Picture Cut Tracks are an excellent tool in audio post-production to help show scene boundaries. When used effectively, cut tracks speed up and greatly improve the accuracy of editing. They also come in very handy during the premix and mix stages. In this article, we will show how to use three different software re-conforming tools to create a picture cut track: Virtual Katy, EdiLoad and Matchbox.

What Is A Picture Cut Track And How Is It Useful?

A picture cut track is an audio track containing a clip at every picture cut point named with the clip name in the source AAF, FCP7 XML, or EDL. Loading one of these into your DAW timeline not only allows you to see or tab to each picture cut point but shows dialog editors directly in the timeline which slate and take was used in the picture edit. To show the source timecodes in each clip as well, generate a conform reference track instead of a picture cut track.

I use my cut tracks during editing to find scene boundaries for ambiences and while mixing, to guide me when to adjust level or pan or signal processing for perspective or scene changes. Depending on which program you use, for a typical 45-minute episode of TV, it can take about 10 minutes to carve up a cut track. I set the process going and let the program chop up the timeline.

There are several software companies out there serving up tools that can create picture cut tracks. Curiously, the premier companies offering up Edit Decision List (EDL) based conform software all seem to have started in New Zealand.

The first one I knew about was Virtual Katy, having been shown the software by the great sound designer who started the company, John McKay. The program is actually named for a team member named “Katy.” The VK team developed their list based editing program during the post-production of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, to cope with ever-changing picture cuts. And I think we can thank the team not just for great films, but also for versatile list editing tools. All three of the companies mentioned in this article were all started by members of the LOTR sound team. Now that’s an interesting slice of trivia!

What You Need To Create A Cut Track

Before we get to cutting, the first thing to do is ask your picture editor to provide a video only EDL; that is, a list that doesn’t include audio events. Video editors typically use multiple video tracks in a similar fashion to us in audio, starting at a track called something like V1 and moving up through there. Depending on how many graphics, visual effects etc. they are using, the video track count can exceed 9 or 10. We often don’t need this information for the cut track assembly process so I regularly ask for only the video tracks with media in them--rather than effects layers- to be included in the EDL. This keeps the list a bit more manageable. We can filter events inside the conform software but I prefer a clean list coming to me, rather than having to hack through events to cleave off what’s unimportant.

For more in-depth information about Edit Decision Lists, you can read this article - Guide to EDL Management, Cleaning, Tracing, and EDL Formats.

Virtual Katy

Starting with Virtual Katy, this program requires an Edit Decision List from which to import cut data. VK6 supports three types of EDL’s: CMX3600, FILE316 and FILE32. I typically go for FILE32 over the classic CMX3600, because the FILE32 EDL format can contain many more events than the 999 limit of CMX3600 and even though it’s not inside the scope of this article, it’s worth mentioning that for other sorts of conforms, the Roll name is limited to 8 characters in CMX3600 while we get 16 characters in FILE16 and 32 characters in FILE32. If you’re going to have to conform location sound as part of your regular workflow, it’s worth noting that these roll names can be lengthy and need to be preserved to be useful. There’s actually a FILE129 EDL format with guess how many characters in the roll names!

Getting started on our cut track is easy. Open VK, create a new project, set the timecode frame rate at the top and in the File Menu’s preferences, make sure your conform speed is set to ‘Fastest’. We’re only conforming one track after all; the slower speeds are very useful when dealing with dense automation and multiple audio tracks to improve copy and paste accuracy.

Drag and drop your list onto your VK project or hit the little + sign at the top right and add it that way. Name the EDL in the pop-up. Your list should appear.

You can filter out any superfluous events and even delete lines you don’t need, for example, the head leader event 001. Just right click over the event number 001 and a dropdown menu will appear.

Once we’ve got the list in order, it’s time to create a Change Plan. We need to check the mirrored option since we’re only using a single EDL.

From this point on it’s pretty simple. Sort the Change Plan by clicking on “Old From” at the top and then scroll through to see which hour in the EDL hasn’t been used as the timecode for a source reel.

In the example list, I can see hour 4 is free so I’ve added three hours to the NEW MOVIE Timecode.

I’m now ready inside VK to conform. The question is what am I conforming?

Let’s open up Pro Tools and create a session with the same timecode rate as our VK session, 23.976. Create an audio track called “Cut Track.”

Give it no input and no output and make it inactive because there won’t be any actual audio on this track.

