HOLLYWOOD — Harrison and Steinberg have jointly developed a new technology that allows Harrison consoles and Steinberg’s Nuendo DAW to seamlessly exchange automation data. The two companies recently demonstrated this new workflow advancement for the first time at the William Holden Theater at Sony Pictures.
The demonstration showed how automation data is preserved when transitioning from a Harrison pre-mix to editing in Nuendo and back again. This enables workflows that utilize the strengths of each platform. Unlike other exchange formats, the newly developed format includes three-dimensional panning (left/right, front/back, and up/down) for immersive mixes. This is only possible because both the DAW and the console have native support for three-dimensional panning. Transferring the automation to Nuendo allows the audio and accompanying automation moves to be auditioned and manipulated in an editing suite before returning to the dub stage. Even the z-axis (up/down) is preserved in the Nuendo session and may be auditioned in a suitably-equipped editing room.
Film sound mixer and Nuendo user Michael O’Farrell believes believes Nuendo is the right choice for immersive sound formats, and supports Harrison’s decision to team up with Yamaha. “Choosing Nuendo as your editing platform makes total sense to me since it is the only major platform that has native Z-plane panning, accommodating the height pan data of the [emerging Dolby and Barco] systems.”
Sony Pictures has been a Harrison customer for over 20 years, and continues to partner with the company when they need to incorporate emerging workflows. Harrison unveiled their proprietary Object++ panning software in 2013. Film mixers have found Object++ to be instrumental for manipulating sounds in the new immersive formats. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — mixed at Sony Pictures — was the first major release to take advantage of this new technology.