The workflow of A-V

[fh1805]

I'm risking at least two things with this post:

- annoying some forum members by preaching to the converted

- upsetting some forum members who seem to hold a contrary view to me

I do respect the views of all other forum members and hope you will respect my right to hold my views. However, I think this subject needs airing.

During the course of this year I have become a regular reader of the forums and an increasingly regular contributor. There is, amongst all the posts, an undercurrent that worries me: the frequency with which some members are asking for sound-editing facilities to be added to PTE.

The workflow of the creation of an A-V sequence has the following phases:

- Planning - Deciding what your subject/theme will be, what images you will need, what music you might want to use, whether you will have voice-over or not, whether you will use sound-effects and/or actuality recordings as part of the sound-track.

- Acquisition - Taking the photographs, making the sound-recordings and getting everything into the computer

- Selection - Choosing which images you will use and which, on reflection, don't fit your needs. Choosing the words for your voice-over and writing a script

- Manipulation - Editing the images to improve them: e.g. by straighten horizons, eliminating converging verticals, removing colour casts and enhancing contrast, sharpening and resizing. Cleaning-up the voice-over recording, editing the sound-effects and actuality recordings

- Assembly - Bringing together the elements of your sound-track (music, voice-over, sound-effects, actuality recordings) and compiling the finished sound-track. Bringing together the images and combining some of them with animation, adding transitions between the images. Adding the sound-track alongside the images

- Polishing - Adjusting the precise timing of the images so that they fit together artistically with the soundtrack.

The Planning phase should start before all the others and will, to some extent, run alongside all the others throughout the creation of the sequence.

The Acquisition phase will involve you in raiding your image stock and in taking new images specifically for the sequence. For the audio side it will involve you in "track ripping" your music from your CD and in making the "open mic" recordings of actuality and voice-over material.

The Selection phase will involve you in discarding unwanted material; reducing a "long list" to a "short list" and a "short list" to an even shorter list and so on down to the final selection.

The Manipulation phase is where you use the tools appropriate for the material to improve and/or tailor it to your specific needs.

The Assembly phase is where you bring together your images (after selection and manipulation) and your sound-track (after selection and manipulation) and fit them together to achieve the artistic result that you had planned.

The Polishing phase goes on for as long as you want it to. If you are like me, every time you watch one of your sequences you see something that you feel you should change.

So, where does PTE fit into this workflow?

Is it a Planning tool? No!

Is it an Acquisition tool? No!

Is it a Selection tool? Not really, although I do use its "digital light-box" feature for some fine tuning of my final selection

Is it a Manipulation tool? No!, No!, No! This is where my concern arises.

Is it an Assembly tool? Yes!, Yes!, Yes!

Is it a Polishing tool? Most definitely!

If I want to manipulate an image file I use software tailor-made to do the job. In my case that means Adobe Photoshop Elements (currently version 5). If I want to manipulate a sound file I use software tailor-made to do that job too. In my case that means Audacity. I most certainly do not try and use a piece of software designed for some other purpose to do my manipulation.

Those forum members who are asking Igor to add sound editing capability to the product are asking him to take the product in totally the wrong direction. No one is asking for Igor to add the sort of image manipulation features that are found in Adobe Photoshop (and I guess in PixBuilder, also, although I have no knowledge of this products features). [igor, if they ever do, please say NO! - loudly and firmly]

So why do they want him to add sound file manipulation features? Why wont they use existing tools to do this job?

PTE is, in my opinion, simply the best software for the assembly of A-V sequences. That is where it fits in the workflow of A-V sequence construction and to try and use it anywhere else in the workflow is wrong.

It is an unfortunate, but nevertheless true, fact that so many different software packages allow totally inexperience individuals to add music to some images and leave them thinking that they can now create audio-visual sequences. There's a lot more to it than that. To do it reasonably well takes time and involves learning a whole new set of skills. You must become a craftsperson (I hate PC language: what's wrong with saying a craftsman? I know many women who are far better craftsmen than I am) in all the following areas:

- project planner

- layout designer

- storyboard writer

- photographer

- sound recordist

- script writer

- sound engineer

- sound editor

- image editor

- producer

- director

- tea/coffee maker

(That last one is far and away the most important!)

