Finalising for Sound, Grading and Distribution:
Often production companies will have their own way/preferences on how they want this to be done, but this is a basic structure to follow to achieve a professional practice.
Sort out timeline, ensure its not messy, do a document to say what is on what track (as it might not transfer if you name the tracks in Avid): It is good practice to keep a tidy timeline from the beginning, but it is good to double check that its flat and good enough to progress to other departments.
Apply timecode, check, export offline reference: The offline reference should have timecode, effects, media composer sound, etc. Essentially a copy of exactly what you have been seeing so that your creative vision is being communicated to the rest of the post-production team.
Remove effects (clip, refresh sequence) OR select clips + backspace: Other departments will need to know, especially gradists, if they need to recreate effects in Davinci. Communicating this is very important. If you would like to do it yourself you could always do it before passing on the grade project files to them.
Two-pop, duplicate timeline, one for offline reference, one for only video, and one for only sound (sometimes another one for VFX)
Two-pop Refresher:
RC -> Sequence report -> Change start to 00:59:30:00 -> Shift material to start at 1:00:00:00 -> Mark an in-point or a marker at 00:59:58:00, this is where the two-pop will be.
Tools -> Audio Tool -> PH -> Create tone -> -20, 1000, 30, make sure to note how many audio tracks you have such as 13, and set location to the same bin as the finalisation sequences -> add a frame of this at the marked spot.
Add a graphic at the same time, such as a massive number 2 for 2-pop -- communicate to other departments that you have done this.
Technical Notes/Tips for Later:
Don't use timecode burn in for two-pop: If you're doing the final export through Davinci, the two-pop won't show up as it is an effect to which effects are stripped in the export. Instead use a simple graphic.
Out of space? Media tool: Avid's media tool can be used to find old transcodes from old projects and to clear space.
Will this be in frame? Mask Margins: You can use Avid's target mask tool to see where the mask margins are going to be. This is especially useful if you're working on a different aspect ratio
EDL (Editing Decision List): In using this, you can communicate with other post-production departments on effects that have been used/are going to be put back on or need to be put on in Davinci. If you use the Tab/Column option then that will generate it in a spreadsheet format, but there are other options that will allow it to be imported into other post-production programs, so it depends on who it is being sent to.
Editing in After Effects AND Avid: This was something I had to do last time (I masked out the tiniest segment as we were filming in the beautiful scenery of Glenshee but there was a car flash in the distance that we didn't spot during filming). Colourists, a lot of the time, will want the original footage to have access to the full colour metadata. In this case, when you're passing on the adobe edited clip, make sure to also provide the original video so that they still have that information.
Always STEREO! Be careful not to do audio mix-downs to mono.
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