Am I really the first to use Vegas to edit a documentary?

[Jill Simpson]

Thank you Ron,

I valued reading your workflow/process/method, and I bookmarked this page, tagging it so I will develop a better gameplan before the next project.

Pros would first log the shots and would only import areas of the tapes that would actually have a chance of being used in the production.

In the beginning,
that’s how we began.
I could tell you a story, but it’s not a great one.

Well, maybe it is of interest.

Before the beginning, before time began, 2.5 years ago, we had hired a great editor. Then he got sick, and the editing work he had done (of which we had seen some) was nowhere to be found. We proposed getting a new editor but he was well enough to say he was totally committed to this project (before his sickness, he began as the producer and principal camera operator).
At first he had said it’s best to have only one person viewing the footage and editing, but since he was sick he agreed it would be good if our other partner (with a good eye for editing) viewed all the footage, took notes, and developed possible outlines. She watched it all, twice, including noting brief flashes of a visual or sound that could be useful. I had asked her to log it in computer, but she prefers pen and paper, and at that point it still seemed our editor would be creating again soon, and that he would be doing the real work, after having been fed by her thoughts.
Eventually, with him still sick, I asked her to provide me with a log so I could do a batch capture of logged sections. She concluded, and I accepted, that there were so many clips that it would be more efficient to capture it all and let her then cull it where she could do more precise culling than from the notes she had originally taken for a purpose other than logging. Previously I wrote that we have 250 subclips, but I’ve learned that it’s closer to 900, totaling 18 hours, so I expect that means she was right that it was better to capture it all than for her to try to write a log from her notes.
Is it clear to you whether it would be better for her to have viewed it all again, this time logging it, instead of capturing it all then culling?

(I also replied, more briefly, to Douglas.)

– 4 GB RAM
– Intel duo core processor, 2.16 gHz EACH, 4.3 gHz total
– Vista 64-bit (32-bit able), with SP1
– Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
– Sound Card: RealTek High Definition Audio, 6.0.1.5384
– Camera: Sony DSR-PD170. Also: Kodak m1033 digital.
——–
Jilligan

[Jill Simpson]

Thanks David,

If it gives you problems with having too many clips, and there’s no cost efficient way to improve the computer, […]

As I’ve written in other recent threads ([url=https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/24/888851]Vegas’ poor use of memory? Unused RAM. Project ‘full’? Vegas crashing.[/url]), it seems that improving the computer would not solve the problems.
Happily, I think rejecting the intermediate-file method will solve everything, since when we’re not using subclips we won’t need all 60 hours of video in the project (plus the 20 hours of subclips).

—————–

could you try just making a second Vegas program and putting the remained of the clips in there, and then just alt+tab between them?

I considered that previously, but wrote in the thread
[url=https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/24/888680]Re: Project ‘full’? Maximum # of hours in a project file? Can’t add to Project Media.[/url]

I could divide the doc into 2 or 3 or 10 sections/themes/categories, with a project file for each section, but almost all 60 tapes contain moments that fit all the story’s sections – I would want to pull from almost all 60 tapes into each section, so I would still need perhaps 50 tapes in each sections’ project file.

That would be okay except for:

A RELATED PROBLEM:
Vegas project files are ALSO limited by total duration of Subclips.
Even when I reduced the # of hours of footage, I could only add subclips up to a limit. So I can’t add all the subclips for the project or even for just a section of the project.

A-ha!
But now that I won’t be using subclips, if I have the “too many clips” problem, your suggestion may indeed be the solution.
Thank you!

– 4 GB RAM
– Intel duo core processor, 2.16 gHz EACH, 4.3 gHz total
– Vista 64-bit (32-bit able), with SP1
– Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
– Sound Card: RealTek High Definition Audio, 6.0.1.5384
– Camera: Sony DSR-PD170. Also: Kodak m1033 digital.
——–
Jilligan

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Jill Simpson] “Is it clear to you whether it would be better for her to have viewed it all again, this time logging it, instead of capturing it all then culling?”

Back when I first started working in editing, I once had a project go out of control just as you have now. (Thankfully, it was my own project.) In the end, after much work, it became increasingly apparent that it was going to be better to just start the process clean — using good logging and import practices — instead of trying to work with all the existing footage and cull from there. That is working backwards and when you have as much stuff as you have online, you never arrive at that “balanced” place.

If it was me, I’d start the whole thing from scratch and log well, with a notebook, naming all my tapes by number, and noting the timecode on each numbered tape where the good shots are found.

In the end, you will know where everything is and you will not have to keep sorting through things repeatedly.