It also means using the right tool at the right time for the right reason. For the assembly of the A-V sequence that tool is PTE. But PTE is not the right tool for manipulating sound-files.

That's it, I've rambled on enough. Time to climb down off my soap-box and let you all have your say.

[Ronniebootwest]

Hello Peter, first off let me say that your post has certainly been well thought out and presented and, in the main, I agree with what you say. However, I doubt very much that manu people will want to go to all that trouble just to make a sequence of images, it is far too long winded. The majority of slide shows these days are simply individual images set to music and it is very rare to see an audio visual sequence made as you describe it. (have you posted one of yours? I would like berfy much to see it).

I totally agree with your comments about using tailor made software to manipulate material needed to create a slide show, i.e an image editor for tweeking images and a sound editor for creating sound files, adding these features to PTE would simply overload it and degrade it to the low standard of other software on the market. Igor, and his team, have created a top rate program that deals with the presentation of images this program is currently 'top of the heap' as far as I am concerned. It would be a great pity if this standard were to be reduced by adding options that would never be able to compete with the likes of Photoshop or Audition. So, I agree with you - let well alone!

Ron West.

[JEB]

Hi Peter,

I agree with much of what you say.

HOWEVER, though I use PTE 95% of the time for its main purpose - making AV’s, I find I am increasingly using it to make lecture presentations.

PowerPoint I hear you say – what was that?

In both cases I use my laptop for the audio and my desktop for the show, running them in tandem till I am reasonably happy that they are pretty well synchronised and only then bringing them together in PTE for final tweaking.

I have to say though if it were possible for PTE to enable sound located in a slide to merge with sound located within the project I would find that a very useful tool. Certainly I would want to have control of the volume of each source but this said I would be more than happy to continue the way I do at present rather than run the risk of compromising a wonderful product.

Regards

John

[bogaertb]

Hi Peter,

I agree with most what you are saying however where it comes to audio I am not completely in line. I know you can do it using Audacity but you realy have to start measuring slide-sequence duration if you want "adapt" music to the content of a slide. It is much easier if you can modify the length of a music clip more easily to adapt music and slides.

But as said: yo can use audacty.

Regards, Bart

[fh1805]

... have you posted one of yours?...

Ron,

Your comment brought home to me the fact that the sequences I had uploaded to MediaFire thus far were all images and music only. So I've just uploaded another one that includes voice-over as well.

I'll post a new topic in the Sequences forum to alert others to its existence but you can download it from here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?29c0niyaxyd

[Ronniebootwest]

Hello Peter,

Thanks for the Mediafire link but I am afraid that it is not working properly - it loads the Mediafire page but your download does not appear.

Ron

[fh1805]

Hi Ron,

Can you give it another try, please? Lin Evans has successfully downloaded the sequence and commented on it via the Sequences Forum, so it is the right link. And I've just clicked on the link in the posts above and it takes me to the download link on MediaFire. I think it must just have been a glitch when you tried.

[JEB]

Peter,

Firstly may I thank you for a beautiful and emotional production, particularly at this time of year with Armistice Day approaching. As someone who lost a father at Anzio during WW2 I know these cemeteries well.

To other matters.

Having, in the not too distant past, been responsible with others, for putting together a 25 minute documentary on the history surrounding our local river – from its source to its outflow - I can appreciate the need for as much detailed planning as possible. To a degree we did plan ahead, however the script was drafted and re-drafted during the period we were gathering images and knowledge – a period of about six months! I used Adobe Audition as I found its layout very easy to use. We used a lot of voice-over some sound effects and music in the background. No way would I have wanted to do all that in a version of PTE. I did as I suggested earlier run them side by side on two separate machines till I was happy that I was close enough to the desired level of synchronization.

However, for small shows I still think that a slightly improved degree of music control within PTE would be helpful.

