Film Composer vs. Media Composer

An opinion on the pros and cons of each

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What if you're cutting a project that will be finished on film? How do you go from the avid sequence back to negative?

Avid makes a great version of their editing system called the Film Composer (also known as Universal Offline), frequently used on big Hollywood films. It takes your film-to-tape transfers and modifies the video in such a way that you are cutting at the film speed of 24 FPS. It generates lists that your negative cutter can use to finish the project. Everybody's happy.

Except the producer. That's really the only problem with the Film Composer--it's expensive to own and rent.

So a lot of people ask, is it possible to edit on a (much cheaper) Media Composer or other nonlinear system? The answer is: YES.

Years before Avid even existed, people got the smart idea that rather than spending a lot of money printing all your dailies and cutting on film, it was often cheaper to transfer negative to videotape and edit on a videotape system. To help this process several negative cutters developed "matchback" software that allows them to figure out which frames to cut using a standard video EDL (Edit Decision List).

Since you're cutting at 30fps (frames per second) and film runs at 24fps there's a decent possibility that a cut you make might be "between" two film frames. A good negative cutter with experience doing matchback knows how to adjust your edits by one frame so that this problem is solved. The adjustments are almost always unnoticable.

The process is really easy. The most important part is to hook up with a really experienced matchback negative cutter BEFORE transferring your negative to tape. The negative cutter will provide the film lab with common but critical specifications. Once the transfer is done, the negative cutter checks the tape to make sure it was done properly and to enter numbers into his software database. Then, you can use the tape to digitize and edit normally. At the end of your project you create a standard EDL and give it to the negative cutter. And that's pretty much it!

Here's a chart that outlines some of the differences:

			FILM COMPOSER or UNIVERSAL OFFLINE
					MEDIA COMPOSER (MC)
					30 fps. Some cuts you make will be between two film frames. The negative cutter will adjust cuts slightly to make up for this.
			24 frames-per-second. Every cut represents a specific film frame.
	Frame rate
					Because of the 30fps situation, slight sync errors might creep up.The simple solution is to make sure your negative is cut and a print is made before doing your final sound mix. Adjust as needed before the mix.
	Sound Synchronization		Nothing unusal.
	Special effects, duplicated footage				You need to pay attention to effects and you'll need to be careful not to use the same piece of nagative twice. The negative cutter will double-check this before starting to cut.
			Automates this process.
			Avid rental is much more but the negative cutting is cheaper.		You'll pay more for the negative cutting services but that cost is usually more than offset by a much cheaper editing system.
	Costs

 

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