Helpful ReplyMotion Picture workflows

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Mirrodin
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2013/09/23 20:33:01 (permalink)

Motion Picture workflows

Hey folks,
  I've been using Sonar for quite some time and officially working on my first 5.1 surround project for a short film.  I've barely had time to scratch the surface and really research standard industry practices for sound recording -> mixing -> mastering/Authoring workflows to be able to practically approach this project, so I've been just learning as I go and I've noticed some peculiar behavior in Sonar X2 Producer becoming apparent.
  1. Rendered audiosync loss: Towards the end of the rough sound design I printed a render of the sound mix so far.  Upon bringing the printed bounce into the NLE for critical viewing with the director it was immediately apparent things weren't in sync.  At first, some elements were ahead, and within a couple of minutes elements began to sync up, and then quickly lose sync and fall behind by the time we arrive to about 4 minutes into the picture.  7-8 minutes into the picture everything drifts back closer to sync, and by 12-13 minutes in to the picture it's more than 6-10 seconds behind!
    1. After several searches, and several bounce attempts, I spent some time really trying to pin point where the sync issue was happening.  Back in the NLE I checked all the audio clips (externally recorded and synced up manually IN the NLE - then exported the OMF of the entire picture to import into Sonar).  Everything played in sync there, so I re-rendered the entire picture to a new video file to see if something had changed in the picture.  I imported the new video clip into Sonar - everything still plays in-sync inside of sonar.
    2. After seeing nothing had changed in the timestamps for the audio clips that were imported into Sonar from the timestamps within the NLE, I figured it was worth looking into the container formats to make sure the video formatting was done correctly.  The film was shot with a Red One MX, and all the native .r3d video files imported directly into Premiere Pro, which is the NLE we're using for the project.  After scouring the web for a couple hours and finding other people's posts about Sonar and audio drift issues, especially in Premiere, there are plenty of people with the issue however all of them blame variable frame-rate containers like MP4 (a main feature of the h264 being temporal compression).  People were citing this issue most common when using mp4 video shot on consumer devices like mobile phone cameras etc.  NONE had issues with the R3d format video.  After running into a dead end there I simply went back through the video project and double checked every step of the project was in the proper framerate format, and that none of the clips or sequence data had strayed from the 24 fps.
    3. I went back into Sonar and double checked that not only was I viewing the grid in SMPTE (hours:minutes:seconds:frames) but also that the video I had imported was at 24 fps, and the grid measure was also at 24 fps.  Everything lines up.  So I'm still left with the resolution that something is happening between the render from Sonar and the imported final audio asset into the NLE.  While some people claimed there were issues with Premiere Pro not being able to handle long format audio files this isn't true, I've had multiple projects I've done in the past in stereo that have never lost sync, and those were shot on DSLR and Samsung Infuse phone cameras!
    4. So finally, I am looking through my Sonar project, and I decide to just re-arrange my plugin processing to a per track basis, and freeze each track, anything like the mastering grade processors that need lookahead, or tools like Waves Vocal Rider obviously create buffers,  so when I'm trying to listen back within the DAW my buffer size in my recording interface is quite high (2048 samples to comfortably play back, 1024 with occasional minor clicks and pops).  After I froze some 100+ tracks I bounced out a new render and dropped it into the NLE, BAM, sync achieved!
  2. Working To Picture = stability issues
    1. My only hitch with Sonar has been trying to work to picture.  While the options allow you to import AVI, MOV, and WMV, the only codec I can get to work is WMV.  The longer the video and the further you get into the timeline, the longer Sonar takes to respond to play and pause.  It seems like it has a hard time indexing the video.
    2. I've come to terms that working to HD picture for critical viewing within Sonar is not the ideal workflow, instead working with as small a picture as possible to keep the video filesize to a minimum it handles fairly well. 
I own Pro Tools 10 (11 is out now, however, which boasts video editing abilities) and I know it's the de-facto DAW of choice when it comes to audio for video post.  I'm just curious if anyone else out there has had any success stories of managing a workflow inside of Sonar editing and mixing to picture.  Has anyone else come across these problems and what have been your solutions? how have you managed to work around them?  I'd love to get more into detail eventually about specific mixing procedures and practices but let's save that for another topic, if you've had experience working across any of the material mentioned above i'd love for you to share!
#1
GuyPicks
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/09/23 20:43:28 (permalink)
This is very interesting. I'm wanting to get into film scores myself with Sonar. I'll be keeping my eyes on this thread.

