Why Online?

You’ll need an online edit if you plan to exhibit at festivals, broadcast on TV, or master to DVD. There are technical requirements you’ll be expected to pass if you want a public screening. Even if you just want to upload to Vimeo or Youtube, an online edit is an affordable way to give your project a high-budget look.

We can work with you from the very beginning of the project to help you make good decisions early on. There’s nothing worse than coming to the finish line and discovering that you have to recut your entire film because you were working in one format instead of another. Go ahead, give us a call. We can help you figure out what workflow will work best for you.

Why is it called “Online Editing”?

Online editing is the process of taking an edited film or video and making it ready for mastering, broadcast, or distribution. The term itself can be confusing. Online editing doesn’t have anything to do with the internet. Traditionally, high-quality (or “online” resolution) video files are so large that it’s not possible to store all that’s needed to edit a program on a single machine. Instead, editors often work with a low-quality (or “offline” resolution) version of the original footage and cut that together. After the show has been completely edited (called “picture-lock,” or just “pixlock”), an online editor recaptures only the high-quality footage that was actually used in the program. This new high-resolution footage replaces the low-quality video, and the show now looks its best — it is “online”.

What if I’m already editing in native HD?

Today, the process of replacing low-quality temporary video with final, high-quality video is only the first step in an online edit. This first step is called “conform,” where the high-resolution material is “conformed” to the shape of the edited show.
Once the show is conformed, or if you’re already editing in HD, there’s much more to do.

A typical online edit consists of other steps such as:

  • Color grading
  • Effects
  • Packaging
  • Output

Why color grade? (And isn’t that color “correct”?)

The online editor looks at every shot to make it look as good as it can. Sometimes the camera isn’t set up properly and the color needs to be “fixed” to look natural. Sometimes a shot from one day is edited next to a shot from a different day and the two don’t look like they go together. Color correction can almost always fix these errors, making a show look consistent and beautiful — if that’s what you want.

The colorist could also make a shot look darker, or uglier, or older. A good colorist can turn day into night, make a red jacket blue, or draw the viewer’s eye toward a particular character in the frame. This goes beyond mere “correction,” and is an art of its own. This is where the term “color grading” comes from.

Take a look at our Gallery for and idea of what color correction can add to your piece.

And you do effects?

We can do simple or complicated effects based on what you need, including:

  • Greenscreen
  • Moves on stills (the “Ken Burns” effect)
  • Stylistic effects like outlines, night vision, film damage, etc
  • Just about anything else we can dream up…

If you need effects work done, let us know and we can work together to figure out if it’s something we can accomplish. There’s a lot we can do, but in some cases like complex 3D animation, we know some local artists that have the specialized tools you’ll need.

How about packaging?

Packaging is most common in series television, where certain graphics, fonts, and pieces of video are expected to be consistent over the course of many episodes. At this point, the online editor often crosses the t’s and dots the i’s, literally, by placing all of the text in a show and, if necessary, retyping credits and such.

I can guess what output is…

At this point, the online editor has a completely finished version of the show and it’s time to make a tape, or a DVD, or a video file of some sort as the final copy that you’ll take home with you. This is the most technically challenging part of the process. HD format decks are expensive and designed for engineers, not editors. There are complex, hundreds-long lists of advanced features, dozens of possible combinations of settings, and delicate cabling connections that all must work together to ensure quality. Out of the multitude of HD formats and resolutions, we’ll make sure you pick the right one.

That does sound like a lot of work

The amount of work depends on the show, and we can tailor your online edit to your needs. An online edit could take a day for a short piece, or two weeks (or more) for a feature film. Some shows are already at high-resolution and don’t need any packaging, and what they need are a good, artistic color grade and output to tape. Other shows are very rough, and need a lot of conform and packaging work, but just a basic color correction pass before output. Some shows just need a DVD delivered at the end; others need 8 to 12 tapes and DVDs made.

If you’re delivering to a TV network, we know that the lengthy technical documents they provide you can be difficult to follow. We’ll go through the requirements with you so you understand what deliverables will be necessary and what additional materials you may need to supply. We’ll help you make sure that your project adheres to specifications for supplementary requirements such as textless masters, graphics masters, slates, and video levels.