Focus on Editing: Jay Ankeney

Jay Ankeney is a free-lance editor and postproduction consultant based in Los Angeles. Write him at 220 39th St. (upper), Manhattan Beach, CA 90266.

Tapeless: From the Field To the Edit Suite
We've all wanted to go tapeless ever since the CMX-600 dangled that tantalizing possibility before our editing eyes in 1971.

The Power and Speed of Laptop Editing Increases
Do you remember the early days of mobile video editing?

Post Production Thrives At NAB2006
As HD production was seen as a mainstay at NAB2006, the challenge of wrestling with it in post took center stage.

The Impact of iNEWS
Starting this month, editors will be presented with the most radical evolution in editing user interfaces since GUIs began to replace timecode-based EDLs back in the 1980s.

Editing at the Emmy Level
"Editing is starting to become recognized as the true art form that it is," 2005 Emmy winner Michael Berenbaum reflects. "When dealing with modern digital edit systems, it has become far less a technical skill and much more a huge contribution to the craft of storytelling."

Avid Rolls Out Native HDV Editing
Earlier this month at IBC, Avid announced new versions of software that will enable editing HDV in its native format.

HDV Infiltrates Regular Television Production
They said it couldn't be done, but now that the long GOP recording format called HDV has found its way into the hands of real-world editors and production folk, it is starting to prove that a lot of the early skeptics were wrong.

Tackling HDV Editing: At the Starting Gate
HDV was one of the hits of NAB2005. Now, as the dust is starting to settle, trying to survey the spectrum of how major editing manufacturers are tackling the challenge of posting that long-GOP (group of pictures) format is almost as daunting as squeezing a massive high-definition recording onto a tiny DV tape.

The View from the Horizon
It was 20 years ago today...

In Praise of Unsung Editors
This is a story about the most unsung editors working their magic at an innovative company called 2G Digital Post just outside of Los Angeles. It is also about a remarkable post-production entrepreneur who had the vision to re-think a process the stodgy old studios were making a hash of, and figure out a way to do it right.

The Goal of Post at Super Bowl XXXIX
Increasingly, it's the video elements only tangentially relevant to passing the pigskin that are becoming the hits of the show.

The Editors' Wish List
It's almost spring, a time when many a post pro's thoughts turn to "editor's dreams" -- speculation on innovations they would like the industry to conjure up to improve all our digicutting lives.

Pushing the HD Editing Envelope
We've seen high definition being edited on desktop NLEs for a while, but in the past it has always involved feeding the source HD into the system via HD-SDI, which, with its required video cards, makes it more expensive than long-form features can usually afford. But when Panasonic released its AJ-HD1200A deck, the whole equation changed.

Tapeless Editing Emerges in 2004
For this last "Focus on Editing" installment in 2004, we're going to look back on the most significant post-production watershed crowning the calendar--the move toward tapeless editing.

Emmy-Winning Editor
We'll examine the creative input Lee Haxall had on the success of "Arrested Development" (which won five Emmys, including "Outstanding Comedy Series"), but to appreciate her progress, it's helpful to understand Haxall's career in context.

Adobe in Action
The goal of this column, however, is to find out how new editing products perform under real-world production pressures, so I contacted two editors using Premier Pro who faced intriguingly different challenges.

Online at the Speed of Wow!
With the vast majority of primetime scripted TV shows being shot in high definition these days, the challenge of online mastering programs containing data-intensive HD images can be daunting.

Long GOP Editing
Kick back with a cold one and journey with me under the guidance of the good folks at Pinnacle Systems into the mystical world of low bit-rate editing.

The HD Codec Revolution
At NAB2004, a lot of the excitement was generated by companies who have come up with very clever ways of wrangling that high bandwidth HD signal into an NLE's software

Offline in Your Briefs, Online in Your Jammies
In an era when editing and effects specialists control digital technologies through data screens and their clients can view the results via long distance communications, is it really necessary for everyone to congregate in the same crowded edit bay for creative minds to meet?

The Aesthetics of Super Bowl Ads
Let's kick off our annual analysis of the most striking of this year's Super Bowl ads by celebrating the editing principles behind these mixtures of entertainment and hype.

The HDV Breakthrough
The original idea was "HD for the Masses" when JVC introduced its prosumer GR-HD1 camera last March based on a new recording format called HDV.

Galloping into 2004
It looks like post production is sprinting out of the starting gate in 2004 as the result of expectations for a major upturn in capital investment empowered by the welcome cash flow of increased production-especially in high end technologies.

Promises Delivered
This has been a pivotal year for the video production industry; fighting a sour economy on one hand and the soaring challenge of HD migration on the other.

Emmy-Winning Editor On the Fast Track
This is a story of a lot of pluck, a little luck, and a great deal of talent that is inspirational to every editor.

Editing: Tracks in the Sand
Tape reels give way to nonlinear editors over the past two decades

The Legacy of Linear
Hot enough for ya? Let's chill with a bit of post-production perspective.

Editors' Feedback Key to dps Upgrade
Sometimes it's not only the big splashy award-winning products you see introduced at the annual NAB fest that catch your eye.

Requiem for A Heavyweight
Not every editor felt the earth rumble, but our universe changed at NAB2003 when Editware announced that it would no longer develop its DPE line of linear edit systems.

