Linear to Non-Linear storytelling

I recently had the opportunity to demonstrate what I feel is the overwhelming power of Virtual Katy on a project very similar to the first show that I used VK on. 

That first show was “Vantage Point” and when it first landed with us it was a linear telling of the story of a presidential assassination. It was a short 5 reel movie and far removed from the final released version. it had however had a lot of sound editorial work done on it already and parts of that was hoped to be saved. The next version we received was a non-linear telling of the story with each reel being from a different characters perspective culminating in a linear ending post-reveal.

Change notes on this type of conform would have been a nightmare and so we decided to give this new program, Virtual Katy a go. After a couple of failed attempts and some marvellous help from Craig Tomlinson with EDL evaluation and guidance we were able to reconform the linear version of the film into a non-linear version. 

Flash-forward to 5 weeks ago when I was approached by the mixer/sound editor on an independent feature to do this exact same process. We took the linear final mix sessions and we were able to reconform the full movie (tracklay, automation etc) into the non-linear directors cut in 40-60 minutes. The look on the directors face as he watched the linear guide QT’s being cut into the new non linear version and matching frame for frame was priceless to see. 

Obviously that wasn’t the end of the story and the sound editor then spent a few days going through and filling in the new scenes and smoothing some automation jumps but it widely accepted that this process would have taken a couple of weeks to have fixed without VK and it’s shot tracking, full project view.

Picture Editorial: Final Cut Pro, 24p project format
Sound Editorial : Avid Pro Tools 8
Conform materials: FCP Video EDLs
Virtual Katy: 3.0.2, 23.976 fps project

Regex - VK and Soundminer

I’ve mentioned RegEx before but thought I’d share some useful ones and some resources. 

VK allows for filtering on import of EDL’s. This is the Regex that I am using for this particular project to strip out all info other than Scene and Take from the Clip name.

_[(0-9A-Z)]*.+|\([a-zA-Z0-9]*.|\ (a-z0-9A-Z)*.+|\*

It’s not the prettiest and there is probably a more ‘tuned’ string out there somewhere but it works and I’m happy with that. 

With Soundminer I needed to repopulate the Scene Take and Tape fields from the filenames of some split out polyphonic files. Not going to go into why this was necessary right now but here is a regex string that was very useful in conjunction with the Admin functionality and the Find and Replace features in Soundminer. 

[._][(A-Z)(0-9)].*

Note this particular string and the process within Soundminer CAN be destructive to your files. I used the UserComments (whcih was completely empty) as a scratch pad for testing. 

Virtual Katy - Special Offer

Virtual Katy have been very kind in providing a special offer for those who make a purchase via this web site. They are giving a $100 discount when you mention this blog or my name when purchasing the Virtual Katy Premium Collection. 

If you’d like to take advantage of this offer please fill in the form linked as **VK Offer**

Thanks,

Ceri