Thanks again for your show – perhaps you should post it on the Show section of the Forum for others to see at this time of year.

Regards

John

[fh1805]

John,

Re posting the show in the other forum. I'm way ahead of you. It got posted there as soon as Ronnie's post above prompted me to re-assess what sequences I had already posted.

Thanks for the feedback and for the contribution to this thread.

[Ronniebootwest]

Peter, I have tried it again but still it will not work.

I will try it again tomorrow and let you know.

Ron

[Peter S]

Hi Ron,

I have just downloaded from Mediafire without any problems so I suspect the problem is at your end. Could your firewall be blocking the download?

Kind Regards

Peter

[potwnc]

Peter,

Your steps pretty much describe what I do... but I would add another step at the end for those of us who want the final product as a video instead of a Windows executable file. That step is rendering (burning would be another final step if the output is to DVD/BD etc.) PTE has come a long way - first with the ability to even output video at all(avi) then with the ability to render and burn to DVD and, with 5.1, the ability to mix existing video into the project.

Similarly to your points above, I'd say there are already excellent tools on the market for these final step(s). I use Vegas Pro 8 and DVD Architect Pro 4.5. Now these are high-end, professional grade, expensive products. But then I'm working on a full-length documentary, in High-Definition and which I want to look as professional as possible. To give some perspective - to date this is a has been an 8.5 -year project (I started the planning in mid 1999 and took the first photos later that year). I've been in serious post-production mode for about 3 months now and I only have about 15 minutes of finished material!

I suspect most PTE users aren't working on projects this elaborate or of this size and so what PTE can now do in this area will be fine for most users. But for others - like me - the DVD Builder component is something I just won't use. Nor would I have any use for any audio manipulation that might get put into PTE - but again others will.

So I'm both agreeing and disagreeing with you. Ultimately WnSoft will decide what this product wants to be as it grows up and the market will determine how commercially successful it is. Right now I would use no other software (and I've tried various of them) for the assembly and polishing but those are my only 2 uses of PTE as it exists today and as far into the future as I can see.

Ray

[pwear]

The original post raises some very good questions. Preferences seem to depend mainly on the kind of final product the av worker wants to produce. Those who have the skill and patience to do complex and highly creative manipulations of still images have a wonderful program in PicturesToExe.

But what about those of us who work in the simplest format - a flow of pictures cut to music, with editing and effects used sparingly?

I began using PTE years ago because it retained image crispness and produced such smooth crossfades. I could find no other software that combined these two crucial qualities – there was no contest. And I stuck with the program into version 5 because I welcomed ‘camera movements’, subtle pans and zooms, and again PTE gave an excellent end result.

But then I started looking around for alternatives, and discovered more recent software that is faster and more flexible for the way I work. Here’s why. If you are mostly cutting pictures to music, the impact of the end result is hugely dependent on timing, on establishing the rhythm of your transitions and effects to match the mood and beat of your sound track. It follows that the most important manipulations are changing the order and duration of images, modifying their associated effects, and splitting and trimming audio tracks. This is about 90% of the work, once the pictures and music have been chosen and sequenced.

The only user interface that does this well and quickly is the ‘timeline’ model, with thumbnails that can be placed or re-ordered by mouse movement, and then stretched or squeezed to change their duration. Zooms, pans and fades, associated with the thumbnails, must be just as easily configured by mouse movement, with every change able to be instantly previewed from any point in the prodution. The corresponding audio edits, splits and fades, must be quick to effect and must play back immediately. Most of this, PTE cannot do.

I tossed up between Wings Platinum and mObjects Basic, choosing the latter because it was cheaper. Even though it doesn’t have an English language handbook, the design is so intuitive that I discovered most of what I needed to know in a couple of hours of fiddling around. The image quality of its output and effects is absolutely the equal of PTE.

If PTE ever develops a genuine timeline interface, it will probably become the Photoshop of AV production, but until then it's like most other programs - very good at some things and less good at others.

Another Peter