Nd advice from video/post pros and experts here

Hi guys, It looks like I'm going to be doing some work with a video production company here in NYC, as they need a sound guy on their team. This could entail anything from corporate/industrial videos to music videos to independent feature films. I'd like to use Reaper for this work if I can, but I am new to this area of recording/production. Are there any particular pitfalls I need to be aware of using Reaper for recording video sound (synched to video cameras/system) and for post pro editing, etc.? Is Reaper properly set up to do this, or will I need to invest in PT or Nuendo to be able to do this properly? The company pretty much exclusively uses Final Cut Pro for video editing. Any thoughts, observations or advice in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

When doing Audio post, I often get an OMF file (exported from Avid). Unfortunately Reaper cannot (yet?) import OMF, so still stuck with Nuendo in that case... edit: Overlooked that the company uses Final Cut Pro, don't know about the export features.

Do people use Vegas Pro for audio post? It seems all the audio tools are there, granted though, not quite on the workflow level of Nuendo or Reaper but compatibility wise there should be far fewer issues with sync and other things. I'm not a fish in this water so... just asking. Surprisingly, Vegas does AAF and EDL but not OMF.

FWIW: I believe OMF is a dying standard. The new standard will be AAF. The good thing is that AAF is an open standard. The bad thing is that Reaper doesnt support both of them and afaik FCP doensnt import AAF. There seems to be some sort of plugin available though for FCP so it can read AAF. Type in "FCP AAF" into google

Hey scottdru, it is possible to work in Reaper but there are currently a lot of pitfalls (the timecode rulers being one...). There are as we know also some speed and flexibility advantages to doing just about any kind of audio production in Reaper so the question is really weighing the two for your scenario. You are correct in looking for at least a companion program (Vegas, PT, whatever) that can help make up for some of these deficiencies. Without a concrete reference point to make sure the timecode positions are correct it's a bit like flying blind. These issues might be solved very shortly but until then I think you are on a good track. SSL Pro Convert would be a good investment if you think you'll be doing more of this kind of work. It will allow you to say yes to most format options (for both source and delivery) making you easier to work with.

I know guys who use Midi Over Ethernet for the MTC. They say it works beautifully.

Thanks planetnine. And I know a lot of people hate it when the word 'professional' is banded about but anyone doing any kind of post or scoring work NEEDS rock solid video support. Nothing flash - timeline thumbnails would be nice but aren't an absolute necessity - but we really do need 100% reliable video playback and sync to the audio. Video support at the moment is really no more than a bullet point on the feature list, sadly. After using REAPER for yonks now, this was the first time during a project that I was really screaming at the thing. Bloody annoying basically, to say the least! Ben

there're very few things I have a bad word to say about in REAPER, but video support is one. I hate to get niggly at Justin & Co as they've turned out an otherwise great piece of audio manipulation software, but I need this for some aspects of my work; that's why I bought a commercial licence, it needs to work or it lets me and my clients down... >

The last time I used video with Reaper was for a film project I've mentioned a few times here. This video was delivered to me as a small DivX(film student who doesn't know all about workflow), which was no problem though. The first I tried was converting it to Quicktime DV ( 28 MBit / 720x576 / 25fps ). This produced some of the problems mentioned. You'd usually need to start playback a little earlier than the stuff you needed to see. Then it was decent. Scrubbing audio with the picture going along didn't work. Zooming in too far blackens the video screen. Added to that, right-click menus on the items only worked after the second click(double-click). All other right-click menus were fine. This only occured when the video window was open. In all what I had was a video playback that sometimes worked well enough only after hitting play stop play. My playhead goes back to where I started playback, when I hit stop. The first playback attempt after that would sometimes continue where it had left off, instead of from the beginning. The codec I ended up with that gave me relativley decent performance was : Cinepak in an AVI container. 2.5 MBit / 25 fps / 320x176 That gave me the least bunch of inaccuracies and hicups. It was by no means good though. The most unfortunate thing about Reapers video capabilities is that you can only see a different frame of the video by clicking in to the arrangement area. No drag or select operations would do that, which makes all kinds of operations work at snail speed as you locate frames by zooming in and single-clicking. ===== The basic necessities when scoring and editing to picture for video are Video Must Follow Every Move I Make when I : - select, trim(with the mouse) - place the cursor with a mouse click(happens already) - move fades, move fade boundaries (can't do that yet on the outter fade boundaries in Reaper) - move envelope points - move items Everyone please add to this list whatever you feel is necessary.

Hi guys. I'm sorry to hear that Reaper doesn't handle video syncing well. I *may* have an opportunity (my first) to score & licence music for a film project. My questions are focused on what to charge as a fee - as I am new to the 'business' side of this. Rather than clutter up this thread, I've started a new one here: If you can give me any advice, I would really appreciate it!