Hi Team
Dorico is so good now that I can use the exported audio as high quality demos for producers and other stakeholders.
In media projects there can often be many cues in a media project with multiple versions of both video and audio. Exporting to Cubase for each iteration of these versions is not worth the trouble so I prefer to leave that until the cue has been approved.
Getting these cues signed off from producers and other stake holders takes a fair bit of manual labour that needs to be repeated for each updated version.
- Create/Edit the cue
- Export the audio
- Merge with video
- Remove the leading one second of silence at the start of the exported audio
- Manually make sure it’s frame accurately synchronised with the Video
- Export the merged media file
- Make sure the synchroned media file is named and versioned correctly using your projects designated naming conventions
- Upload to Frame.io|CueDB|Whatever
- Wait for feedback from producer and work on another cue.
- REPEAT lots of times
It’s easy to make mistakes with versions confusing the stakeholders and making decisions very awkward. These stakeholders are also very busy particularly in post-production.
My request is for the Dorico team to consider this workflow and assist in some improvements. The primary Dorico related workflow issue is the frame accurate export of the merged audio and video. Some things for consideration:
- When exporting the audio on its own, embed a reference timecode so that the audio can be aligned correctly when importing into a video editor (such as DaVinci Resolve or similar)
- When exporting audio (and video) use a similar concept to the “Filename Options” that allows the user to build up the filename based on parameters.
- Add a “Incrementing Version Number” to each flow that can be used in the filename when exporting. Dates and times are useful but they get messy.
- Perhaps add some LUA based scripting hooks that run pre and post-processing, where an advanced user can do stuff like upload to a remote server.
I imagine that these types of capabilities would benefit professional copyists and arrangers as they work quickly preparing for a session.
On a side note: versioning of files for professional projects is a big deal, not a little one. I’m not talking about text based project files enabling the comparison of two project files - I’m not sre that’s as helpful as it sounds. You’ve got to be ready to retrieve previous versions, have them labelled properly so that you can find them and make changes. It’s very important to be prepared for disaster.
For projects that can be mostly done within Dorico this will really make a difference.
Kind regards
James