268 The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, 4E

OMF Export

If you plan on using a dedicated sound editing application to complete the sound design of your film, software that can export OMF files will make your life a lot easier. OMF files contain the audio portion of your timeline and can be imported directly into an audio editing system such as ProTools. OMF support saves lots of time if you need to reconstruct your audio in another application.

Finishing Tools

Finally, the editing software you choose needs to be capable of creating an output of your final product. Outputting can be very complicated, and we’ve dedicated an entire chapter to it at the end of this book. Most professional-level editing applications offer support for low-res Web-oriented outputs and full-res HD outputs, as well as everything in-between.

Our Software Recommendations

There are many editing applications on the market, so we decided to stick with some of the most popular, and, in our opinion, most successful products out there. All of these programs are capable of being the centerpiece of a high-end, professional editing workstation. All of them share a similar, customizable interface with strong mouse support and lots of keyboard shortcuts. All of them offer drag-and-drop editing, three-point editing, and trimming. They have multiple levels of Undo, auto save and auto backup functions, as well as support for multiple video and audio tracks. They all offer decent audio editing tools and basic special effects capabilities, including title generators. Finally, they all support the importing and exporting of QuickTime movies and are capable of high-quality videotape outputs. In short, any one of these applications is up to the task of editing a movie. Finally, be aware that this list is not comprehensive. We chose not to talk about the myriad low-end editing apps—such as Apple iMovie—simply because there are so many of them, and they do not offer the advanced features necessary for longer format or more complex projects.

nAdobe Premiere Pro: The original QuickTime editing program, Premiere, is the least robust editing application listed here, but as a result, it is also the easiest to learn to use. It offers impressive integration with the Adobe Creative Suite, especially Photoshop, After Effects, Encore (for DVD/Blu-ray authoring), Media Encoder, and Soundbooth, not to mention Flash and Dreamweaver for Web-oriented projects.

nApple Final Cut Pro: Apple’s popular editing application is a complete, Mac platform–only editing system that is often the application of choice for indie filmmakers. The Final Cut Studio package includes several other great apps: Compressor, Soundtrack Pro, Motion, DVD Studio Pro, and Color.

nAvid Media Composer: It has a line of products that offer all of the features discussed in this chapter and then some. Designed for multiple users who need to manage large projects and finally available as a software-only app, Avid Media Composer is a great choice for the high-end market and indie filmmaker alike. The stand-alone software application comes bundled with Sorenson Squeeze, Boris FX Continuum, Avid DVD, and the SmartSound Sonicfire Pro music scoring application.

nSony Vegas: It is a mid-range Windows-only application with support for native HD editing.

Know What You Need

By this point, you’ve thought long and hard about your project. Look at the following list of editing software features and decide which ones are important for your project.

nWill your project require multi-camera editing?

nWill you need to network two or more editing workstations together?

nDoes the application have native support for the codec you shot your footage on? Or is the application’s intermediary codec right for your project?

nIs color correction important for your project?

nCan the application import and export the file formats you need: Flash, Photoshop, and so on?

nWhat kind of special effects will your project require?

nWill you be doing your final mix in your editing app or in a dedicated audio editing app?

nDo you need to be able to export audio OMF files or 2K film res frames?

Most software-only editing applications offer downloadable demo versions of their products, so try out the ones that sound promising.