Video to audio, audio to video… Which one comes first, is really open to any ones discretion these days.
There are forms of video and sound art that are never locked, and always changing.
Edit sound to video, or video to sound.
With the current project I am producing, it would make life much easier and quicker, and would suit the creative process… to be able to edit video inside the DAW. Just basic basic one track video editing. Splice, Trim, Fade In/Out, Clip Cross fading, Clip Manager.
Most video editing programs have the bare minimum audio editing capability. But most DAWs on the market don’t have any video editing capability with the exception of Acoustica MixCraft.
Why not give this opportunity for the composer and director, to work more closely with the video in the musical DAW, rather than have these processes so separated? Being able to do a rough cut while making the music. Or making music, then making the visuals. Then adding the visuals, then tweaking the music, then tweaking the visuals?
That is a very simplified view of the tools needed when editing.
How would you temp a needed split?
What type of video cross fades should be available?
Import export of XML/EDL?
Text scrolls?
Graphics handling?
Basic Color correction and LUTs? Etc.
While there may be quite a bit of overlap between picture and sound editing for Resolve to eventually mature to a usable level, I am quite sure it will never turn into a compositional tool.
I also do see the value of being able to link picture and sound during editing. But so far not even Avid has managed to do that. Adding a full NLE toolset to a DAW is no simple matter. And if it’s not a full NLE it is only useful for the odd type of productions that don’t need or use a professional workflow. Thus it is unlikely to make enough money to pay for the investment.
It would be ideal, if you could export XML so you could load the edit into Premiere and continue the edit there.
But as another user had pointed out on another thread that no longer exists (thankfully), Acoustica has accomplished this in their MixCraft software, even with video effects.
Text scrolls, I’d say no. Text overlay and positioning and still picture imports yes.
It’s more about rough editing, musical transition timing, and just being able to work and be in a mindset that is sort of working in an opposite direction if it seems creatively appropriate for the project, than it is about having video editing implementation that results in a finished video product exported out of DAW. Most people would do the finished video in another program, although that’s not say that this couldn’t potentially be good enough for basic YouTube video editing. I envision it as more of a way to develop a testing stage in a project where the music/sound and visuals are developed together more closely, rather than one after the other.
I fully get your point, I just don’t think the user base at that “basic” level is large enough or financially strong enough to warrant the development to do this.
If it could make a lot of money, help workflow for most users while not stealing development resources from the DAW development, then I wouldn’t mind it beeing included at all. If any of my points would be affected negatively (I think all of them would have to be) then I don’t see a big enough upside to do it I am afraid.
And I fully realise that different types of users see this from diferent perspectives.
I do Feature films and TV Drama with decent budgets based on my location (low according to Hollywood standards, medium to high compared to many other countries). We would love a tool that would make it easier to achieve preliminary sound work while editing is ongoing. But not by sacrificing quality or workflow on either picture editing or sound. No current tools can deliver this yet. Resolve is closest though.
Maybe there is potential through ARA2 to have a video editing program hosted in the DAW? I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but that would be very cool, and really, even better.
My only thought on why this could be popular… Is look at YouTube musicians and YouTube content creators. I mean, that would be the mass market to tap into. But then you have more niche markets that are quite big as well, a lot of electronic musicians are putting a lot of resources into creating visual experiences to the extent that it is a merged artform - it’s more of a media presentation.
Definitely a risky endeavor, but it makes sense in my mind and I’m surprised more DAWs haven’t tapped into this… It’s all about the combined live music+visuals these days. All video programs are %90 video, %10 sound… But DAWs are more like, %99 DAW, 1% video - it’s just interesting is all.
I’m considering just running MTC or something to another computer running the video editor.
The problem isnt syncing them together, that is the easy part. The problem is editing on both simoultaneously, where some sounds needs to follow the video edits(dialog and hard effects), some sometimes need to follow, ambiances music and sound design elements, and what about the other way around? If you edit the sound or music, if/how/when/why should control if a video edit should happen as well?
This gets really complex really quickly.
That is why picture leads and sound follows for most work, apart from music videos and art installs.
Yes, and I’m caught in the middle of the software tug of war to the max extreme with this particular project… It’s really a project of combined mediums and will even be displayed to audiences in different ways.
