Live From Abbey Road: Recording History
Since opening in 1931, EMI’s world-famous Abbey Road Studios have been at the cutting edge of music and technology. It’s the historic source for some of the greatest music the world’s ever heard, from The Beatles to Radiohead and beyond. There’s really no other place quite like it, which is why producers Michael Gleason and Peter Van Hooke chose it as the location for their unique TV concept, Live From Abbey Road, screened worldwide — and built using Final Cut Studio.
Final Cut Studio delivers a complete end-to-end solution for every process.
At heart, the series aims to present the best artists, whether they’re established or up-and-coming, in the best possible light with the highest possible production values. Bands aren’t wheeled on and off stage to tight schedules, they’re given the chance to shine. Among many others, the show’s first series featured the likes of Paul Simon, Primal Scream, Dr. John, Kasabian, Massive Attack, David Gilmour and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
World-class talent of this calibre requires world-class solutions. The tools of Final Cut Studio offer the production team exactly what they need to deliver the very best of music in this most unique of venues. Post production manager John Mills explains the need to use Apple’s solution for the project: “I don’t think a show like ours would be possible if we had to use different facilities houses to put it together — they are incredibly expensive so we’d have had to sacrifice quality. That means we’d lose a significant part of what the audience gets from the show. We wouldn’t be able to give each artist the care and time we’re doing now”.
Each one-hour show features three bands filmed across three days, generating around 60 hours of raw HD footage, reflecting the industry move to the format. The team uses six Panasonic HDX900E cameras and shoots in the DVCPro HD 1080 25P format. Apple’s Final Cut Studio is the editing software tool of choice, with the team storing its footage using Apple’s Xsan software and 20TBs of storage. The final edit is put into a 1920 x 1080, ProResHQ timeline.
Once complete, the edit is flattened, imported into Apple’s Color software, graded, then re-imported back into Final Cut for applying the graphic layers, clocks, adding finished sound (mixed off-site) and quality control. Once assembled, the timeline is mastered to HDCam SR and exported to multiple formats, including DVD, PAL, and NTSC — all from within the same suite. The team doesn’t need to move footage between platforms because all the software and computing power they require comes from Final Cut Studio and five optically-networked Macs. Each show takes about two weeks to put together.
Mills explains: “Working in DVCPro HD, as opposed to HDCam, has saved us countless hours of extra work — we don’t need to migrate between formats, which saves rendering time. The streamlining of the workflow has been substantial and much less stressful for the whole team”.
The codec’s key advantage is its data rate, meaning editors can see full HD on their screens as they edit. Editor Keith Mottram explains: “For our workflow, it’s entirely appropriate. I couldn’t pull so many streams of uncompressed video in another format. On a price/performance ratio, it’s perfect for us, though next season, we will be working all data, using Apple’s ProRes format and this will deliver even better results”.
What’s key is that Live From Abbey Road’s relatively small seven-person core production unit can manage to film, edit, colour correct and export the entire show using one set of tools. Mottram explains: “What I have here — my toolkit — includes everything I would have taken that was around a few years ago on expensive turnkey systems. Today, I am running those tools on today’s best desktop technology. It’s incredible to get to this level of workflow. If I put myself in a time machine and went back ten years, I’d never have believed I could do this”.
“It’s pretty labour intensive. We would like longer. The logistics are quite complex sometimes, but we always get there”, adds Mills. Would any other solution help the team put this kind of show together? Mottram and Mills speak in unison: “No. We wouldn’t be able to achieve this kind of turnaround using any other solution”.
