In this article film author, producer und cutter Goran Maršalek writes about his passion for documentary films – and working with EDIUS. On Easter Sunday 2021 the national Croatian TV channel “HTV” aired Goran Maršalek’s documentary film “Storm of the Soul“ at prime time. Working on the documentary is also covered in this text.

By Goran Maršalek (www.media53.hr)

Stability – this is the most important feature, that a professional editor expects from the tool he is working with in the process of creating a project. My video editing story started 15 years ago. Before I had been working on recording and editing radio shows for almost 10 years, so I know what a stable and reliable software means for production. Although I didn’t have much experience in video editing and postproduction at the time, just some theoretical knowledge and a great desire to learn, I knew I wanted a stable software hoping not to waste time any more in trying to recover crashed projects.

I had never heard of EDIUS before

That was my basic wish and then I got to know EDIUS. If I remember correctly, it was EDIUS version 4. I got the installation disc from a friend who worked at a local TV station. I had never heard of EDIUS before. But when I started EDIUS for the very first time, I felt that everything was transparent and intuitive. From then until today, I have tried out all the main NLEs in the market. But as you might have guessed, I stayed with EDIUS. There are many good reasons for this like Intuitiveness. The ability to natively work with any kind of codec and file format. The professional approach. The wide choice of preview quality options leveraging the speed of editing and real time playback… I could go on with this list of my favorite features all day. But all this would be nothing without the most important one – stability!

My main business: TV content

My main task is to produce and post-produce video content, mainly for TV. This includes documentaries of various formats, music videos, TV commercials and other video content primarily for TV broadcast as well as for distribution via DVD and BD. I had been doing weddings for a while, but for the last seven or eight years I have focused on my main business: TV content. Concerning corporate films, the most famous brand, I have worked for, is Coca-Cola. For the Croatian and regional Coca-Cola branch, together with my team I have shot and produced more than 30 reports and documentaries including one of the most important corporate films Coca-Cola has ever made in Croatia and the surrounding region since its presence in that market since the early 1970s. All were edited with EDIUS and EDIUS compatible plugins. So EDIUS is therefore my most important everyday tool reliably supporting me as a filmmaker to make a living.

Stability and reliability are equally important

The description of my job shows that the stability of the NLE is crucial, as these are big projects. Some of them are TV series that I have been working on for years. All these projects were edited and post-produced in EDIUS, some in combination with photo editing solutions. In my business, stability and reliability are equally important. Everyone working on a project for a longer time period will know what I mean. And I could really name a lot of cases when the reliability of EDIUS was crucial and saved me from great trouble. I would not trust other NLEs to behave in such a reliable manner, given that they have crashed on much less demanding occasions. And that is one of the reasons why I stayed with EDIUS.

To give you an example: With EDIUS I am never in doubt, whether I will be able to open and work on a project I have not touched in years, edited with an older EDIUS version. A few months ago, a client asked me to reopen one of his projects that I had already finished 6 years ago. He asked me to redo the project in another language and for a different customer. This was an American educational project called “The Art of Marriage”.

“The Art of Marriage” edited with EDIUS 6.5 and continued with EDIUS 8

The project has a total duration of 5 hours and is about 1 terabyte large. 6 years ago, I edited and finished the project with EDIUS 6.5 (32-bit native) with tons of graphics and titles. After finishing the project, I had moved all the material, over the years, from disk to disk and it finally ended up on one external drive.

The ultimate stress test for EDIUS was yet to come

So, after 6 years it was time to open the project again. And guess what? Everything worked fantastic, just as if I had I closed it yesterday! No matter what, everything opened fine and ran smoothly now with EDIUS 8 (64-bit native), even complex nested sequences. It is simply a great feeling when I can fully trust my NLE.

However, the ultimate stress test for EDIUS was yet to come. This happened in 2016, when I started working on my new documentary “Storm of the Soul” (original Croatian title “BURA DUŠE”), a documentary about Croatian war veterans.

Timeline of “Storm of the Soul”

I edited the film entirely with EDIUS 8 WG. The still pictures were edited with Affinity Photo and Affinity Design software. The premiere of the documentary took place in 2019 in Croatia’s most famous cinema “Kino Europa” in Zagreb.

Within this project I have used numberless plugins and tools for color correction and grading, working on still pictures, applying sound effects and lots of blends and track mattes in EDIUS. I used a lot of motion tracking and EDIUS did a perfect with this the tracking as well. The project was truly “heavy weight” with more than 25.000 clips of various formats and framerates ranging from 23.97 up to 100 fps and resolutions from 640 x 480 resolution up to 4K.