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#2
dubdisciple
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/09/23 20:43:34 (permalink)
Like you, I learned the hard way that I have to freeze tracks that were going to require critical sync.  Also, like you, I don't bother with any other codec in Sonar other than wmv.  Wish I had more to offer, but honestly, you really summed it up nicely.  Those who think they are going to import 4k footage into Sonar and run 128 tracks of audio with convolution reverb are deluding themselves.
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dubdisciple
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/09/23 20:47:47 (permalink)
sometimes I will simply render out submix stems from Sonar and import them into my NLE.  Since the LA2A works as a VST, I can use that on the master bus in my NLE.
 
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Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/09/23 21:40:59 (permalink)
One would think a WMV with mainline 4.1 compression at 720p would be fine for viewing, considering my average file size is 581 mb for the 17 minute 720p @ 24fps WMV, the small (320x240 @24 fps) WMV weighs in at only 78.1 mb.  Much easier for Sonar to parse and index. 

I really love that Sonar has the surround bridge feature to automatically make stereo plugins available on 5.1 busses.  Unlinking the bridged instances to get more control over the discreet audio channels is proving very fruitful, however I'm concerned moving back to processing on surround bussing will create the sync issue again.

I've found that for sound design and editing, whatever processing I can do on the per-track basis, I'll take advantage of the take lanes.
  • Original imported audio gets the 1st top lane, I'll hold Shift+ctrl and drag the clip into a new lane, and mute the originating lane, apply the plugins diretly to the clip (make sure to extend the clip out well beyond what you want in the audio to account for any tail or editing afterward that you might need back in the mix later).  For example, my first pass would be denoising a track (the camera on set sometimes would be quite audible especially in small interior spaces due to the Red One MX being a heavy metal chassis - the internal fans on the camera were extremely loud while it tried to stay cool when not shooting, and while it does go into "silent mode" as soon as you hit record, the fans are still perceptible to the microphones especially as gain gets boosted in post production to bring dialog and other featured sounds up.
  • One particular favorite of mine WAS to simply pack up the plugin chain I had created on one track to easily apply the chain to all the tracks, I tried to apply a plugin chain directly onto a clip and the chain container on the audio clip ends up empty. I have to unpack the FX chain and copy drag each plugin individually in the proper order onto the clip.

  • Much easier to use the take lanes to iterate and quickly bounce versions of audio clips to keep resources to a minimum.  If you're doing heavy processing with multiple plugins (Just the 1 FX chain for "fight outside" there was 6 plugins used), I would highly suggest packing up your FX chain and labeling them the version OF the take lane you're in so you know which FX chain was used to create which bounced version of that audio clip.  ie: Fight Outside 1.0, Fight Outside 1.1 etc. or 1, 2, ABC etc... In some cases you may be swapping out entire plugins or using completely new ones each time.  Keep each plugin chain on your channel in the proper order and just left disabled.
  • Another practice I've started using is manually saving out preset files native to each plugin based on what I'm doing to build up my private Preset library.
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Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/09/27 00:09:15 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby dubdisciple 2013/09/27 10:37:56
Turns out there's a simple, but rather silly solution for dropping FX Chains onto clip bins.  When you drag and drop the FX chain over a clip, the clip's FX bin will pop up, you have to make sure you let go of left click while over this pop-up bin window, if you let go just while over the clip, the FX chain will be empty.  This works regardless of whether clip(s) are highlighted/selected.
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Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/09/30 15:00:09 (permalink)
Just went through final print master.  Several renders later I decided to just leave "fast bounce" on and audio drift problems disappeared.  During playback in Sonar I would have to frequently pause it, and let it get back in sync and hit play again.  I was afraid I'd have to turn all of the plugins off, bounce 1 group bus at a time, apply the plugins on a separate project for just that stem mix, bounce that, bounce another stem mix unprocessed, apply the processing to that stem on it's own and render both out together, and slowly compile the whole master print the hard, long way!  I'd just really like to know what causes the program to lose the ability to keep track of clip timings... 
The good news is I didn't have to resort to that, bad news is i'm 12 hours behind schedule now :P
#7
Featherlight
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/09/30 15:06:05 (permalink)
Curious to see if this behavior changes in X3 in any way?

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#8
Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/01 23:15:30 (permalink)
Yes very curious I'm eager to see what updates they've done under the hood besides all the feature list articles they've been posting up everywhere.  So, here's another update on this project.  Trying to bounce with even just 1 plugin that has any sort of latency like Ozone 5 maximizer throws everything out of whack. Just 1 simple plugin on the master bus causes havoc on the sync.
 
After numerous failed attempts to bounce, I disabled all FX and just tried to bounce at 48k/16 bit multichannel wav (I'm assuming Sonar automatically chooses signed 16-bit sub) and left Fast Bounce on. While this did the trick it left me confused as to what exactly is causing sync loss and audio drift.  My project is in 96k/24 bit and with the # of plugins active only on the surround busses I'm able to play back the entire project in-sync with my audio driver's buffer size around 1024 (otherwise clicks pops and scratching does start to occur as opposed to just playing out of sync). 
  1. My next logical choice was to try and figure out a way to bounce stem mixes without any bus processing that is essentially bringing the gain and mix together JUST to see if Sonar could indeed render out a print that does line up to the video.  Viola, as long as no plugins OR pro-channel modules are enabled everything is in sync.  There were only a few tracks (not buses) that had pro-channel modules being used and thus I had to freeze those tracks in order to get the processing chain in proper order.
  2. I decided to make another bounce of the same bus solo'd with the plugins active on them, but the master chain still disabled, effectively printed a bounce of the mix phase the way it's intended.  Dropped that in the video NLE and that syncs up too!  I quickly bounced all the stems (each of these were my surround buses: Dialog Master, SFX Master, Ambience Master, Music Master) and started a separate sonar project and appended the title to say "Mux" purely for organization.  I brought all the multichannel waves into the new project and checked playback to the preview WMV.  Everything plays in sync.
  3. From here I applied the master FX chain I had saved out from the original project file.  At this point all of the stems already have their mix processing baked in, so naturally all that's left to do is master.  I bounce out the master and the whole thing yet again comes out of sync EVEN though I'm using the same render setttings mentioned above - 48k/16 bit FAST bounce.  The "mux" project is also in the same format.  So now i'm confused if the clip timings came out of sync in the baked stem mixes or if it was just the fact that adding a plugin to the master chain can cause audio drift.
  4. My final option i'm trying right now is to purely go through the mux without processing just to bring the audio together into a single 5.1 mix, and find a way to apply the mastering chain in Sound Forge Pro and see if that does the trick.  I just have to be weary before bouncing there are no peaks in the stems that cause the master to pass "digital zero" and go into the red.
My thoughts are that Surround Bridge when handling plugins with latency - due to it creating multiple instances, somehow causes this audio drift.  while the feature of being able to bridge stereo plugins for surround use can be really awesome (if I have more time to explore it for creative purposes), clearly it's implementation is something VERY specific, or just plain far too complex for someone to just "get into" and start creating surround mixes right away.  This whole thing has put me several days behind schedule already I just hope I can close it out tonight, the VFX artist is coming by tomorrow to finalize some assets on the remaining shots and then final Print Master rendering will take about 24-28 hours..
 
I'm curious if X3 has addressed anything under the hood that helps to keep plugins in sync across variable latencies each plugin might create.
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Jimbo 88
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 00:12:51 (permalink)
This may or may not answer your questions...but here is a video I made about how I work with picture.   i do not mix my music or work with surround sound.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh9Ico1HgC0

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#10
Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 00:37:48 (permalink)
Thanks! Interesting video, especially about workflow on network series where you have a smaller, more specific role.  It's always nice to see workflows for larger commercial jobs like a series or full length feature (noteably higher end where your function in the pipeline is very specific).  Knowing about streamers and punches and breaking up the work into smaller segments is very useful!
On my project I double checked my timecode roll and from beginning to end it matches.  However on playback when there's too much processing and audio dropouts aren't occurring the sync starts to drift, and checking timecode is a lie because it still matches between Sonar and the picture.  In my case I have the entire project both video and audio, everything is within my facility so I have no need nor the time to spend breaking apart and rendering all the various cues and scenes and elements.  I compiled the complete score in stereo in a separate project and that worked just fine, but that was stereo.  I imported the score to the main sound project and am just upmixing the stereo music into the surround panorama.
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dubdisciple
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 01:17:58 (permalink)
As of now the video features of X3 have not changed, but Cakewalk staff have mentioned that  there will be upcoming changes in a free update.
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 02:05:20 (permalink)
I love Sonar for composing and writing/recording music, but I feel it would be a nightmare to do Audio Post with.  In ProTools you can 'snap' to all sorts of places, like the end of a clip, start of a clip, highlight and cut to the end of a clip from now time, highlight and cut from now time to beginning of clip without touching your mouse etc.  Lots of options.  That's not even mentioning the horrible video handling of Sonar, which is a pretty big issue if your going to do Audio Post Production.
 
Doing ADR takes and naming the individual clips sequentially is easier in Pro Tools as is setting up the pre-roll for a punch in on the ADR takes.  (Beep-Beep-Beep_GO)
The routing in ProTools also makes things easier when you are going to mix down to stems.  You can output a track to multiple places with a key combo.
 
I am not bashing Sonar, just pointing out that Sonar is NOT a audio post production DAW (I only touched on a couple reasons).  If you have Pro Tools 10, I would use that for Audio Post instead of bashing your head against the wall with Sonar. 
 
Sonar is awesome for music creation, recording, included plug ins, soft synths, etc, but it would be difficult if not impossible to have any kind of efficient post audio workflow with it.
 
 


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#13
Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 02:46:59 (permalink)
I cannot for the life of me work with PT10.  I have it and the workflow would take me far too long to learn.  I know it's the industry standard and all but everything feels just... so backwards and antiquated. BIGGEST headache is dealing with solo safe just to hear certain elements or groups of elements in solo.  Utterly pointless, I get the coding for why they did it. but honestly if their programming department had half a brain to implement a smart soloing feature to assist you with the asinine task of moving your mouse over to each group of tracks or busses to solo safe by presenting some sort of pop-up when you hold down the left click on a solo option to bring up the signal chain from tracks to busses to master faders etc. so that you can just solo safe in 2 clicks instead of 8, or 48 for the "those casual users who don't use it often."  I can do most of the other stuff in Sonar with ease and comping ADR and foley takes with the take lanes is super easy, not to mention instead of having to make multiple tracks I can just keep all of my FX bounce passes & original recording data stored chronologically in take lanes with the previous ones muted, labeled and notes detailing what FX chain I may have developed or used in that bounce pass, baked in, and archived.
 
However, I just hit a brick wall now with this project when I finally thought I had it.  I bounced stem mixes with my mix processing applied and they appeared in sync in the NLE on a quick glance so I rushed to get to the mastering phase. Bounce a master print and still as usuall, completely out of sync.  I have to backtrack now and try to get the audio out of Sonar in un-mixed stems and see if I can apply my processing manually with Sound Forge Pro.  Pro Tools 10 is so damn finicky on my system (win 7 pro x64, win 8 pro x64, Apple OSX 10.6 and above it fights with my interface - RME fireface 800 all the time, or just plain glitches out for no reason).  This has happened since 10.21 all the way through the latest 10.3.7 as of August.  I spend 99.9% of my time just trying to get it to open and stay open.  Otherwise I would have just brought this whole project OMF bounced into it and tried to figure out a mixing solution, I've never worked with PT in surround, I'd be slower than a rock trying to get into the workflow even if I could get it working. 
Sorry, Pro Tools and Avid just leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
#14
mudgel
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 03:02:21 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby Brando 2013/11/28 20:33:45
Noel or Andrew did say there were further video enhancements due in the x3b update due before the end of the year.
Edit: I meant x3d of course.
post edited by mudgel - 2013/11/28 22:22:46

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Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 03:51:20 (permalink)
I'll give it a chance as soon as it's possible.  I'd really love to see more documentation/reviews/overviews/in-depth videos... anything beyond all the press maelstrom.  I can only assume if Cakewalk has done some serious tinkering with the VST deployment in their architecture they may have addressed the issues with surround bridge I'm also assuming is the cause of all this frustration.  I've worked with 15-20 minute videos in the past on commercial and friends/personal youtube projects for the last couple years with Sonar, in fact this year I've done about 6 commercials with another 30 spot deliveries coming this week I need to take care of, they're simple to manage.  I have ZERO problems with sonar in these projects, but again.. they're all in stereo.
 An earlier commercial music score project in particular I ran into more than 300+ tracks with FX and tons of automation, and did mixing and mastering within the same project just to save time.  more than 97 plugins applied, only during mixdown did I freeze and bounce tracks, but bus FX and automation was still live during mixing and mastering.  a minute-thirty spot @ 96k/24 bit with a crap ton of tracks (386 in the project to be exact) to manage simply because I kept all my old takes and print passes running through external hardware with different automation ideas etc, kept and archived and/or muted.  My workflow for handling this is no different than what I've been doing for the short film project.  As I mentioned before, I'll utilize take lanes to bounce specific effects and bake my iterations IN place and just label the take lane appropriately.  If this workflow yields perfect results for projects of 1:30 duration to picture, as well as 10+ minute youtube cheapo projects with friends (again in stereo) with track counts just as high, why then am I running into issues only now if it's a video/duration/track-count/clip count issue?  So far the only thing that is being done differently is the fact i'm working in 5.1.  I've gone through all the preferences and set everything accordingly.  If I can get clear, intelligible and stable playback (no blatantly obvious issues with my audio hardware) I can rule out audio drivers/ASIO/hardware issues.  Audio drift is the only problem occurring for me.
I've finally managed to bounce completely raw stems and everything stays in sync all the way through.  Now I just have to figure out how to apply the mixing processing for each outside of Sonar, and then bring the processed stems in for Muxing, bounce out a pre-master, and then use the same process to apply the mastering stage processing and call it DONE.
post edited by Mirrodin - 2013/10/02 04:01:24
#16
Mick Moreau
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 06:40:25 (permalink)
THIS is a thread that I hope will keep growing with great information!  Excellent!
 

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Jimbo 88
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 09:45:11 (permalink)
Mirrodin
On my project I double checked my timecode roll and from beginning to end it matches.  However on playback when there's too much processing and audio dropouts aren't occurring the sync starts to drift, and checking timecode is a lie because it still matches between Sonar and the picture.  In my case I have the entire project both video and audio, everything is within my facility so I have no need nor the time to spend breaking apart and rendering all the various cues and scenes and elements.  I compiled the complete score in stereo in a separate project and that worked just fine, but that was stereo.  I imported the score to the main sound project and am just upmixing the stereo music into the surround panorama.



If your audio is drifting out of sync there is something not set correct.  Your buffers may be too low or Sync in preferences is not set correctly. Perhaps your sound card needs updating or is not set correctly.  I have never had the issue you discribe.
 
Good luck, have fun. Scoring to picture is a blast. 

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#18
garybrun
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 11:59:42 (permalink)
Thanks for sharing the video and Your workflow.
I work With Adobe Premier (was also a part of the beta team for that and for Matrox).
 
I have been a Cakewalk user for many years and I really dont want to learn other systems.
Granted most of the business was on Final Cut and Mac..  but I have these computers and programs but I'm more comfortable With my PC.  I know.. long story Mac vs Pc debate.

I dont want to spend more time to learn other programs  (I also have Studio One 2 and Reason and these are used for Reading other Peoples projects).
 
I am really looking forward to the up and coming video additions to X3

Things change so fast in the business and the demands for more Computing Power keep growing and I build my computers every 3 - 4 years. I can work With HD in real time and compress to mp4 faster than real time With my MATROX Rack  which means I don't need my Cineform any longer.
I was also Blu Ray ready 3 years ago and have never been asked for a Blu Ray Project yet!  :-)
The video side of things for X3 could be a bit of a game changer and it would be great to have a forum area dedicated to video Production.

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#19
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 14:50:32 (permalink)
Totally agree with you there, more advanced video workflow implementation would DEFINITELY put Sonar in a whole new class; I know quite a few guys in post who would love to be able to break free of the ProTools shackles but as much as they might like certain aspects of Sonar, it simply isn't feasible for studio based post work.
 
I've been using it faithfully since ver 5 for a lot of picture work, but the amount of workarounds and trade-offs make it quite difficult and time consuming.  I just happen to love other aspects of the software so much I put up with it, but I don't think others would have that desire/luxury.
 
So, super excited about the upcoming announcements, I can only hope that at the very least we will soon have:
- The ability to at least slide a video track around in a project, if not even be able to trim/do basic edits.
- The ability to easily output HD video to an external monitor via something like a Matrox MX02 (or even the HDMI out of an internal video card).  I have been outputting SD DV via the Canopus for years, and it is clunky and fickle at best, not to mention looks horrible on a 50" client monitor.
- More codecs which are Sonar-friendly.
 
Fingers crossed!
#20
garybrun
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/02 15:21:59 (permalink)
+1

Sonar Platinum 64bit, Win 10 64 bit, English,
Intel Core i7 4960X @ 3.67GHz, ASRock Motherboard, 48GB DDR3 1600MHz, Nvidea NVS 510, Intel 750 1.2 SSD, 488GB SSD, 300GB SSD, 22TB in SATA
Hardware: VS-700 set ASIO, Presonus RM32ai, Studio Live III 32, Studiolive 32R,  RME Fireface 800, Matrox MX02 Rack, Roland Integra 7, Roland A-88, Edirol R-4 Pro, Focusrite Liquid Channel x 2, Jomeek Studio Channel VC1Qcs, Ultra Dyne 9024, TD30KV, Komplete 9 Ultimate, Monitors: Focal TRIO6 BE, JBL Studio Monitor 4412, SE Monroe Egg 150, Avantone x 2.
#21
jscomposer
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/04 12:20:03 (permalink)
This is why I switched to Cubase 7 for scoring to picture...it automatically syncs the frame rate, etc. Plus, Cubase is compatible with popular video formats. I got tired of coverting everything down to a lo-res AVI file.
 
I'm excited about X3 because I heard that an update later this year will address such issues.
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jscomposer
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/06 13:53:56 (permalink)
Does the latest X3 patch include video fixes??
#23
markyzno
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/10/06 14:20:42 (permalink)
jscomposer
Does the latest X3 patch include video fixes??




No, thats X3c. Wait for the news.