There truly is no program that has this balance.
Of coarse we have workarounds, and have refined a working system that is as efficient as possible, but having these minor abilities in a DAW would expedite the creative process exponentially.
Imagine if you could just share these basics between program using one .XML clip project database - maybe the video editor has started sequencing clips, has some placements, some clip crossfades, multicam cuts, and the video editor just saves to a software shared project folder with a .XML and then this can instantly be opened in Nuendo and all the same placements, crossfades, etc are right there in Nuendo and can still be tweaked. No rendering.
I would love to see something like this as well. I use Nuendo mostly for music production but I do get video projects where simple splicing is required. These projects rarely have set-in-stone video or audio. One influences the other, requiring going back and forth between programs, sometimes guessing where the edit should be.
While I don’t mind this request conceptually I do have two concerns;
Allowing for more non-audio work to be done in a post-audio environment/situation risks far less efficient workflows. So in one sense I’m wondering if we won’t lose out on productivity if this is the case. Granted, we may be heading that way anyway, as a matter of fact I think we are, and so it may be unavoidable and in the long term necessary to compete. But having said that I still feel it’s a bit of a concern because I think several of us prefer to focus on audio and not have to deal with other things.
(Blackmagic design with its Davinci Resolve is an example of a company marrying the two, from the other side so to speak)
More importantly though I would be worried about everything that is not video in Nuendo. I think we need to look at Nuendo as a whole and then look at development cycles and both quirks and bugs as well as other features. I’m certainly not convinced that this is the best place to spend development money. In my opinion other features that could and maybe should be improved should come first. So the question then becomes what happens if Steinberg tries to make this happen; does the other stuff wait, does everything get developed simultaneously which then means either slower progress or less quality or more resources spent on r&d (i.e. probably higher cost for us)……???
However, it would be amazing if you could just shorten a piece of video and replace the audio in one action straight from the project window. Nothing fancy, just really rudimentary, purely for preview.
I don’t want any video editing features in my DAW. Okey, replace audio for video is needed and also replace audio for a selected part of the video is needed and thus some basic video conversion options.
But why nothing else IMO? Because it is not my job to re-edit video. If something goes wrong and there are some mismatch in the final cut because I did some (asked) corrections. Who’s the one who pays for correcting it? Me?
And just ”some” video editing features would not be enough. The whole feature line up would be necessary including export different edls, video effects etc…
Now, how many new bugs this would introduce? Too many…
How much heavier this would make my DAW. Too much…
How complex the whole DAW would become? Too time consuming for me.
There are options for one man shows if video and audio editing needs to be done within on application…
I edit video in FCPX and Premiere… there’s no way shoehorning that type of workflow into a DAW wouldn’t ruin the DAW and make a crappy video editor.
If video is your bag and you want a decent audio experience then FCPX integrates a little bit of Logic in there, with a path into Logic. [ though I prefer moving to Nuendo or Cubase of course]
For matter give Resolve a try … it’s free… and has everything in there. Not my cup of tea, but you can’t say it’s not a one-stop-shop!
Video editing features in Nuendo?
Please. Not.
The last thing I need is some customer who’s gotten on to the fact that I might be able to ammend a video edit in a picture-locked film I’m mixing. It’s practically ASKING them to take the hand when we’ve offered a finger.
Only the POSSIBILITY of us being able to change editorial decisions and the production companies KNOWING this will open a whole new world of pain for us as well as the editorial staff:
What? The dialogue scene in the park at 13:34 is too long at the end? Oh, we’ll just let the mix guy do it in his studio, no need to book the edit suite for another day… Hey, what’s this? There’s a flash frame at the cut now - how’d that happen? (Maybe because the audio guy doesn’t have a class-1 monitor in his studio that can show interlaced video and why should he?) … Hey, our master file’s just been rejected by QC, they say the MXF container has material with the wrong codec … But we’re airing tomorrow!!! … Aaaaah! … Who’s gonna fix this? … Who’s gonna pay for this??? … and on and on.