Positive Post News in Uncertain Times
It's been a tough time for all of us in the editing world during the past year. But surprisingly, even with new technologies at both the high and the low end challenging traditional business models, I keep hearing about forward-thinking post-production houses that have been able to ride above this ebb tide by finding ways to keep profitable.

New Year, New Technologies
Ah, the first column of a New Year, burgeoning with potential. We're going to kick it off by looking at two new technologies I have been tracking recently that may offer significant benefits to the future of film and video production.

Frances Parker Wins Editing Emmy for 'Band of Brothers'
Congratulations to Frances Parker who received the Emmy award for "Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special" at the Creative Arts ceremony held at L.A.'s Shrine Auditorium last month.

The Future of Digital Post
Quo Vadis, NLE? Let's face it, after years of watching nonlinear digital post production develop, it's finally risen to a mature technology.

844/X Tested Under Fire
Brian Diecks still remembers his concerns over the original decision. "Some of my friends thought I was nuts to risk a major client's premiere project with us on a brand-new level 1.0 edit system," the President/Creative Director of The Diecks Group recalls, "but the promise of Media 100's 844/X nonlinear editor and the performance it offered for the cost made it a gamble worth trying."

News Editing's Magic Bullet
Dedicated newsroom editors use the phrase "crash and burn" as their bravado sobriquet, recognizing that work flow under deadline is their highest concern. As a result, manufacturers of nonlinear newsroom edit systems have intentionally streamlined their user interfaces to prevent technological complexity from interfering with the necessity to get the stories out, and get them out on time.

Getting the Hi-def ROI
If you believe the PR hype, almost all the companies at last week's NAB convention in Las Vegas seemed to be showing off the same thing. Not "systems," not "products," but the universal buzzword "solutions." Yet as today's high-definition shoots crawl their way into post production, many of the first investors in HD finishing linear technologies are learning that the early-generation "solutions" have become late-generation financial boondoggles.

The NYC "Miracle" Spots
Leave it to digital video production and postproduction artists to conjure up images of inspiration that can help turn a year of such tragedy into uplifting optimism.

VISITING AVID
While the courtesy driver Avid had sent chauffeured me through the colorful New England’s fall foliage toward the company’s campus in Tewksbury, Mass., I had time to reflect on the central dilemma facing this leader of nonlinear postproduction technology: profit.

Bill Johnson’s Presidential Editing
When Bill Johnson, A.C.E., stepped up to the stage of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Sept. 8 to receive the Creative Arts Emmy award for "Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Series" – in recognition of his editing the season-ending "Two Cathedrals" episode of NBC’s "The West Wing" – he was able to relax and enjoy the moment.

Sony’s XPRI Goes to Market
Releasing a major new turnkey digital editing system during this time of turmoil in our industry takes some guts.

Laptop Editing at NBC
You’re an editor right at the scene of the action, riding an adrenaline rush, cutting a breaking story from within a packed remote truck.

Media 100 Broadens Its Scope
Company Puts New Emphasis on Streaming Technology

More From the Floor
Given the bedlam of the floor scene at NAB, it is always gratifying when representatives of major edit system manufacturers are willing to take time away from the crowds to give me an inside look at what they are showing and where they are going.

Editing Spotlights at NAB2001
The annual NAB convention is a chance for edit system manufacturers to float out new ideas, technologies and, ultimately, new products.

Editing Over the Internet
I recently had an eye-popping experience. Ten days before NAB2001 I was invited to the Woodland Hills offices of Internet Pro Video (IPV) just north of Los Angeles to see a preview of a fascinating innovation that would get its stateside introduction at the Vegas technofest.

Mastering DVD Mastering
You can hear those disks a-spinning in more and more edit bays these days. The editting previously involved only magnetic recording media, but the advent of DVD disks – originally called "Digital Versatile Disks" but now more commonly dubbed "Digital Video Disks" – require an optical recording medium similar to that used for music CDs.

Anatomy of a Super Bowl Ad
It’s Jan. 29, the day after Super Bowl XXXV, and time for many of us to review the game tapes. Sure, football experts were trying to figure out how so many errors could result in such a lopsided 34-7 romp of the Baltimore Ravens over the hapless New York Giants.

Avid on the Uptick
It can be lonely at the top. And, as Avid Technologies, the leading provider of nonlinear postproduction systems has learned, it can sometimes also be unprofitable. But now...

Editing in 24p
There is a new dance being done in Hollywood postproduction circles these days. It’s called 24p, and as the name implies it rocks to a different cadence than the 30-frame-per-second video waltz to which we’ve been trotting since subcarrier replaced bobby soxes.

Emmy Winner — Carol Littleton, A. C. E.
The editing career of Carol Littleton, A.C.E., has been an odyssey filled with personal growth. Her journey started in Paris when as a student Littleton became mesmerized by the French New Wave cinema’s reflection of the grittier side of life

The Rise of Editing Appliances
Thunder crashes in the heavens while lighting bolts reveal giant reptiles roaming unchallenged over the surface of the earth. But far down below, scurrying below the firmament, a bunch of diminutive mammals are thriving under a radically different concept of life’s purpose by digging out their own niche in the hierarchy of evolution.