“Do you still batch capture?” Is it OK to use subclips of a single tape-length file for all of my editing?

[Ron Craig]

Just my opinion and workflow but I capture everything. If you have enough drive/array space, why not? I don’t see why working with subclips would be a problem. Again, if you have the drive space make them independent clip, or new media, if you want.

I also use terabyte drives now to archive everything — all original data and all project data. How nice to be able to go back to that archive and find anything you need!

[Benjamin Reichman]

Ron, what would be the advantage of making them independent clips–or “new media”–is that the same thing?

[Ron Craig]

I wasn’t being clear. Creating an independent clip does not create new media. It just removes the relationship between that newly independent clip and any other clip in the project that uses the same media. But it retains its relationship to the source media on your drives. To create clips/subclips with actual new media on your drives you need to export and reimport, I believe.

I’m not an expert in Media Manager but I think that is what you want to read up on in the manual.

[Mark Suszko]

Well the way I look at it, if you make one huge grab of the tape from end to end and just edit by invoking multiple iterations of that one clip with different in and out points, you haven’t technically “wasted” hard drive space, *assuming you will wind up using almost every frame*, since what we’re doing here is non-destructive editing. I can imagine situations where you grab a multitude of individual clips that comprise 95 percent of the original footage, yet you fill over 100 percent because each little separate grab probably came with a few seconds of heads and tails for “handles” on it, and that would represent loading in additional copies of the same original footage over and over, in those little increments. Unlikely to be a huge issue for most situations. I would not base the decision on hard drive space unless I was really up against the wall for dive room. Depending on your time frame to work, you could always digitize at a space-saving rate, then reimport and remaster after getting a lock on the edit.

So, what do you give up, just loading in a tape from end to end? For one thing, efficiency in locating and identifying specific sections. Yeah, you could do it later by marking out selections and making them independent clips. But one way or another, you have to log it or deal with the equivalent of logging. You can do it on the front end during ingest, or on the back end when you should instead be concentrating on editing, but you WILL end up doing it at some point.

One problem I can see with working off one massive source clip is, if that clip gets damaged or accidentally disconnected, your entire program goes offline. If one of many clips in a bin goes a-wanderin’, you have just one little hole in your timeline.

Now depending on what the job is, I do things both ways. I used to always just digitize the whole tape as one and cut it up on the timeline. That, I think, is because I was raised in linear tape editing where scrubbing back and forth thru reels is all part of the game, and part of getting familiar with the footage. In that paradigm, you end up “logging” little pieces of shots and cut-aways and such in your head, and at some point, you might be stuck for a shot, and the brain says “you know, I saw a couple seconds of so-and-so on this reel in the last half, never meant to be used, it was just part of some slating, but it could be useful here”.

The longer I work with FCP though, the more I like to take advantage of bin management and logging functions. What I’m doing when I log on ingest is I’m already “pre-editing” in a way, selecting out only the stuff I know I will need.

The longer the finished piece is, the more complicated it is, the faster/ more efficient the bin/multiple clip method becomes, versus just grabbing the whole tape and slicing it down. If I am working on news, where it is mostly subtractive editing, cutting down to fit a time, but still a linear narrative, I grab the whole thing from where I know the good stuff starts to where I’m sure there will be enough to finish, digitize it as one chunk, then razor it down roughly in a speed pass at faster than real time. Then I go back and refine the cuts.

I have just a tiny amount of time so far working with P2 clips, which come in as their own clips based on stop-start info. These I find still need renaming to make finding the shot you want faster, but if it is news cutting, again, I might just select all; and drag them into the timeline, because I’m used to that.

[Benjamin Reichman]

I appreciate all the advice! Just for the record, in case this is helpful to anyone: I decided to:

1) Capture the whole tape as one file with Capture Now.

2) Add markers automatically with the DV Start/Stop Detect command.

3) Make those marked sections into subclips automatically with the Make Subclip command.

4) Follow the advice on p. 115 of Volume IV of the manual (“Removing Portions of Media Files After Creating Subclips”). It did NOT work as advertised–it created a set of files in a temporary folder with odd names instead of my Capture Scratch folder. I found another thread on Creative COW that saved me: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1010749

5) After fiddling around with the Media Manager, I followed the advice in the thread and “moved” the media into my Capture Scratch folder. Then used the Rename File to Match Clip command.

I now have 12 files that represent all the footage in the tape that I’m using, and about 125 subclips that refer to those 12 files. I was expecting I’d get one file per subclip, but that didn’t happen. I suppose that’s not a problem, but as a new FCP user, I found the Media Manager to be quite wonky. It didn’t work as the manual clearly stated it would, and that’s a little unnerving.