I am already suspiciously eyeing Resolve in that respect, thankfully, for now, it’s still a kick-ass CCR tool but still a crap NLE and a crap DAW. Let’s hope it stays that way and never makes it to industry standarddom in either of the latter.
That is something I may need to clarify here for all you Steinberg R&D folks who are surely listening in
When I asked you some time ago to include a replace audio feature for broadcast op1A files, I explicitly meant ONLY replace audio. I do not EVER in any way want to be able to influence the video content of said file… ^^
As you said, it would never work. On most of the pro-projects, multiple people are working on the same masters. (Editors, VFX, Grading, Composers, Foley, dialog edit, …) Currently it already is a problem to have video’s named, numbered, 2popped, BITC-ed & distributed to all concerned collaborators in a proper way.
For smaller single-person-projects there is Premiere, FCPx and Resolve.
Let’s keep it that way.
The idea isn’t aimed at engineers holding commercial audio chairs in commercial audio editing studios where they clock in and out and are there only for one purpose.
I’m not sure a hypothetical “how many bugs would this produce?” is a valid point either because well… let me ask you, specifically, “how many new bugs would this produce? Exact number please”. Maybe it wouldn’t produce any new bugs, or maybe 1, or 2? Or Maybe 100. Still, It’s no reason to not do something potentially inspiring new kinds of workflows.
Why would a customer who locked their own picture ask you to do, it doesn’t make sense. and would you even be working off a full resolution copy of the locked-picture? Anyways, regardless of this feature… You decide what work you want and don’t want to do always… And if someone wanted you to do this? You would turn down the money?
You’re both speaking all this crazy hypotheticals to try and negate an idea, of which doesn’t even have to really do with that field of work…? You guys need to listen to some Brian Eno or something, get a little outside the box.
Look at how long it took to iron out some fundamental flaws in Nuendo 7. Look at the time it took to deal with certain issues in v8. Still some very strange things going on in 8.3.15 supposedly.
The question is if it is more beneficial for those who can afford to pay for Nuendo and stay up to date (professionals mainly) to have video editing capability rather than have those issues fixed. I think that’s the fundamental question here. And what you need to ask yourself is; What are the odds that even if new bugs aren’t introduced at a higher rate because video editing was added bugs that are ‘normal’ will take longer to fix?
I’ll take bug fixes and improvements and enhancements of post-production specific features over added video stuff any day.
I think you should listen to all the people that chimed in here. I don’t wish to sound dismissive because I don’t really know you personally, but you’re talking to people with literally decades of experience in post production. Like Tumppi said; when something becomes possible clients start asking for it. Let me just give you at least some perspective:
When I started out all my work was done in Pro Tools. The system ran on a beige mac and included a Digidesign sync box that connected to a machine room where Beta decks were located. In the beginning picture was played back from tape in realtime. After a while we started digitizing video from tape (realtime), but we still laid back to tape (realtime again). The point here is that there was virtually zero time to mess with picture edits because changing something meant re-edit in the Avid, export new OMF, create new DigiBeta tape, physically get that tape to audio post, and at that point it’s hours later. If you’re in television this was a no-no. Locked mostly meant locked in those days.
Now fast forward to a few years ago when I started getting requests to send out audio-to-picture for review. No biggie. PT allows me to bounce to video. But then there was bouncing to shorter sections. And eventually people started asking if I could tweak edits that became problematic (i.e. lip-sync issues etc) and finally “Can we adjust color here?”.
So, the question is really a deeper one here; how much different type work do you really want to do in post? Highly skilled professional or “Jack of all trades master of none”? Which ultimately pays most? Which is ultimately most rewarding.
– AND: Are you prepared to not only be responsible for audio being to spec, but also video?
My guess is that you’re actually right about things converging and that there’s a benefit to it to decent size of the market, but the question is if it’s better to add stuff to Nuendo or simply learn how to operate Resolve alongside Nuendo instead. I for one would rather become good at Resolve and very good at Nuendo than having to deal with upcoming issues with video features… and ‘yes’, I’m absolutely being a pessimist about that.
Pop-quiz: It’s February 2019 and we’re on Nuendo v8 - Can we export audio mixdown to picture yet?
The answer should tell you all you need to know about the potential issues of extensive video features.
