative work to locate all the media assets. That early BBC experience taught me the critical importance of correct metadata naming conventions and storing all project media together in the right location.
Complex conforms
In the 1990s, some self-shooting production teams recorded on mini-DV tapes. The nature of those productions often meant recording with non-continuous timecode. At the ingest or digitising stage, operators frequently named those tapes incorrectly. In those early days, conforms involving this type of content almost always required significant manual work to locate the correct shot and match it against the offline edit.
Delivering complex conforms successfully was, and I believe always will be, one of the best ways for developing editors to learn the editing process and build a thorough understanding of post-production workflows.
Offline to online workflows
The key to any successful Avid conform, and to any film or video post-production workflow, is agreeing the complete process with all parties before the project begins. Establishing the workflow early also allows for proper cost assessment, including professional media storage, which will always form part of the budget. Where a production plans to edit at low resolution first, filling in all metadata fields correctly throughout production and post-production becomes especially important.
Avid conform workflow problems
Some of the conforming problems I have encountered throughout my career include:
- Incompatibility or licensing issues with visual effects
- File paths to media being too long
- Naming conventions not followed and non-standard characters used in file names
- Graphics and images stored in incorrect locations
- Sync and lip-sync issues in the conformed edit
- Compatibility issues between different nonlinear editing platforms
- Raster size and frame rate compatibility problems
- Relevant media appearing offline
What I find interesting about complex Avid conforms is that they tend to generate a fresh set of problems to solve each time. For me, that is one of the main reasons I have always enjoyed working on them.
Working as a freelance Avid editor, I manage post-production conforms that had previously been edited on Avid Media Composer.
If you would like any help with your Avid conform or editing project, please get in touch via my website contact form.
Links to helpful post-production articles
Here are some links to other helpful post-production posts that I have written:
