Encore Hollywood is the first site to be employing the Mathematical Technologies Inc. (MTI) new Control Dailies system, which looks well positioned to attract attention at the 2005 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas this coming April.
Control Dailies is a software-based workflow system that serves as the backbone of the dailies process, handling tasks such as collecting “metadata” (all the information about a job including shoot dates, credits and copyrights) as well as organizing material, archiving and outputting tape. It also provides a window to what could be the future of postproduction.
“The idea [with Control Dailies] was to lay a foundation for transitioning a videocentric facility to being a datacentric facility, and in doing so create efficiencies in the process,” explained MTI board member Larry Chernoff, who has been working closely with the development team. (Chernoff continues to hold the title of chairman of Ascent Media Creatives Services, the Santa Monica-headquartered parent of Encore; and also operates his Beverly Hills-based consulting firm Chernoff Touber Associates.)
“[The aim] is to create a work process that is harmonized where every application is metadata aware, and Control Dailies lays the foundation for the collection of all the metadata,” said Chernoff. “Subsequent applications [i.e. editing and compositing] would borrow the metadata from Control Dailies.”
Beta site Encore started using Control Dailies in October, and is now using the system to produce dailies five days a week, for the episodic series Without A Trace. SHOOT recently sat in on a dailies session at the facility.
Encore telecine assistant Jordan Fox began the evening by creating a list of the day’s work and importing audio. This is the beginning of the process of collecting metadata. The material is stored on drives (in this instance provided by Bright Systems), and the metadata sits on the MTI database server. The server also becomes an archival tool in that it contains all the organized metadata after the project is completed. (MTI recommends backing up the data weekly.) The masters are then stored in a vault.
Control Dailies operates on a high performance storage area network (SAN), in this case from Bright Systems, which operates at 450 MB/second (which can accommodate four streams of standard definition video and two streams of high definition, or could be used for higher resolution 2k data, if needed) and is used for tasks including ingest, quality assurance and output to tape.
The next step is color correction, which is accomplished at Encore in this case with a da Vinci DUI and Control Dailies interface. Chernoff estimated that the industry average for dailies is that for every four hours of work in a telecine session, one hour gets recorded. He asserted that Control Dailies can get a facility down to a 2:1 ratio. “It’s doubling their capacity,” he contended.
Chernoff added that this could make the dailies process faster and more efficient–in other words, more profitable, as a facility that charges by the foot can accommodate a heavier volume of work in the same period of time. “You should be able to get two shows through per night,” he estimated. “There’s a great economic incentive for a facility to go with Control Dailies.”
Encore colorist Erin Dodgen confirmed that it helps her to get the job done faster. “And it’s less stressful–I’m not worried about sync issues or lists. I can concentrate on color, so it gives me a better product in faster time.”
As Dodgen color corrected, assistant Fox worked simultaneously on tasks such as quality assurance and finally recording to tape; this helped to speed up the process while also providing experience for this next generation of talent.
For recording dailies to tape, the formatting step includes automated laydown of bars and tone, black and the slate. With Control Dailies, MTI noted that a facility can bypass other machines, such as character generators and audio mixers in the dailies workflow.
MTI expects to have the product further developed by NAB, with new features including 2k data support. As development continues, the company is focused on building a work process where every post application is metadata aware.
“Every application would borrow from Control Dailies its knowledge base of metadata,” said Chernoff. “That can really help in commercials because you could transfer everything in 2k, work in proxies in the editorial room, but then when EDL comes back from the editorial room you can literally online it instantaneously and present it to the color corrector in story sequence.
“I think this system, particularly with it going to 2k, dovetails very well for commercials,” he added. “They won’t tax storage as much as features, for example.”
At NAB, MTI also aims to introduce a new product called Convey, which is an application that would work in tandem with Control Dailies, as it will handle file-based deliverables. Chernoff explained that Convey would grab frame and transcode them into various file formats for delivery, including Avid files, Window Media 9, MPEG2 for DVD, and MXF for Apple’s Final Cut Pro.
“In the case of Avid files, generally speaking, you record your video out to videotape; the videotape goes to the cutting room and they digitize it in cutting room,” Chernoff explained. “We’re hoping to bypass that by encoding Avid files in Control Dailies through Convey, and Convey would produce those files and deliver those files on a storage device such as a Firewire drive.”
MTI director of sales Pat Howley reported that further down the road, the company plans to tweak the software to further accommodate commercials with a version that allows for fast ingest of all footage rather than recording selected takes. That release would be timed to meet customer demand.
SHOOT’s Annual Road to NAB Series begins March 18 and will appear each week until NAB. The series will continue its tradition of breaking news about product introductions, evaluating industry trends, and helping readers plan their NAB schedules. For editorial consideration, contact SHOOT’s senior editor of technology and postproduction Carolyn Giardina at 310-581-5750 or email cgiardina@shootonline.com.