Sonar Platinum 64 bit > Pro tools 10.3.2 >Intel i7 3770K > 16Gb Ram > Gigabyte Z77-D3H Motherboard> NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2 GB > ATi RADEON HD5700 > 240GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD> Win 10 home 64 bit> Delta 1010 > MOTU Audio Express > MA-15D's > NI Ultimate 9 > NI Kontrol S61 1.1 > NI MAschine Studio 2.3 / KORG MS-20 Mini - Arturia MicroBrute > KORG SQ1 - KORG Kaoss Pad KP3 > iPad and IO Dock 2 running various bits > Bunch of guitars >

Sound Design on IMDB --
 
#24
Mirrodin
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Re: Motion Picture workflows 2013/11/28 19:47:39 (permalink)
Wow, great to see some more additions to the thread! The good news is I've solved the drift issue.  Surround Bridge is simply not an option for instancing any sort of plugins (and noticing that there was no real support for 5.1 surround plugins - more than stereo audio I/O via surround bridge).  Thus, I had to create several steps.


  1. Initial sound project:

    Srnd E: Master Surround bus to surround mains
    Srnd F: Dialog/Production Sound global
    Srnd G: Ambience global
    Srnd H: SFX global
    Srnd I: Music (already mixed, just placed for reference in this project).


    All clip-based FX are bounced and logged, with notes, using the clip lanes as archival and steps/iterations.
    All the dialog based tracks with track FX are "frozen" in place, and then trimed manually for the large silence gaps as I opt for this method or trim silence tools to make sure there are no issues with transient or sudden jump from zero amplitude.
  2. Created a new "mix" project, importing each of the stem bounces in 6 channel multitrack wave @ 96k/24 (same as my initial project).

    Each channel is hard panned to the correct surround placement / speaker designation using the surround panner.  I then worked from the center channel on outward experimenting with sound mixing: dynamics and EQ etc trying to find a good program level that wasn't squashed but also could be uniformly applied to each of the 6 channels (yes, affecting the sub too).  I would recommend (after experiencing this workflow) processing the center discretely, apply an instance of your chain to the front left and right, and whatever changes are made to the FL/FR keep them uniform with each other, do the same with the rears, and then treat the sub last, adjusting to keep impact and keep in mind the LFE's purpose in the listening experience.

    Much smaller project management.  The project above with all the stems I went through and removed silence manually again. This stage is where I spent a fair amount of time doing volume automation for secondary mix.  While processing with plugins worked to get me a "character" or window with which to hear the sonic landscape in, much of the dynamics and overall presentation I managed to achieve with automation. 
  3. My client was wanting rushed edits and constant temp render updates of the entire film project (printed to HD1080p mp4's) which meant every time I had to render the full film to give him a new copy of the film with the changes made (often there were changes made to VFX shots, or issues with timing in the end spacing between cut to black and the credit roll) meant I would have a solid 24-28 hours of down-time while the computer rendered the film.  I tried to urge him to minimize the time we spent doing iterative renders like this but he was insistant on the last two passes I made in the last couple months as he really wanted the film as complete as possible for each of his festival submissions. 
    Due to this, I ended up rushing a "master" phase and overdid it trying to get the levels and everything to feel and sound more "commercially competitive". it ended up destroying the mix, sounding amateurish, and in the stereo-downmixes phasing became ultra-apparent due to the center/LR/rears being muxed together with such smeared details in my processing being pushed up by the mastering chain.
    Thankfully I was able to spend some time undoing the damage and rendered the client a new temp render for submissions that while less "commercial competitive" retains the impact, sounds much more dynamic and was able to deliver on all the elements and work he wanted to stand out.
I have since purchased the X3 Producer upgrade, and LOVE the new features especially with the vst3 etc.  However, as this project was rushed I couldn't afford any issues so I did a side-by-side install of X3 next to X2, and just kept working on the project in X2. One thing I will point out is that the plugin Manager utility will be affected by the X3 install, and in X2 will show you options for VST3 but I didn't have any problems so long as I kept my static plugin menu layouts saved in X2 separate from X3.  I have yet to try and mess with X3's surround plugin capabilities and see if the surround bridge issues have been fixed.  But I can say with 99.99% certainty that the SOURCE of my problems started with using surround bridge for surround processing on 5.1 busses, and have completely disappeared in this workaround.  I have 0 timing/drift issues.
#25
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