Company 3 posting in HD with Xpri: editor Pat Kelleher onlines Whoopi and Hope & Faith with Sony's Windows-based NLE

Post, April, 2004 by Marc Loftus

NEW YORK -- It's not all that common for a primetime television series to be posted in New York City. So the fact that editor Pat Kelleher is online editing two shows out of Company 3 New York (www.ascentmedia.com) might be considered the exception rather than the rule. Even more interesting is the system Kelleher is using to online both NBC's Whoopi and ABC's Hope & Faith. A new Windows 2000-based Sony Xpri NLE handles online duties for the two series, both of which are shot in high definition using Sony's HDCAM format.

Kelleher's career spans more than a decade editing broadcast projects. His first regular longformat gig was Spin City, while he was working at the Manhattan facility Post Perfect. Hope & Faith and Whoopi mark the first time he's handled two primetime shows simultaneously. It's also the first time he's gone the nonlinear route.

Whoopi stars actress/comedian Whoopi Goldberg as a former one-hit wonder who's used her limited success as a singer to buy a small hotel in New York City. Hope & Faith stars Faith Ford and Kelly Ripa as sisters living in two very different worlds. When Faith loses her spot on a daytime TV drama, she seeks out her sister and her busy family in a Midwest suburb where she can find refuge from the demands of Hollywood.

SHOOTING

Both shows may seem different, but Kelleher says they have more in common than meets the eye. "They are very similar in that they are shooting multicamera HDCAM. Style-wise, they are very similar. [They're] very mainstream sitcoms. There are no big shakes to them; you set up your four cameras. Hope & Faith shoots a little more footage than Whoopi."

The shows are shot in 16X9 high definition in Queens, NY. Silvercup Studios hosts Hope & Faith, while and Kaufman Astoria Studios is home to Whoopi.

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EDITING

"They shoot HDCAM, which makes this whole thing that much better," says Kelleher. The Xpri is capable of working in uncompressed HD and HDCAM native. "It's HDCAM originated, so it's perfect for the Xpri. On shoot night, they send over their camera masters and we start the process by downconverting their camera masters to a 30 non-dropframe Beta SP tape, which goes back to their editorial. We send them Beta SPs that have extracted 4X3. Basically, that is what everyone is seeing anyway."

The shows are offlined on Avid systems at their respective production facilities in Queens over the course of a week, says Kelleher, but the camera masters stay at Company 3. An EDL is then emailed to Kelleher to start the online.

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"It opens perfect in the Xpri," says Kelleher of the EDL file. "I do the conversion and basically just start batch digitizing. The list comes to me and once it translates, it opens up into a sequence and I'll have a bunch of clips that need to be digitized."

Kelleher says the capture process is pretty straightforward. "It's realtime," he says about working in the HDCAM format. "I did linear online for a bulk of my career and it's equal to or quicker."

The Xpri at Company 3 is set up with 10 hours of HDCAM storage. Once the show is locked and conformed--and Kelleher is confident that there will not be any more changes--he will go out to tape. Then he'll clear his drives, knowing that the camera masters are safe in a vault at Company 3.

In addition to the conform, Kelleher also handles incidental finishing and titles. "I'm finding that with the Xpri, I'm able to do a lot more than what I was able to do in a linear room. And I'm scratching the surface because I've only been on it for a couple of months."

AUDIO

Audio for both shows is being handled at Howard Schwartz Recording in New York City. For Whoopi, HSR provides Company 3 with AIFF files on a CD, which Kelleher then inputs to the system and applies to the timeline. Hope & Faith comes on TASCAM DA-88 tapes.

"They are giving us DA-88s, because their high def delivery requires a Dolby 5.1 mix," Kelleher explains. "We are actually doing that in a linear room, relaying from a DA-88 to a D-5, which is uncompressed HD."

The Xpri purchase was based on Company 3 securing the two high definition productions and within two weeks of its arrival, Kelleher was posting two primetime series.

"I won't sugar coat it. It was a tough couple of weeks," he says. "It wasn't just the newness of the system and high def, we were talking about two brand-new series. To Sony's credit, it was that easy to learn. It's a really great machine. My comfort level is at a point where I feel like I've been doing this for a long time."