A real nightmare for post-production

Nine different types of cameras were used in total with an even greater variety of lenses. Among them was a Sony broadcast camera PMW 300 as well as a DJI Phantom 2 drone, a handheld Canon XA 30 and DSLRs like the Canon range from 5D to 7D, a Canon 750D, Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 and a GH2.

Storm of the Soul: Mix and Match on one Timeline

Different phases of the film were shot with different cameras, a real nightmare for post-production! But we were always smiling and in the mood. We had our goal, and we were going towards it.

There was only minimal transcoding or pre-rendering needed, mostly because the native files would be loaded with other heavy additions such as NEAT video or RED Giant plugin filters, many times even in combination. There were lots of nested interconnected sequences. I had all possible combinations, and all was mixed with everything else... Whenever you have limited financial resources and limited recording equipment, you then put to work whatever is available and comes in handy.

What everybody tells you NEVER to do

Due to the growing size of the project and to also achieve the desired editing speed, at one point in post-production, I was forced to transfer all material from the HDD and older SSDs to several new SSDs. At the same time, due to the age of the components, I was forced to change core elements of my editing PC like the motherboard, processor, memory, and cooling. Having to do this in the middle of a project is exactly what everybody tells you NEVER to do. Usually such an update would result in a disaster. Something bad would always happen, get lost or go wrong. But… after switching and reconnecting all the new hardware parts EDIUS did not have one problem! Everything worked like a charm and much quicker, far beyond expectations. After a short but unavoidable hardware update intermission I was therefore good to go and able to continue editing my project, faster and even more joyful than before.

Since I was also the director and editor of this documentary, the ability to manage notes in the sequence marker was extremely helpful for my workflow. I wished EDIUS 8 already had the colored markers that are standard with EDIUS now.

Just edit and play

When the editing was complete, I could draw the line and enthusiastically conclude the following: EDIUS did the job FANTASTICALLY. There were no crashes, no projects lost and no lost files. And therefore, there never was no panic, no fear at all. Like someone said: Just edit and play. Background rendering – as it is available now with EDIUS X – could have further enhanced and accelerated the entire post-production process, but I could not complain at all. Everything went smoothly and painlessly. Of course, some denoised NEAT files as well as some clips with Red Giant filters applied needed rendering (CTRL + G), but that was no big deal. EDIUS did this quickly, too. When I was in a hurry, I would simply reduce the preview quality for a real time playback instead of rendering and the matter would be resolved.

All could be done just with EDIUS

The documentary was co-funded by the Croatian Ministry of Veterans Affairs. Their jury, consisting of six film professionals from various film agencies and companies, concluded, that among fifty documentaries about the war in Croatia made in the past twenty years, our film was the absolute best. They said the film had the looks of a high budget movie; way more expensive than the cost really was. We were happy and pleased and at the same time surprised by such a reaction. Because we knew what compromises we had to make which are inevitable when dealing with very limited financial resources.

After the premiere showing, some movie professionals expressed their congratulations on behalf of my excellent use of After Effects… Now this point goes completely to EDIUS because there was no After Effects involved at all. I had to explain to them that I only used three software solutions: Grass Valley EDIUS (8WG) as the solution for editing, color correction and for export. Affinity Photo for still pictures and Pro Tools for audio, and that I have nothing installed from Adobe on my PC at all. They were surprised because they would not have thought, all this could be done with EDIUS and plugins for EDIUS.

Korean version of “Stom of the Soul”

English version of “Storm of the Soul”

A few months later, we received requests to translate our documentary into several foreign languages including Korean, Czech, Ukrainian, English, Italian, Bulgarian and more.

Enjoy your work while you work

Some people say that it doesn't matter what program you're working with if it's able to do the job properly. And on one hand, they might be right. The main thing is to get your work done. However, I would still go a step further and say, that there is something even more important than doing just the job. And this is, to be able to enjoy your work while you work. To me, EDIUS provides just that, enjoyment while I work.

And this not only me. My son is 17 years old and has been editing his YouTube videos for several years with EDIUS 7. My wife worked as a TV journalist until 5 years ago, often editing her own TV news reports with EDIUS. Today, she works at an elementary school and teaches Croatian. As a part of school activities, she teaches media literacy having children editing school projects, also using EDIUS!

Goran Maršalek together with his wife Daniela Maršalek at the film premiere in Zagreb

Every serious and long-term EDIUS user wants certain improvement related to the creative part, such as improvements in the audio section, new and modern video effects, and transitions. So did I. And after quite a while Grass Valley even delivered on that. With EDIUS X they included new “Seamless Transitions”, advanced audio tools and – the biggest improvement for my workflow – background rendering and background file export options.

