For many years while audio recordings have been made on magnetic tape, editors have been faced with the painstaking task of digitizing and syncing these audio recordings to picture. With the advent of disk based location recorders, the digitizing process can be eliminated but the process of managing and syncing audio files to picture can still be a daunting and tedious process.

Loco is a Location Conforming tool that can automate this task into a process taking seconds rather than hours or days.

The software reads an EDL file which represents the first picture cut. This could be the output of an Avid or other picture editing system. This EDL is used to indicate where audio is needed on a timeline to match the picture.

Instead of having to use logging sheets to manually locate the correct piece of audio, Loco automatically searches through one or more folders assigned by the user for BWAV files containing suitable audio material. The selection of suitable audio material is made by searching for files matching various criteria. Most importantly, the software looks a match between the timecode in the file and the EDL. In order to narrow down the search, the software then examines the file’s metadata to find files which match the reel number stored in the EDL.

The current generation of location recorders encode reel information in various ways depending on the machine or the recordist’s needs. Some allow it to be stored as part of the filename. Others embed this within the file or even encode it into the timecode User Bits recorded with the file’s metadata on location. Loco automatically scans the files and is able to extract this information intelligently without any manual configuration being necessary.

If automatic selection of an audio file for an event cannot be made, the software will guide the user through the process of selecting alternate files matching appropriate criteria. As an example, this could occur if a file was incorrectly labeled on location.

In a matter of seconds, all the audio files are spotted as events across multiple tracks on a timeline. The resulting timeline can then be saved as either an AAF file (for loading directly into Protools) or an AES31 ADL file for loading into other workstations.

To conform a session, the user is first asked to select an EDL file and one or more folders containing the BWAV files to be conformed. The software will scan through nested folders to find audio files to conform.

After pressing Conform, the software will analyze the audio files to find suitable media to match the events in the EDL. The following screen is then shown which lists all the events in the EDL. By selecting an event, the screen will also show details of the event and audio files that could be assigned to it.

If audio files exist with suitable metadata to match an event in the EDL, this event will be labeled as ‘Good’ and will automatically be included in the output of the conform. For some events, the software may only be able to find a partial match between the metadata in an audio file and an event. As an example, this could occur if the timecode information is matched but the Reel/Scene do not match. These events will be labeled as ‘Uncertain’. The user is presented with a list of the audio files that partially match the event so that these can also be included in the conformed output if required.

There may also be events in the EDL for which no audio exists (for example, where audio has not yet been recorded). These will be labeled as ‘Missing’.