Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1353865
16 I M PS E . O R G CO R N E R TECH BY KOREY PEREIRA MPSE Kraken Dialogue Editors Toolkit A s an editor, it is only natural to get into a flow of how we work and what tools we use to do it. Every once in a while though, something new comes along that changes the way we fundamentally work. For me, this was when fellow MPSE member Enos Desjardins introduced me to Kraken Dialogue Editors Toolkit. The creator, Marc Specter, is himself a dialogue editor, and set out to create a tool to address challenges he faced as a dialogue editor. How It Works The first thing you do when setting up Kraken is get it synced to the Pro Tools timeline. Kraken uses two different MIDI timing messages (MMC and MTC) to receive the current sync position from Pro Tools. With a Pro Tools session open, Kraken scans the contents of the tracks, and matches those contents to any imported dailies. "Set Sync Tracks" allows you to target only the dialogue tracks in the Pro Tools session. Kraken will then find matching clips during playback or scrubbing in Pro Tools. Finding and Spotting ALTs One of the more tedious and often time-consuming steps in the dialogue editing process is finding "alt" or alternate takes to fix issues with the production audio. However, finding a suitable fix in production can often save a troublesome line from making it onto the ADR cue sheet. Before Kraken, my alt-finding process involved manually dragging in potential takes down the timeline, listening to all the options, then trimming and dragging the best of them into sync. What Kraken does is link to your selection in Pro Tools and cue up matching alternatives in Kraken in real time. For example, when searching for alts to 38AT2, Kraken will cue up all takes related to Scene 38. You can then quickly scan through each take and mic individually to find what you are looking for and spot your selection back to the Pro Tools timeline. What sets this apart from using other software is that Kraken references the original audio file in your dailies folder. This maintains all metadata from the original file and lets you easily audition other channels using Pro Tools' field recorder functionality without generating a duplicate trimmed audio file to keep track of. Kraken pulling alts