Actually, the former lack of modern and professional transition effects and the limited set of audio options had been my only real criticism about EDIUS before. Now with EDIUS X this is no issue anymore.

However, what sets EDIUS apart from other NLEs is all that I have described above. Because all options mean nothing if I do not have the confidence and certainty that the program will quickly and efficiently do what I ask of it, under all conditions. My long-time practice and experience proofed this well.

Love and trust with EDIUS have been around for a very long time and in many different situations, so my wife has nicely concluded, that EDIUS is no longer just a tool for us. In some way EDIUS has become a member of our family.

Goran Maršalek

MEDIA 53, www.media53.hr

The film is available to view for free with English subtitles on this website: https://en.filmburaduse.com/

Goran informed us that he is currently working on two new documentaries. He writes:

I edit and post-produce make both films in EDIUS X. Both films are still in the production phase. Post-production should start in April this year.

One is about foreign volunteers who fought in the Croatian army during the war in Croatia in 1991. It is a long-awaited documentary in Croatia, because even 30 years after the war ended no one had made a film about these people. Goran was already able to send us a link to the trailer of his new film “1991 - Who's your neighbor?”: https://youtu.be/to2OjxdRrVc

Addition: On 17th November 2023 the film "1991 - Who's your neighbor?" won not less than three awards at the renowned 8 & HalFilm Awards: Best Editing, Best European Director and Best Documentary Director.

The second documentary cover a religious topic and is called “Delusions about Jesus”. The film is about the modern perception and often misconception of Jesus.

This trailer is in English language. https://youtu.be/04zcfXGYjEY

When Thomas Rebensburg talks about his projects, his passion for music is present at every moment. The composer faced great challenges in the music score and live performance of a 100-year-old Ganghofer silent film. Due to the Corona pandemic, the event had to be postponed several times, and technical obstacles also had to be overcome. In midst all those challenges the Grass Valley T2 4K video player/recorder proved to be a reliable problem solver. More about that later...

Before the concert: Thomas Rebensburg prepares the T2 4K for the playback of the silent movie

Actually, everything would have fit beautifully for an anniversary in 2020. The popular writer Ludwig Ganghofer had died 100 years ago and had last lived and worked in Tegernsee. The Rottach Art and Culture Association had commissioned Thomas Rebensburg to compose a new film score for one of the first Ganghofer adaptations, "The Monastery’s Hunter" (original German title: “Der Klosterjäger”) - also from 1920. By the 1960s, Ganghofer's works had already reached a total circulation of around 35 million books, and the material had already been filmed 50 times as movies.

The original music for the film "The Monastery’s Hunter" is today considered lost. The composition assignment appealed to Thomas Rebensburg even more. With a humorous note, Rebensburg puts the importance of the first live silent film scores a little in perspective. "In the beginning, it was not so much about creating a particularly artistic composition, but mainly about drowning out the loud noise of the projector with music," Thomas Rebensburg explains and smiles.

Because of the live situation, orchestral music in silent films can usually only address the tension of the action in very general terms, says Rebensburg. For the music to the silent film "The Monastery’s Hunter," the composer took a different approach. The music was to retell the moving images and the story. And in doing so be synchronized with the action and scenically precise, to have a particularly impressive effect.

However, this requires the music performance to be absolutely synchronous with the moving image. In the case of a music production in the studio and post-processing of the video in the editing room, this would not be a problem, because corrections could be made at any time. However, in a live performance with 13 instrumental soloists, the picture-accurate music playback can hardly be maintained over a long 63 minutes. This is because, unlike a current motion picture with numerous breaks in the music score, Rebensburg composed the music for "The Monastery’s Hunter" throughout the entire length of the silent film.

"And this is where Grass Valley's technology comes into play," explains the composer. Because the project was ultimately realized by integrating the Grass Valley Player/Recorder T2 4K into the interaction between conductor and orchestra.

The screen in the background: The T2 4K outputs the image and a frame-accurate time code

Thomas Rebensburg: "The T2 4K serves as a player for the projection on the screen, and the player also outputs the current time code with frame accuracy." Through an interface, this timecode is translated into the midi standard and bar positions common to musicians, and thus controls the playback of the score in Logic. Logic is the digital audio workstation - as music and notation program - with which Thomas Rebensburg has been working successfully for decades.

