quote from b.bass:my experience with mastering engineers is that unless you stand there the whole time...with a gun....he ain't gonna hear one word of such instructions.
i don't believe there are that many like that. i was a video master/edit engineer...ok, a looong time o go... but i enjoyed what i did...maybe it's cause ...nahhhh. granted, we mastered on 2" quads...my earliest were the awesome ampegs (dange...were it ampex?...mst be the vodka)
the 1200 & 2000. the 2000 was just so clean an editor. later, doing shows and arty things...they had...oh dear; RCA, TR-50's. i did all the usual maintenance for the four used in production. come in at six..power up big things...go get coffee..stand around or find cleaning stuff and alignment tapes. tubes should be settled by now...at least one hour. and on it goes. you had make sure the right head was cuttin in on the right field..no, the first field...if ya misaligned at this step...well, during the real edit...your gonna see the kingston trio make some real errors as their colors go into a black hole...congrats..ya jst blew an edit and ya gotta go back the master anddd back up to the previous edit and lay all that down again...this can be a real drag if your just doing audience shots for segways to thenext piece. we'ed try for at least 30 minutes of the show ready by the end of a day...sometimes a whole hour came of it!
but...i listened to the producer in how he wanted a piece to transit...had to, had 4 machines backed-timed and rolling...and the timer on each was a mechanical counter...the timer wuz me!..and it took .6 seconds for an edit to take from the time your finger made the button 'click'.
but... i cared. so did the producer...who stood right there with me all day to make sure he liked it to!

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t higg