That’s how I would handle it — especially with an older machine that is going to need all the babying it can get.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
publisher
Creative COW Magazine

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

I would urge you to follow Ron’s recommendation.
You can easily log and batch capture, thus saving space, time, and having the shots you want, and in the process, I suspect you’ll learn alot about how NLE’s and file management work.
This will only serve you well in the long run. 60 hours is a lot of tape, and will likely Xlate to 120 hours of work, but you’ve probably spent that much in frustration and set-backs at this point.
At some time, it’s more profitable and self-fulfilling to realize the horse is dead.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Jill Simpson]

Thank you Ron – and now Douglass too.

Yes, I’d rather start riding a new horse out of the gate than keep whipping a dead horse just because I’m 1/4 way around the track.

I will consider this further, but I don’t think starting fresh is necessary, because I think it’s fair to say everything is logged, albeit by an unusual route:
1. Each tape has clips in well-named regions.
(Each tape has its own project file. Originally all tapes were in one project file, but when we found we could only fit a few tapes’ worth of subclips into our all-encompassing project file, we gave each tape its own project.)
2. Since I will now be operating in DV, surely I can batch render these regions and then splice and trim them at will, without needing to keep track of where the clips come from (the timecodes in the source tapes.)

If I’m wrong about part 2 of that, then I think I have an easy way to batch capture:
1. Run the “Regions to Subtitles” script
2. From ‘Edit Details’ => Commands, copy the spreadsheet of titles and timecodes to a spreadsheet program, and from there to a batch capture program. [I need to investigate that further. If it’s difficult in Vegas I might be able to do it using my friend’s Premiere.]

Thanks again Ron and Douglas – I will think about this more.

(P.S. I recalled another reason I accepted my project partner’s suggestion to just capture all the footage: I thought I needed to work with intermediate files and I learned that it was well-nigh impossible to capture in low res, then edit, then generate a log from the edit, then batch capture in full res the required clips – AND: In learning that, I came across someone’s opinion that batch capturing was old school, and that with modern computers capable of storing and processing more data, I’d be better off to just capture it all.
Yup, I’ve taken every wrong turn.)

– 4 GB RAM
– Intel duo core processor, 2.16 gHz EACH, 4.3 gHz total
– Vista 64-bit (32-bit able), with SP1
– Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
– Sound Card: RealTek High Definition Audio, 6.0.1.5384
– Camera: Sony DSR-PD170. Also: Kodak m1033 digital.
——–
Jilligan

[Rob Mack]

I think your first mistake was to try to shoehorn ideas from users of other NLEs into Vegas. It’s natural to try to force a new NLE to work like one you’ve got more experience with but I think in the end this just causes trouble. I don’t know if you personally have experience with other systems or if you were just reading tips from others but the result was the same.

Vegas gives you only one timeline per project. Most other systems give you more timelines and the project file manages them all. It seems like that’s what you were trying to simulate by nesting veg files into a master project. Don’t bother with this, as you’ve seen that nested Vegs don’t help much in managing a big project. Most people get by in Vegas by just managing things at the Windows Explorer level, organizing things into folders.

Bins are useful for organizing clips and they’re easily copied from one project to another.

Subclips have the problem you’ve discovered, that they won’t retain a user assigned name when you copy them to a new project file. They also have hard fixed heads and tails, which may or may not bother you.

Trimmer regions can be a very useful substitute for subclips. You mark a region in the trimmer and then you can view those regions in the Vegas Explorer as child objects of the file they come from. If you’ve captured fairly big clips (like the whole tape or a whole interview) then regions displayed this way are very easy to use. You can drag them to the timeline or back into the trimmer. Unfortunately, you can’t organize them in bins, probably because they existed in Vegas before bins did and the bins, subclips, and nested veg features were just added as lipservice to people in forums.

Vegas works very well with DV AVI files (and has done so for years) so there’s no good reason to work with smaller proxies.

Vegas has limits. You can find you’ve got too many objects in the file, too many events on tracks, too many tracks…and you generally only find this out once the project is so big that you can’t easily pull it apart. It’s prudent to break a project into smaller phases if you can, just to keep the project spritely and responsive. For instance, you could do 15 minute segments, or you could do the entire project as basic cuts, render the vision to a new track and get rid of the old media, then move on to do the color and then do the audio.

The main thing is just to try not to choose such complex and convoluted workflows. Vegas does well with “simple”. Don’t over-think your process.

There are a few good script tools out there that can help you out. I’d go look for Veggie Toolkit because I think it may have useful features for your situation.

Rob Mack