What is Conforming?
Conforming is the process of replacing lower-quality media in an edit or a shot with higher-quality media, usually camera-original files.
In most post-production workflows (even for big-budget Hollywood productions), editors typically work with lower-quality files, called proxies. These files are much easier to edit and require much less storage and are less CPU intensive than top-quality original camera files.
Once an edit is finished or locked, that exact recipe needs to be sent to someone else to continue working on other things such as color grading, CGI so on. so that they can recreate it in another program. This time better-quality source files will be used instead of low-quality files. And usually, a more powerful computer will be used to re-create this tasty recipe.
Conforming makes your edits smooth and simple but still delivers the best quality results.
Why Conform?
Early on in your career, you might be able to get away with doing everything yourself in one program like Adobe Premiere or Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve. Maybe you edit, create graphics, and color yourself all in one program and don’t need to conform to anything.
While it’s great if you can do everything yourself in one program, the more you advance in your career and the bigger the projects, the more you’ll need to hand off edits to other artists for conforming.
Most professional projects have very tiny deadlines and budgets involving multiple artists using different pieces of software. The project might have CG vendors, colorists, and a motion graphics team involved.
All of these factors mean that files will need to be parsed out, conformed, re-conformed back into edits, and managed properly.
It’s important to understand exactly what conforming will mean for the project that you’re working on.
Conforming For Collaboration
Conforming is an important process to understand, but the term itself can be confusing. Many different scenarios involve conforming. And you always conform to do a specific task. It isn’t just the task itself if that makes sense.
You conform FOR color grading. You conform FOR finishing. You conform FOR CG. All that means is that you replace low-quality files with the best quality files you can to make sure you’re getting the most out of your camera.
If you have an edit with a shot that needs to get sent to a CG vendor, for example, you will want to confirm that low-resolution shot to a higher-resolution file, in a codec and bitrate that is best for CG work, before sending it to the vendor.
If you have a sequence that is ready for color, a colorist will need to confirm the original camera files to the edit sequence before coloring.
When the colorist is finished, she might render out files and send them to an online artist to conform the colored files to the edit. Usually, during the online stage, the editorial effects, graphics, and audio are all added back to the sequence for final mastering.
As an added example, in more advanced workflows, your source shots might be high-resolution DPX files or even OpenEXR. Some film studios transcode all the original camera files to high-quality mastering files like these to make sure the color and VFX pipeline is smooth.
This process maintains the maximum quality of the camera source files, but also makes it easier to maintain a color pipeline with multiple vendors through the post-production process.
All About Communication
The first step of any conform process is communication. An editor or assistant, a producer or post supervisor, and the artist or vendor doing the conforming need to communicate about workflow.
For example, you might have an edit that needs to be colored by an offsite colorist. Talk to the colorist about his or her preferred method of prep, what the expectation is for the clients seeing the color, and work out the details so that conforming to the source files is a smooth process.
If you need to send shots to a CG company, jump on a conference call with them. You’ll need to know how to prep the files, what type of files they’ll need, how you’ll get the files back, etc. Sometimes you might need to conform yourself when preparing files for external vendors.
Today, a great tool for conforming is DaVinci Resolve. In Resolve, it’s a simple process to match edits back to source files and spit out whatever formats, color spaces, and resolutions are needed.
Once all of the players are on the same page about the needs of a particular project, you can start to move forward.
Most Common Conform Scenarios
To give you a better idea of common conform scenarios, I’ve listed a few common color and online workflows below. These are very general workflows that cover a wide range of potential projects:
Commercial Conforming
1. Color and shots
An edit sequence is prepared without effects, just shots end to end.
The colorist conforms and colors source shots.
Individual shots are rendered with handles from color.
2. Online and sequence
An edit sequence is prepared with all effects.
An online artist conforms to the colored shots.
Graphics, audio, and all the pieces from offline are cut back in.
Film/TV Conforming
1. Online and shots
An edit sequence is prepared with all effects.
Online artist conforms source shots
Conformed shots are rendered out for CG or VFX
The sequence is rendered out for color
2. Color
A conformed sequence with baked-in effects is imported
Color or assistant notches or cuts up the edit
Color and render back sequence to Online
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