DP 4.5 First Look: Film and DVD Production
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Jim Watson
Sonic Blender
Santa Monica, CA, US
So many features of Digital Performer 4.5 have already become such second nature to me that it's difficult to know what to talk about first.
As an example, I recently finished a special-edition DVD package for the movie FASTER. The DVD package includes a new hour long documentary update. For this update, I remixed several music cues from the original movie, edited lots of new dialog and narration from Ewan McGregor, created new sound design, and mixed it all for 5.1—all while outputting QuickTime DV video to an external monitor.
The new Beat Detection Engine was very helpful in doing the remixes since the director wanted the music cues at different tempos than the originals. This also helped me to create entirely new grooves while still using some of the original rhythm parts.
This entire project originated from an OMF file created in FCP/HD. DP imported this OMF file flawlessly. Along with the thousands of dialog edits already done by the video editor, many additional edits were needed, plus smoothing for all those edits. The new Smooth Audio Edits feature along with the Add Room Tone feature were very helpful here!
Of course DP's surround capabilities have always been ahead of the pack, and now with the availablity of N-channel busses it's even better! I was able to use the new capability of multi-channel busses to create new 5.1 sound design and do really "enhanced" 5.1 mixes of the music. This was really fun!
The QuickTime DV playback is set up so that when DP is "parked," that's where the picture is, and then it's perfectly in sync when you're in play mode. Perfect!
Several times during this project, some very long sessions occured. Eighteen- and twenty-hour sessions. Through these long sessions under a tight deadline, I was very happy to be running a DAW that was rock solid and that I knew I could count on.
I started using the new MasterWorks EQ immediatly on all my projects. It really sounds great! I have been able to dial in large boosts & cuts without getting the artifacts that sometimes plague other EQ plug-ins. The interface is great to look at, and it gives a tremendous amount of information at a glance. 
This has now replaced the third party plug-in that was often across my mix bus.
I use third party plug-ins from both the UAD-1 and TC PowerCore PCI cards, so I am in love with DP4.5's complete plug-in latency compensation. It's great that it also works with "heavy" native plug-ins like Waves' excellent mastering plug-ins.
I could go on and on about Digital performer 4.5, but I'm sure you can tell that I don't know what I would do without all these great new additions to my long-time tool of choice.
Hear from other users in In Their Own Words.
