Apple M8728Z/A User Manual - Page 152

If you are using a traditional film workflow, the effects must be output back to film using a digital film recorder. This is sometimes called the film-digital-film method. First, the original camera negative is scanned digitally; then the scanned digital copy is imported into a digital film workstation, and your special effects are created there before being recorded back to film. There are digital effects labs that offer this service, using your film list as a guide in determining the location and duration of motion effects and of superimposed compositing effects such as blue-screen effects. Although the film-digital-film method can produce wonderful effects, be aware that it can be more expensive than optical printing. • Effects involving filters and color correction: Digital film restoration and artifact removal are other types of digital manipulation that commonly occur with the film-digital-film method. This kind of digital manipulation is tracked by the filter effects list, which is part of the optical list. In a DI workflow, you can use Color to perform many of these types of digital manipulation. Color is capable of outputting DPX image sequences, which can be used to print back to film. In a film workflow, any color correction or filterlike effects in your finished film are created by a specialist at a film-printing facility or via the film-digital-film method. You can work directly with a color specialist (often known as a color timer) to include color correction in your film. Special Considerations for Effects in a DI Workflow There are a wide variety of approaches to working with effects when you are using a DI workflow. There are also an increasing number of third-party applications available that specialize in the various aspects of the process, such as tracking effect revisions. Following is a list of issues that you need to be aware of while working on your project: • If you have not already created high-quality film scans of the parts of the video involved in the effect, you must do that first. You can use the optical list section of a film list to identify the film rolls and frames that need to be pulled and scanned. There are many methods you can use to generate that film list-for example, you can place all effects in their own track and specify that track when exporting the film list. • The digital visual effects facility generally provides the final effects using your final output video format and resolution. Make sure to retain all original metadata such as key numbers and timecode so the effects can be tracked back to the original film frames. Otherwise you must manually verify that the correct frames were used to create the effects, which can be time-consuming. • You need to create temporary versions of the effects to use in your offline edit of the program. In some cases, the visual effects facility may provide these. If so, make sure the facility knows which codec to use and your sequence settings so that the clips will not have to be reencoded or rendered. These temporary versions of the effects clips also need to have the same timecode as the original video clips. 152 Chapter 9 Editing with Final Cut Pro