• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  First-time assistant editor: please evaluate my workflow [long]

  Posted by Benjamin Reichman on September 15, 2010 at 2:37 pm

  I’m starting work as an assistant editor on a large project: 30 separate short narrative pieces (4-9 pages each).

  The director/editor has given me detailed instructions and assistance, and the script supervisor and DIT have weighed in, but at the end of the day, I’m responsible for making sure everything’s copacetic. Could you please review these steps and let me know what you think? Is there anything I’m missing or any problems I could encounter?

  BACKGROUND
  All footage will be shot on the Sony EX1 and EX3 in “SP 1080i60” (HDV, interlaced 29.97). Some scenes will be single camera, but most will be two-camera. There will be up to four channels of audio going straight into the cameras (Camera A might have a boom and a lav, while Camera B might have two lavs, for example).

  The crew are all seasoned professionals, so I’m pretty confident that every shot will be properly slated, etc.

  MY PROCESS

  DELIVERY OF FOOTAGE
  A PA will deliver a hard drive from the DIT containing the “BPAV” folders (full contents of each memory card shot). Each one will be inside a folder named VIDEOTITLE_DATE_CamA_R01. The date will be six digits–for example, 092110 for September 21, 2010. CamA or CamB is self-explanatory, and “R01” means the first ‘roll’ (SxS card) of the day for that camera. Additionally, all clips will have the CamA or CamB prefix.

  BACKUP
  I’ll back up all these folders containing the “BPAV” memory card contents to a series of external Firewire hard drives. Those will be the master backup–the ONLY backup of the “BPAV” folders.

  On a G-Speed eS RAID (set as RAID-5), I will place the Quicktime files generated through Log & Transfer from the “BPAV” folders.

  That means I’ll have one pristine copy of the original “BPAV” on an external Firewire drive. I’ll also have one copy of the Quicktime-wrapped XDCAM EX files on the G-Speed eS RAID.

  Is that enough in terms of backup? Should I have two separate copies of the “BPAV” folders?

  FCP ORGANIZATION
  Each video will have its own folder on the RAID:
  VIDEOTITLE

  This contains:

  [folder] Capture Scratch

  [folder] Audio Render Files

  [folder] Render Files

  [FCP Proj File] VIDEOTITLE

  [optional folder] Stills

  [folder] Music

  [folder] Graphics

  [folder] SFX

  FINAL CUT PRO PROJECT FILE BINS

  The FCP project will contain the following bins:

  Sequences [insert space before “S” so it’s sorted first]
  –contains a single sequence: VIDEOTITLE_ASSEMBLY. Later, VIDEOTITLE_ROUGHCUT, VIDEOTITLE_FINECUT, etc. will be created.

  Footage [footage by scene. Each clip will be named SC01.2A TK1, etc. per the script’s own naming convention.]

  Graphics

  Music

  SFX

  Source [footage by day, keeping the original clip names (CamA followed by a string of numbers]

  Titles

  PLURALEYES AND MULTICLIPS

  Each pair of multi-camera clips will be turned into a multiclip by PluralEyes. I haven’t used it yet, but we just purchased it (half an hour ago…).

  ______________
  ______________

  I know this is very long, but I wanted to share all the steps and thoughts that I have. What do you think? What are the pitfalls? Will my backup strategy be enough? Have we forgotten anything?

  Many thanks in advance!
  Ben

  Benjamin Reichman replied 15 years, 8 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
• 0 Replies

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