Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 1, 2017. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The most powerful (and probably best-known) tool in the package is Plural Eyes 4 for synchronizing different film and audio sources without a clapperboard and real timecode. While professional broadcast or digital film cameras usually provide a (sometimes optional) sync function, hobby or action cameras such as GoPros or DSLRs, as well as smartphones or other video-capable devices, are usually unable to record real timecode or even be synchronized frame-accurately with other cameras via cable. Anyone who films with several cameras at the same time or has to add external audio sources without real timecode knows how fiddly the manual synchronization of different elements in a timeline can be. This is exactly where Plural Eyes steps in and allows users simply to drag the film and audio tracks into a window, click “Sychronize,” wait a few minutes if necessary, and ultimately receive a Premiere or Final Cut Pro sequence. The work is just as simple as described here, as long as—and this is important—the material has a usable audio track, because Plural Eyes ignores all timecodes and visual clapperboards and instead synchronizes the material based on waveform information. Anyone who pays attention to recording the sound during shooting will find Plural Eyes a very useful, time-saving assistant. Adobe Premiere users can, incidentally, also use Plural Eyes directly in the editing software to synchronize elements within the timeline automatically.
Another very useful helper is the small Offload program for copying material from a camera card (or another medium) to the hard drive. Why do you need a separate program for that, some readers may ask, when I can simply copy the material via drag and drop? Quite simply: During a normal copy process, no checksums are calculated. This means that if minor problems occur during copying, the operating system does not necessarily notice them, but simply completes the process, sometimes with faulty or even completely missing data (which is often barely apparent, especially with invisible files or complex card structures). Offload, on the other hand, carries out verification after every copy of every clip and checks whether the files really are identical. Users can also specify a backup volume before ingest (for example, an external hard drive) in order to have a backup performed automatically after the actual copying process (also with verification).
The only disadvantage of using Offload is that an ingest process (even without a backup) takes around twice as long as a normal copy process. This can be particularly nerve-racking when working on set without a data wrangler, returning from a shoot sometime around midnight, while the cards are needed for fresh recordings the next morning. Unfortunately, Offload is not always entirely reliable, as it sometimes tends to crash unexpectedly, thereby unnecessarily prolonging the ingest process. Naturally, a crash only occurs when you are using Offload unattended and under time pressure.
The Shooter Suite is completed by the two plug-ins Instant 4K for upscaling older material to 4K, and Frames for deinterlacing interlaced video. In contrast to simple scaling using the host software’s motion setting, Instant 4K promises a better final result while also providing presets for different 4K resolutions. The Shooter Suite is a thoroughly useful collection, especially for users who frequently shoot with several cameras simultaneously, and with Offload it provides a more or less reliable tool for digitizing camera cards. Anyone who can do without the two plug-ins Instant 4K and Frames can, however, purchase Plural Eyes and Offload as individual products if required—the collection makes sense only if you frequently have to deinterlace or upscale to 4K, since these two plug-ins are included in the collection almost as free extras compared with the individual prices.
Red Giant – Shooter Suite 13
Helpful tools for digitization and
synchronization with two free plug-ins
Platform: Standalone, Adobe and Apple
Full version: 4OO US dollars
Info: www.redgiant.com
