Anyone who works in a facility that works with an offline and online process probably knows that the online, or conform, process has typically been handled by the big guys. Smoke, Flame, Pablo, you know, the expensive ones. (Ok, maybe Smoke isn’t THAT expensive anymore, but you get the point).
The main reason for this is trying to relink an offline edit to your trimmed color correct files has always been a nightmare. If you were to take an offline EDL or XML into FCP7 or Premiere Pro, and try to reconnect to the clips manually, it was an insanely tedious if not impossible process. Those applications want clips to be the same length as the original, the same names, the same frame size. With a color correct, however, that won’t be the case. Maybe you did your offline edit at proxy resolution. Maybe your file names have changed. And even if none of that happened, the clips length won’t match. When you edit, you edit with long clips. Then you might use a few seconds of a several minute clip. Color correct with a few seconds of handles, and want to relink. You might also have several source clips from the same original clip, necessitating new file names.
That is where reLink reTooled comes in. You take your offline edit and export an xml. Then open up reLink reTooled, load that XML and point it to your new media. Then you can choose your relink criteria and save out an XML that references your new media. That’s all. I’ve been using this tool for many months now, and have put it to the test on large national clients. Using a combination of FCP7 and After Effects, conforms have been simplified and transformed from the days of capturing from a D5. The whole process is intuitive and simple. But your best bet is to just watch the video and see it in action. Check out a brief teaser above and a full demonstration below.