"Offline Edit"

[David Sweetman]

(Oops, that title should read, "Online Edit")

 

I know the very basic difference between an online and an offline edit...I know what's involved in an offline edit fairly well, because that's what I do, and I know an online edit is a lot better. But my question is, what exactly is different with an online edit? Why is it so much better? And, what's the most significant difference in the equipment?

 

Thanks for any clarification, my understading of it now is somewhat abstract. I knew enough to get through a meeting with a post house, but I don't want to go around not knowing what it really is indefinitely.

Edited June 8, 2006 by David Sweetman

[Jamie Metzger]

Online edit is where all of your color correction and SFX and what not go in.

 

Offline is for assembling the story, and doing cuts and transitions, with mild VFX work.

 

Depending on what your ratio is, you might be able to offline, and do a fair amount of work, but that depends on you and your machine.

 

In avid, you can batch dig at 15:1, which looks fu**ing terrible, but it speeds up editing considerably.

 

When you have your producers and directors consent, that they are happy with the edits, and ready to final final it, then you re-dig at 2:1 or 1:1; using your logged tapes to re-digitze at a much lower compression, which is "online editing"

 

15:1 = 1 pixel is sampled for 15 around it, big blocky looking poop.

 

2:1 much finer compression; 1 pixel is sampled for only 2 around it.

Edited June 8, 2006 by Jmetzger

[David Sweetman]

Awesome, thanks that really cleared it up.

[David Mullen ASC]

The terms have become less clear these days because people can master at full rez, uncompressed, on their editing systems, so there are not clear separations or differences anymore... but traditionally, an online session involved going back to the original camera tapes and, using the EDL, assembling the final edited master from them by laying the shots off onto a new tape, versus offline where you digitized your camera tapes at lower rez, did an edit, and created an EDL as a guide for the later tape-to-tape online session.

[Michael Nash]

Another way of looking at it is that an "online" edit involves the actual image, as it will be seen by the viewer. That means the visual quality of the material has to be as good as possible.

 

An "offline" edit is to create the information (EDL) that will be used to generate the online edit. Since the images used during offline editing aren't the actual footage that will be seen by the viewer (i.e. tape clones, low-res captures, or "proxy" files), they can be of any quality.

 

But as pointed out, these days sometimes it's possible to use the actual footage (full quality) for "offline" purposes.