How and where to do your Post Production.

The world of professional editing and post production has changed dramatically in the last few years. The biggest of the barriers to entry – (cost), has all but disappeared with the advent of desktop editing solutions.
Manufacturers like Apple and Adobe and even Avid have made this possible with products like Final Cut Studio 2 and Adobe’s CS3 Production Suite leading the way, with Avid trying hard to compete; at least on price.
Most of these manufacturer’s offerings are a bundle of software which try to give you most of the tools you will need, with editing, DVD authoring, compositing, titling, colour grading and audio design all included. They are designed as a bundle and the various applications have straight forward ways of working together, to prevent those moments when you need to get a project that has been created in one format to open and work in another that uses a totally different format and find that they wont talk to each other.
At the start of the mini revolution the post production industry took some time to be convinced that products like these which retail for less than£2k could compete with the established manufacturer’s products with price tags between £40K and £500K. Of course there is no one solution that will deliver everything to all people, so its important to know what you want to achieve and in what time frame to be able to make an informed decision on your next purchase. In today’s professional world almost every facility large and small has one or more of these desktop solutions available in their portfolio of services.
This has also meant that the line between traditional offline and online editing roles has been blurred however they are still not the sort of skills that everyone has in equal measure and although more and more people are crossing this bridge with training it is still not typical to have the same operator start and finish a project to delivery.
One thing that has made it a bit easier is that nearly all these applications now run on one manufacturers hardware, with Apple leading the way. So there no longer needs to be several workstations running the various different software’s; one machine could be all you need. As you may have guessed by now all these solutions are using digital formats and this has meant that again the traditional roles of video engineering and support has had to change as well and move into the digital world of zeros and ones.
If due to workflows and volume you still need to have multiple workstations sharing a project then the solution is often a shared network, and this is where it becomes more an IT rather than video issue on management and support but again there are some very affordable options out there. For example many workstations can double up as both the operating workstation and the network storage, and with distributive rendering and file sharing it just keeps getting better.
Another recent change to the way you can maximise your resources is digital asset management which also has includes some reasonably priced options. The most recent of which are CatDV and Apple’s Final Cut Server. If you are someone that has a mass of DV tapes and other media, and need to be able to see what's on them at a glance or you perhaps want a quick and convenient way to log all your material then either of these could be the answer you have been looking for.
It could be said that the biggest differential that exists today between those that can and those that do is the quality of the talent and with the cost of solutions having dropped significantly there has been a move towards spending some of these savings on training talent to an even higher skill level or hiring the right craft freelancer for those important clients and projects.
You may be someone that chooses to do as much of the work yourself and then take it to a suitable post house to finish and online the project to a professional quality, this can produce massive savings and also allow you the flexibility of trying new things without watching the clock and the budget run out.
So to sum up, the more you know about your specific requirements before starting the search for the answer the more likely you will be to make the right decisions and it doesn’t have to cost the earth.

Soho Editors Agency
Soho Editors Agency represents some of the best talent on the planet in all genres of media including Commercials, Broadcast TV, Web, Corporate, Music, Computer Games and Feature Films. Soho Editors have years of experience working in the post production industry around the world with offices in London, New York & Dublin.
Soho Editors have the largest qualified database of post production talent available online for you to view & search. Soho Editors prides itself on understanding the clients we work with and are always available to help with any project you may have coming up, contact our Talent Agents for all the help you need.