Anyway, it’s all set, and I’m only leaving these comments in case anyone else is in my same situation. The lesson, as many other people have said in the forums, seems to be: don’t rely on the Media Manager.

[David Roth weiss]

Benjamin,

I’ve been following this thread, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is you’re actually trying to accomplish. Is there an objective to all of this? Are you actually trying to achieve something that will be of value to you? What is the end result you been trying achieve with all these extra steps, and why?

Perhaps if you clearly define your ultimate objective it might be possible to help you find a workflow to meet that objective, but as it stands now, it sounds like you’re trying to turn a simple job into a difficult job and a short one into a long one.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Benjamin Reichman]

David, I’m a beginner, and I probably am making something simple needlessly complex, but I assure you that’s not my intention!

My goal is to get footage from my miniDV camcorder into Final Cut quickly and without too much wasted hard drive space, while saving on wear-and-tear of my camcorder.

Logging and capturing from tape the way I was taught in a course works well, obviously, but:

a) it seems slow to fast-forward, rewind, etc. as I log clips from tape, and

b) I’ve been told that it’s best to capture from a miniDV tape deck and NOT a camcorder so that you don’t wear out the camcorder. I don’t know how large an issue this really is, but I don’t have access to a deck. So all the logging and capturing I do is straight from my camcorder.

Because of the two issues above, I thought that if I could capture the tape as one large file, then I’d be saving wear-and-tear on the camcorder, and I could save time reviewing the footage because fast-forwarding, rewinding, jumping from point to point, etc. is much faster from the hard drive than from tape.

If I capture one large file, however, I need to break it up into pieces, so that I can save hard drive space by not keeping portions of video I don’t need. Another reason is that Mark warned above about the danger of having a single massive video file that might become corrupt, which would require recapturing the whole tape from scratch.

So that’s what I was thinking. Whether that thought process makes sense or not, is the question. 😉

[David Roth weiss]

[Benjamin Reichman] “David, I’m a beginner, and I probably am making something simple needlessly complex, but I assure you that’s not my intention! “

We all have to start at some point, so beginning is no sin at all.

My advice to you Benjamin would be not to get too caught up in the business of media management using Media Manager as a way to save miniscule amounts of cheap hard drive space, at the expense of your valuable time. At 13Gb per hour, DV or HDV don’t take up a lot of hard drive space, and hard drives are incredibly cheap these days. Just remember, you can always buy another hard drive, but you can’t buy additional time on this planet.

Creativity and storytelling with sound and picture are where it’s at, so I’d advise you to simply ingest the material into your system as fast as you can, even if that’s in one or possibly two big chunks per reel. Then, simply start “breaking down” your footage into subclips and categorizing by subject into various bins. There are other ways to do it, but that method is the one to learn first, as it’s pretty much ubiquitous. BTW, subclips are made by adding an in & out point, then hitting Command-U.

[Benjamin Reichman] “it seems slow to fast-forward, rewind, etc. as I log clips from tape”

Also a great way to introduce dropouts. Learn it, so you know how, but unless there’s a great reason to do it, such as for dramatic films, forget it.

[Benjamin Reichman] “I’ve been told that it’s best to capture from a miniDV tape deck and NOT a camcorder so that you don’t wear out the camcorder. I don’t know how large an issue this really is, but I don’t have access to a deck. So all the logging and capturing I do is straight from my camcorder. “

If you shoot professionally and do this constantly it’s a problem, otherwise forget it. We’re in a recession, no one can afford a deck now.

[Benjamin Reichman] “Another reason is that Mark warned above about the danger of having a single massive video file that might become corrupt, which would require recapturing the whole tape from scratch. “

Mark is an old fuddy-duddy Cow sometimes, who absolutely loves to write, and while we all love him, we don’t always abide by every word he commits to paper. And, there’s no such thing as a massive 13Gb file these days anyway, that’s just Mark flashing back to the days of yesteryear, when he and I were both working on massive 2Gb hard drives. Those days are gone, and today a big file is more like 650Gb.

So, in summary, as I said before, get that material into your system as fast as you can and get down to some serious storytelling as soon as you can. Then, get to the finish line with a good job under your belt, and move onto the next project. Time keeps on ticking…

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Mark Suszko]

Fuddy-duddy!?! Just because I didn’t hang out back behind the school with the “cool kids” and their expensive 2- gig hard drives and 486 processors is no reason for being condescending. I can be cool, I’ve been cool plenty of times, really. I can be cool any time I want to. Man.

[David Roth weiss]

[Mark Suszko] “I can be cool any time I want to.”

I did say that we all love you.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.