Mathew Waters has declared himself something of a maverick by using Steinberg’s Nuendo audio workstation software in a town where Digidesign’s Pro Tools has come to rule the roost. It’s a decision that allows him to more easily combine the roles of supervising sound editor, sound designer and mixer on director Victor Salva’s new film, Peaceful Warrior – a virtuoso multitasking act that reflects the film’s modest $10 million-plus budget.

He isn’t a total nonconformist. Waters uses and likes Pro Tools for certain applications, and Pro Tools played a big part on the dialog, backgrounds and ADR work on Peaceful Warrior. But when he figured out he could directly connect a Mac G4 loaded with Nuendo to the Harrison Series 12 digital console at Todd-AO Burbank’s mix stage usings, he saw an opportunity to accommodate the workflow needs of the combination of staff and freelance audio technicians common on independent films, and to alter workflow protocol for the better.

Click here to download a diagram (PDF format) of the workflow on Peaceful Warrior.

“I think Pro Tools is great, but when you’re working on low- and mid-budget films, you need to be cost-effective, especially as a freelancer,” says Waters, whose film sound credits include Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Blade II and The Wedding Planner. Over time, he’s noticed that the cost of digital audio hardware has gone up relative to the cost of the software. He wanted to avoid having to continually upgrade and add more hardware, yet remain compatible with the gear that the major studios were adding, whether it’s a Pro Tools Pro Control mixing surface or battleship digital consoles such as the Neve DFC, Harrison and the Euphonix System 5.

“It started out as a cost issue for me,” he says. “Using the MADI interface, I can get Nuendo on a Mac to play on a stage directly into the Harrison or the DFC or the Euphonix without having to go through analog converters. I can’t do that with Pro Tools because it doesn’t support MADI. With the Nuendo-MADI-digital console configuration, I can get twice the number of tracks at a fraction of the cost.”

On Peaceful Warrior, in addition to the sound design and effects he was recording, Waters was integrating and editing work from other audio sources, including ADR and Foley, which were recorded at Todd-AO on Pro Tools H|D systems. He resolved the file-format differences by exporting files from Pro Tools as AAF files, which can take some time – but when you’re working in your own studio, you can adjust the wall clock.

Nuendo’s larger track capacity means he can play all of the sources against each other and stay on a single system. When he reaches the mix stage, the director can request individual components of a sound design stem.

"This film has a number of dream sequences, which in general tend to use up a lot of tracks,” says Waters. “One in Peaceful Warrior was 100 tracks’ worth. On Nuendo, I can keep adding tracks until the computer breaks. So at the mix stage, I keep my options open longer ‘ if Victor wants to hear a variation on some of the sound design right then and there, I can handle it.”

In this work model, panning and other dynamics are done in the mix, not in the predubs. One of the limitations of constant file conversions is that they don’t allow much metadata to be transferred. Waters maintains that that’s not a problem, and suggests that it actually encourages an almost music-like mix, with more of the moves reserved for the console. “We don’t have all the same functionality as we would if we stayed in the Pro Tools domain exclusively,” he says. “On the other hand, we do get to mix through a hell of a digital console.”

Using the MADI card as an interface also netted Waters 56 discrete channels on the console, compared to the 32 he says a conventional Pro Tools rig provides using the Pro Controller. “On a six-reel show being mixed in 11 days, they don’t have the budget to predub,” he says. “I would have had to do a lot of compositing and combining of elements to make all this audio fit into 32 channels.”

Waters is not trying to foster an us-versus-them mindset, but he does feel that Hollywood gets comfortable with a knee-jerk methodology without looking hard at alternatives. In fact, while his primary motivation was economical, the flexibility he discovered in having access to more tracks and being able to defer creative decisions until the last minute surprised him. “People were surprised when I suggested it,” he says. “Some were downright suspicious.”

Those people included Keith Burhans, chief engineer at Todd-AO Burbank, who beta-tested the original v. 1.5 of Nuendo for Steinberg. (Yamaha purchased Steinberg last year and now distributes Nuendo.) He initially looked askance at Waters’ idea. Burhans recalls his initial reaction: “He wants me to take down a tried-and-true way of working and go with something unproven?” But he agreed, plugging Waters’ Mac into the stage’s matrix via a KVM keyboard monitor switcher, which let both the Pro Tools and Nuendo GUIs appear on the screens during the mix. “It was really just one cable from the MADI card in his computer to my MADI router into the digital core of the console. The only other thing I had to do was feed [his computer] the same word clock from the stage that everyone else was getting.”

It actually wasn’t quite that simple. One limitation of Nuendo is that it does not chase SMPTE linear time code (LTC), only MIDI time code (MTC). That’s not an issue in music applications, but it’s a serious speed bump in audio post. “In the world of movies, there is no such thing as MTC,” Burhans states flatly. The solution was to siphon time code from the studio’s distribution amplifier and convert it to MTC using MOTU’s Micro Express SMPTE reader and generator, which converts LTC to MTC.

That had a collateral benefit. “MTC by its nature sends out MMC [MIDI Machine Control] signals,” Burhans explains. “So when we fast-forward or rewind, the Nuendo play head is shuttling along with that function. It’s shuttling the entire session, so to speak, even 100 tracks at a time, which is cool.”

Cool and cheap, say the audio post engineers, such as co-supervising sound editor Glenn Morgan sound mixer Joe Barnett, who worked on Peaceful Warrior with Burhans and Waters. Waters asserts that the need for alternative workflows will increast as the economic underpinnings driving Hollywood evolve, with a continuing trend toward independent production and lower post-production budgets and more freelance engineers and editors working on these projects with their own gear.

“I know that the way this business is, I will always have to find a way to be financially creative in order to able to be artistically creative,” says Waters. “Young directors want a lot of sound ‘ layers of it ‘ and they want more control over it right up until the final mix. They’re also not all working with huge post-production budgets. It’s up to [the engineers] to find ways to meet those requirements that are affordable for them and us. What’s really cool is that this solution was out there waiting to happen. I’m sure there’s more like that. You just have to look for them.”