Then, select the entire timeline on this track. Everything. The whole 24-hour timeline.

Create a Clip Group (Option+Command+G on a Mac) from this long slab of empty timeline.

We now have a 24-hour file that takes up absolutely zero hard drive space and lives on an inactive track.

Place the cursor in the track so your conform software will know which track to conform.

Now, return to VK and click the little icon at the bottom of the window that looks like three cogs. The assembly process is like watching a chef continually chopping vegetables at high speed for ten minutes. I suggest a tea break whilst VK is performing. You can watch it working in this video example…

After your cup of tea, come back and clear off any redundant pieces and cut and paste your material.

Starting at the 4-hour mark, select all the events, and simply cut and paste to the desired timecode; in this case, the 1 hour mark. Check some random events to ensure the track is accurate and you’re finished with Virtual Katy.

EdiLoad From Sounds In Sync

Sounds In Sync is another wonderful company with a wide range of products from ADR solutions, to visual overlay solutions for counters and streamers, to marker creation and of course, conform and re-conform solutions. EdiLoad is the specific piece of software we’re interested in. This powerhouse program is feature-packed and will even create an interesting Scene Change track, which only shows the scene change edits, provided you have the necessary information.

On the topic of our Cut Track, EdiLoad is so good at creating a Cut Track that when I tried it I didn’t even have time for tea. Here’s how EdiLoad does it:

Open EdiLoad and click on Import at the top left corner of the window. Select “EDL File - New.

We’ve still got that Event 001 HEAD_LEADER I don’t want. Click on it and hit the delete key.

Then say yes to deleting it in the pop-up window.

Next, Go to the File Menu and select Export/AAF/Picture Cut Track

Set the start time for your AAF export to the start time of your Pro Tools session. In my case, it’s 00:57:30:00.

Export. EdiLoad creates blank audio files and this 990 event list took about 20 seconds to complete. No time for tea at all!

Import into Pro Tools. You’ll have to set the start time to exactly match your session start time. 

I checked this method against my known VK Conform Cut Track and the results were very nearly identical. This is an extremely elegant way to generate a cut track. I have to say, I am very impressed by EdiLoad.

Mark Franken, of Sounds In Sync was extremely helpful during my trial of this amazing software. I encourage you to check out more content on Production Expert on using Sounds In Sync products. There is also more material, blog posts and other instructional material on the Sounds In Sync website. It’s an extremely well thought out website. One might say, it looks “sharp.”

Matchbox From The Cargo Cult

The third and final piece of software worth demoing is Matchbox from The Cargo Cult, which just happens to also have created one of my very favourite pieces of software called ‘Envy’. Technically, I gave their legacy software “Conformalizer” a go as well but the process is nearly identical to VK. The only differences are I imported the EDL as a CHANGE list. This is how Conformalizer handles single EDL conforms. The cup of tea was much longer for Conformalizer than VK. 

Getting back to Matchbox, I had help from The Cargo Cult’s Justin Webster with this one, as the program is very new to me and I wanted to know what their Cut Track generation scheme would entail. It turns out they have a totally different approach. It’s really simple though.

Start by importing the EDL to a new sequence (Command+2). I got this cool orange timeline from my test EDL.

Hop over to Pro Tools and select either our Cut Track we created earlier or duplicate the video track that’s present in your timeline. The choice is yours.

Back in Matchbox, there’s a menu at the top of the screen called ‘Reconform’. From this menu select “Create Shot Track in DAW using Video Clips.”

The Matchbox Helper AudioSuite plugin launches and Matchbox starts dicing up our cut track or your video track.

What’s incredibly handy about this method is there’s a little window that pops up and shows the progress and more importantly, the ETA to completion. I would say this method is very similar to my VK method but it is a bit more intuitive. Nice and trim.

And Finally…

It’s worth checking out these tools and comparing the feature sets since the scope of this article was limited to one specific task. EdiLoad and Matchbox have a lot of creative workflow solutions beyond EDL-based work including being able to generate lists from AAF files and even from video files. VK is a streamlined, focussed, incredibly quick EDL based list editing tool.

They do vary in price so it’s really important to consider what you need from the software before you decide which of them suits your workflow.

I hope you find the Cut Track a useful timesaver. For me, it’s worth the short break (or not if you’re using Edi Load!) because the time I save hunting for picture changes adds up to hours of my life over the course of any given year. And maybe that’s the sharpest point I can make.