With the Grass Valley T2 4K as video player for film projection in the hall and time code encoder for frame-accurate playback of the score at the conductor's desk, Thomas Rebensburg had found an ideal solution for live use. In addition, Rebensburg had also taken the special challenges of a live performance into account in his composition by providing for some somewhat freer passages that would allow him to unobtrusively align the orchestra and the film.

The video timecode, converted to MIDI, controls the synchronous playback of the score in Logic

"Now, looking at the score or the screen, if I see that the orchestra is slightly out of sync, we can use those passages as breakpoints to get back in sync with the film and the score. It takes both a lot of practice and great discipline for the musicians to be able to play expressively and yet not become out of sync with the film. My job as a conductor in this project, like a metronome, is above all to be a reliable clock."

On March 11, 2022, the time had finally come. The premiere at the Seeforum Rottach-Egern could take place and the audience in the hall as well as the critics were enthusiastic. The Tegernseer Zeitung commented: "The music took over (...) the reflections and inner monologues (...) (and) turned the 1920 film into a magnificent, new and modern cinematic masterpiece. The audience then rewarded the performance of the composer and the musicians with minutes of applause and shouts of 'Bravo'."

Indeed, the interplay with the 13 instrumental soloists worked so perfectly that Thomas Rebensburg hardly had to correct the timing once. "Thanks to the great commitment of the musicians, the audience perceived the performance as expressive and not, for example, as restricted by technical specifications" explains Rebensburg. "To experience this from the audience in this way has of course made us particularly happy!"

Together with the orchestra, Thomas Rebensburg is already looking forward to further performances and a film version in the future. Both are already in the planning stage. The T2 4K from Grass Valley will then also be back as a timecode and video player and reliably support the common beat.

Pictures: Laura Jung and private

Thomas Rebensburg

Thomas Rebensburg, born in 1958, has always made music. He studied composition and conducting in Munich and received his first composition award during his studies. Further awards followed in various musical genres as well as the Bavarian State Prize of the Minister of Culture for outstanding achievements as a composer.

Thomas Rebensburg loves versatility. His genre includes symphonic music, chamber music, music theater, choral and church music, film music, songwriting and advertising as well as working as an arranger and composer for national and international ensembles and artists such as Angelika Milster, Gunther Emmerlich, Deborah Sasson, Francisco Araiza, and many others, including numerous productions with the radio orchestras of WDR, HR, SWR and BR.

Thomas Rebensburg is active as an honorary member of the German Composers' Association, GEMA and as a board member of the Bavarian Media Council.

Grass Valley T2 4K (Digital-Recorder/Player)

The T2 4K digital recorders/players are 4K DCI, 4K UHD or HD/SD audio/video playout systems available in three different models and are suitable for almost any application in the studio, in a live situation or even at an event.

In workstation mode, the transport controls on the front panel make the unit as easy to operate as a traditional VTR. Depending on configuration and resolution, the T2 4K supports up to two playback channels and one recording channel simultaneously, often replacing external players. 

Equipped with extensive interfaces for video/audio/remote and LTC connectivity, the T2 4K can also transfer files via USB 3.0 and a Gigabit Ethernet network. The T2 works great with EDIUS and, like EDIUS, supports nearly every format and codec, such as Grass Valley HQX, XAVC, XAVC S, XDCAM, P2, AVC-ULTRA, Apple ProRes 422, Avid DNxHD, and MPEG-2.

“No other video editing system can handle the variety of file formats we receive.” Grant Salinger, Managing Director, Motionlink

“Real-time editing capability is a big deal. It allows me to focus on storytelling instead of ‘working’ an interface… and storytelling is at the core of what we do. In fact, I’d say the best feature of EDIUS is the play button. The play button works, and it works every single time it’s used. It’s no surprise that the EDIUS logo IS the play button.” TheFrank Aldana, Director/Editor/VFX/Voiceover artist, Red Ei8ht Inc.



“EDIUS allows us to cut the shows fast and efficiently, yet the viewer thinks we’re switching live. That’s what makes me the most proud. When a fan who attended the show enjoys the video, I know we’ve done something right.” Ty Roberts, Co-founder and Video Editor, TourGigs


“We produce about 48-and-a-half hours of news a week. That’s a LOT of news, so products like EDIUS are really important in terms of making sure that we get the workflow as efficient as we can. And we’re doing it with about the same staff we did a lot less news with, earlier. So the efficiency of operations really makes a big difference.” Dennis Milligan, News Director, WBTV



“If there’s breaking news and you have no time to get something on the air, you just use the Source Browser and literally you could have video edited within seconds.” Leighton Grant, Chief Photographer, Raycom Media