Celemony video tutorials
Technical guidelines
The sample of your work
Please send us a sample of your work in the form of a film roughly two minutes in length describing some aspect of working with Melodyne. Which is up to you. With regard to appearance and style, please use the existing movies on our website as models.
From your work sample we hope to obtain a vivid initial impression of your way of working. Even though this sample will never need to be made into a “real” film (so you need not follow them yet to the letter), you will find here the technical and aesthetic guidelines for the films you will eventually make. Perhaps even when making your sample film, these will spare you the effort of trying to “deduce” the relevant principles from the films on our web site.
Output format of the work sample:
Quicktime, H.264, 25 fps, 1280 x 720 px, AAC.
The final films
Music
You will produce audio projects in your preferred DAW. We support at the present time Pro Tools, Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, Live, Sonar, Studio One and Digital Performer. You will produce the music used in the film yourself. It has to be music that you are legally entitled to use and in the event that you do not own the copyright to the material, you must be able to stipulate who does.
In your sample film, please make sure that the music and speech are appropriately mixed. In the “real” films, you will have to assign the music and speech to separate tracks, as the speech will later be replaced by us (see below). Some of our authors prefer to mix the music in their DAWs rather than in Final Cut. Either way, please include a stereo mix of your music along with the voice track in the Final Cut project.
Language
Please use your mother tongue – whether English or German – when speaking in the video. At a later stage, your texts will be read by our voice-over specialist and the resulting audio added to the film in post production. Please make sure that in the Final Cut project, your voice is on a separate track to the music and not mixed in with it.
Text panels and graphics
Graphics and titles will be added to the films during the opening and closing sequences and perhaps also in between. We will handle this task ourselves in post production. To help you develop a sense of the length, please supply temporary panels for the opening and closing sequences. Please add music to these opening and closing panels that corresponds to or complements that used in the film. The length of the intro will depend upon your music but should be between 6 and 8 seconds. The closing sequence should be around 8 to 10 seconds long. Only use text panels during the film itself if your film is divided into chapters or where it makes sense to summarize the content in the form of a bullet list (“in this film, you have learnt how to...”).
Size and zoom: Please bear in mind that our films will be watched in two sizes: 720p and 360p. We derive these end formats from a film that our film-maker produces in 1280 x 720 px resolution. Make sure, therefore, when selecting zoom levels in Melodyne and Final Cut that the film will still be “legible” (i.e. that menus and blob details will not be too small) when viewed in 360p resolution, without however making it too coarse and “pixely” in 720p.
Magnifying glass: To make details clearer, either work with variable zooming or enlarge details using magnifying glass effects. To realize magnification effects, use Final Cut (filter “Mask Shape”, see screenshot). Don’t use Screenflow’s magnifying glass as it is not versatile enough.
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Clicks and double-clicks: Whenever it seems sensible to do so as an aid to understanding, you should emphasize click and double-click actions visually. You needn’t bother too much about this in the case of your work sample; in later films, however, you will use special Final Cut templates created by us to lend visual emphasis to mouse actions.
Format of the Melodyne view: If you are showing the entire Melodyne window (as opposed to zooming in on details), the plug-in window should fill the entire screen. Avoid, on the one hand, trimming the edge of the Melodyne window, and on the other, leaving bits of the DAW window lying around at the edge of the screen (unless, that is, there is some detail of the DAW display to which you wish to draw the viewer’s attention). For your work sample, you can do this e.g. by dragging an orientation frame using some tool like Skitch. For the subsequent production of real films, however, we will provide you with a tool that will allow you to set the correct window size from within Melodyne with pixel precision.
Interface language: Select English as the language of the user interface within Melodyne, your DAW and (if shown) your operating system as well. Remember that the final film will be in English, and obviously the voice-over track and images must match.
Keyboard shortcuts: Even though in practice you may use keyboard shortcuts to perform many actions (undo, blob selection, etc.), please always use the corresponding menu commands in the video. Otherwise viewers won’t be able to follow what you are doing. Exception: If your specific theme is the use of keyboard commands, then for greater clarity please use text overlays of the shortcuts in question (e.g. “Win: Ctrl-Z, Mac: cmd-Z”).
Cuts: Ideally, screen sequences should be filmed in a single take. That doesn’t always work out though. Typical problems and their solutions are the following:
1. The sequence runs too quickly, leaving insufficient time for the “off camera” spoken commentary. You can solve this problem in Final Cut by inserting static images (Modify > Make Freeze Frame).
2. The sequence takes too long and you want to speed things up. Do this by making cuts, taking care that the mouse cursor doesn’t jump at the point where the cut is made. Also make sure that no loss of continuity in zoom and scroll levels or colored highlighting (selected blobs, highlighted tools etc.) occurs at the point where the cut is made. This technique works well for scenes filmed with the playback paused. During playback, of course, there is only one situation in which you can make a cut without both the screen display and the music jumping, and that is when the playback is looped, in which case you can just remove one or several entire iterations of the loop.
3. You have to repair a passage, i.e. reshoot a certain part and later combine two takes. Here, again, please avoid the mouse pointer, zoom and scroll levels etc. jumping. Make also sure that the retakes are correctly positioned in relation to the music.
Fades: Always fade to white. Please avoid other effects such as turning pages, whirling effects and the like! Try to avoid using fades for the repair of takes (preferring for this purpose invisible cuts as described above). But please use fades to indicate that something has been skipped. Example: you are performing a series of actions with a blob and the commentary says something along the lines of “if you now repeat the procedure in other places, your vocal track may end up looking like this.” Bear in mind, you do not have to illustrate every last step of every procedure in your films. The object is to inspire users to experiment (“now that’s something I’d like to try for myself”) and ensure they understand the basic principles (“Got it. Now I know what I have to do.”) Skipping details is fine if the viewer understands from the commentary that steps have been omitted.
Delivery format of the final films
When we have commissioned you to produce a film, we will expect you to deliver as the fruits of your efforts the following files:
Final Cut project
Please use Final Cut Pro 7.x. Project size: 1280 x 720 px, Codec: Apple Intermediate 720p30. When you have finished, send us the entire Final Cut project (assembled via File > Media Manager).
DAW project
Here, too, give us the complete project including the Melodyne transfers. Please bounce plug-ins other than Melodyne unless these are delivered as standard with the DAW. It is possible that we will want to reshoot certain passages e.g. to keep the film up to date if Melodyne’s GUI has changed. We need to be sure, therefore, that we have all the files we will need for any subsequent editing.
Screenflow
You will film your screen using Screenflow and export it from there (also in Apple Intermediate 720p30) to Final Cut. When you save your Final Cut project, these sequences will automatically be included. We don’t need your original Screenflow project as well.
Text panels
You only need to create temporary text panels (see above). The best way to do this is using Final Cut, as they will form part of the project and don’t have to be delivered separately.
Script
You will narrate a pilot track. Later we will replace your voice with recordings of our own (see above). For this reason, please make sure to send us your script in the form of a txt file.
Any questions?
If you have any further questions about the job description ot the technical guidelines, please feel free to write an e-mail to our colleague Tom Bratka.
