Digital dailies: thanks to evolving technology, producers are saving time and money

Post, Oct, 2004 by Matthew Armstrong

The concept of digital dailies means different things to different people, depending on the situation. Traditionally, "dailies" or "rushes" are unedited prints of movie film from the previous day's shoot processed overnight and shipped back for the director to screen on location.

But thanks to the Internet and other technologies, this footage can now be transmitted electronically with a variety of resolution and connectivity options. This has not only changed the way traditional dailies are acquired and sent but also production and post, saving time and money and allowing for integrated collaboration anywhere in the world. This is why the term digital dailies has come to mean something else. In addition to the dailies from a shoot, there are the various stages of rough cuts, the reviews of effects shots and final reviews before a project goes to color correction and processing.

Mixed into this equation are the needs of the people viewing the footage. For some, a lower rez proxy may be all that is necessary in order to get an idea of the content, while the director, cinematographer and visual effects artists require full resolution film frames to accurately assess their work. To this point Larry Librach, assistant VP of business development for broadcast & entertainment at JVC notes. "There isn't any one system that fits every need."

The fact that there are many systems out there and the fact that studios and post houses are racing to find the best solution is a sign of the savings potential in transferring footage digitally.

"In terms of process we're talking about saving five to 10 working days per daily transfer and review cycle," explains Jerry Ledbetter, of Sony Pictures Entertainment. "If they're shooting in Canada it's probably saving three to five days, if they're in China it's probably 10 days. That time savings translates into dollars. It means striking sets earlier, talent decisions are made earlier and it allows you to correct things in time. Anytime you can save days it's a big dollars savings."

CUSTOMIZING YOUR DAILIES SOLUTION

Sony Pictures Entertainment (www.sonypictures.com) deals with virtually every form of production from film to television and studio or on-location shoots around the world, and each of these types of production has its own requirements. From sending low rez Windows Media 9 files for content review, full rez MPEG-2 files back to the editors or DVD files or HD resolution files for screening, Sony Pictures has implemented a system that allows it to meet a wide range of needs.

"There's a large variety of requirements around supplying digital dailies," says Ledbetter, "We literally have a couple different methods we have put together for achieving those kinds of results associated with each individual area. At the core of that is the ability to move material over the network as digital files, and that's the CineShare solution."

Incorporated a year ago, CineShare is a proprietary software system built on top of the software ActiveMedia from Insci. Insci's ActiveMedia solution is a scalable, enterprise class digital asset management solution allowing a user to play video, stop it, enter comments, view metadata and send it via the Internet along the production chain. Sony Pictures wrote a software program on top of that which allows it to tailor the workflow to suit a particular production's needs, whether it be a television program shooting at a studio in LA or a film shoot in China. Having a system that is easily adaptable to suit any variables of production has been the key element in handling all of Sony Pictures' business. Sony also makes use of Sample Digital's licensed software with its encryption key and playlist viewing system.

"Formats are going to keep changing and improving," Ledbetter notes. "That's an important reason for decoupling the systems that supply digital dailies. Network transport as a single service and decoupling it from the actual player or the encoders is an important strategic way to approach the solution. That way we don't have to change it all at once as we move on and plug in new technologies."

"In the past you had physical delivery, which was slow, and the other option was FTP sites," explains Mike Koehler, solutions specialist for Insci. "The problem with FTP is you couldn't wrap other information, metadata and workflow around the media. One of the things Sony has done is create workflow tools using our software so the files march through the necessary chain of approvals in an electronic fashion. We wrote the software so it could be adapted to different types of workflows. This way you can solve each individual department's problems so you're thinking more in terms of custom software where you build a program to solve a specific problem. But rather than writing custom software you build a custom interface that's pointed back to the same enterprise infrastructure, so you can evolve. This is what Sony did. They solved the syndicated television department's problems first and then the international motion pictures and so on. But each solution plugs in to the same back end database and servers."