General question about how people are logging and organizing footage

[Michael Garber]

Hey Jeremy,

Agreed that markers are a good way log specific items on clips. It’s just that, with interviews, I prefer to have ranges, so I can quickly add an entire bite to a timeline. In that scenario, my only choices are favorites or adding more keywords.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Garber] “Agreed that markers are a good way log specific items on clips. It’s just that, with interviews, I prefer to have ranges, so I can quickly add an entire bite to a timeline. In that scenario, my only choices are favorites or adding more keywords”

You can make the range with a favorite and name it. Or you can simply mark the range with a favorite and stick a marker on it.

Jeremy

[Michael Garber]

Hey Jeremy. Thanks, and I was aware of that. Just wondering if Loren leaves the interviewer’s question in when he keywords “answer” so that he can hear the original question – and then favorites or adds additional keywords to the answers.

I’ve been doing some tests with footage I shot the other day and I’ll be doing some off-the-cuff tutorials that I’ll put on Vimeo. Are you or anyone else aware of any tutorials online that go into the real nitty-gritty details of logging and keywords? I’ve seen some on Macprovideo and all the other major sites. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone giving insight into how to log footage for, say, a cooking show as opposed to a documentary.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Garber] ” But there doesn’t seem to be anyone giving insight into how to log footage for, say, a cooking show as opposed to a documentary.”

I haven’t seen one.

In all honesty, since the Event structure is so diverse and open to interpretation, I’m not sure if there’s any one way to do it. With bins, you had to put things in certain places. With keywords/data, you can sort it any which way you want.

I would say however you can best remember everything is how you should do it.

If lots of separate keyword ranges makes the most sense, then by all means, make a bunch of them.

It would also depend on your content. If you have a bunch of interviews and everyone was asked the same questions relatively, then you can sort the interviews by question.

For docs you could do it by location, or person, or BOTH. There’s so many different ways it could go

[Loren Risker]

[Michael Garber] “when you keyword the answers, do you include the interviewer’s question in the first range pass?”

I don’t include the questions, but I could see how it would be helpful. The reason I don’t is I never put the interviewer’s questions in the edit. I personally don’t care for a behind the camera voice. So the quote needs to stand on its own, and therefore I shouldn’t need the context.

Also, for my style I never have a person talking for more than 30 seconds without chopping it up. So when I am finding “answers” I break up what they’re talking wherever there’s an opportunity to separate it.

This is another reason I like FCPX. I found FCP7 was too rigid once you made subclips. With keywords, you can always get back the media from outside of the range so it encourages tighter sorting.

[Michael Garber] “And then you would further refine with more keywords – general summations of the answer/topic the interviewee is discussing, correct?”

Exactly. I try to keep these subjects short. After reading this thread however, I’m going to experiment more with markers to put in more detailed descriptions. However, I find with the amount of footage I get and the amount of time I spend on the edit I can hold those details in my memory and it might not be worth it to me to get that detailed.

[Michael Garber]

Thanks, Loren. I have been using a combo of your system as well as Jeremy’s.

1st pass general keywording – names, location, etc…
2nd pass on interviews – marker for question, additional keywords for “answer”. Add notes on the keyword for answer with subject’s response.

Here’s where I’ve come across a major hitch. Once you do all this, including adding a note for the response to the keyword, IF you add another keyword to further refine the answer, the detailed log note is ERASED.

This brings me back to my general frustration with FCPX (ok I could post this in the debate forum, but I’m not.) Every time I try to go through and give it another chance, I find all these niggling bugs and lacking features. I really feel like all of us on this forum are bug checking for Apple. Where’s the check or reimbursement for our time? Grumble grumble.

Just in the past 2 hours of logging, I’ve sent Apple 5 consecutive feedback messages today with other niggling problems. I’m talking really specific workflow issues. Stuff that’s just odd or strange.

I watched an interview with Michael Wohl the other day where he explained how much detail went into FCP. 4 years of development. And they were really able to program for the minutia of editing. I really feel like FCPX was, by comparison, slapped together. There is just sooo much missing. It’s like they didn’t fully think through a lot of the steps – or issues weren’t fully troubleshooted in-house before features were released.

In this sense, I feel very limited by X. I want to drive the software at full throttle. But it just won’t let me most of the time. Sorry for the rant – and now back to your regularly scheduled FCPX Techniques forum infotainment. 😉

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Jeremy Garchow]

I would suggest sending feedback to Apple.

There are bugs.

So you are adding a keyword to a keyword and the notes erase?

[Michael Garber]

In the last post, I said that I’m sending them feedback constantly. Been doing it since it came out last year. And have sent them 5 bug and feature requests just today.

Yes, notes go away if you add a keyword to a keyword.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Tony Sarafoski]

[Loren Risker] “That way in the Rick bin will be EVERYTHING related to Rick, not just interviews. And in the interviews there will be everything that’s an interview, not just Rick interviews.”

Ok now I understand Loren.

With my project (being the testimonials), each interview was a separate project.

This means B-Rolls from Alex, Joe or Michael are not mixed or used in Rick’s project, therefore I separated Rick’s material, only in a Rick folder.

In other words Rick’s folder will only hold the 30min interview (which is uncut), The Answers, Bites, B-rolls, Music, and Graphics. Hope that make sense…?

I do however understand your workflow, especially the use of smart keyword collections, which is a great tool that I’ve been avoiding 🙁 and not sure why either..!

I guess what Michael and I would like to be able to do (which is working against the way Apple or Bill advise), is to be able to make smaller clips from a “main clip”.

Let me try simplify this. Rather than using keywords or favorites to break up a 30min interview into smaller selects, I instead would like to be able to separate the 30min interview into “clips”. This in return allows me to add custom notes, and also gives me the ability to search within that keyword.

I understand the only way to achieve this right now is to tag selects as favourites, then add your custom notes, which in return become searchable. However as Michael has mentioned, the problem is every time you click on a new keyword in the Event Library, then click back again, you need to re-toggle down to see your favorites, in other words it just doesn’t stick..!

I guess favourites is the new “create new clip” feature, I would just like to be given more flexibility as per my screen grab below.

The other thing I’d like to add to this is, not every job I work on gives me the time to detail my material in the Event Browser prior building the story on the timeline, which means I have to be able to quickly drop clips and trim to build a story in a linear fashion. Though I’ve been able to do that now, and even faster in X than I was able to in 7, I still feel there are only a “minor” few missing features that I hope be brought back in a future version.

Having said that, keyword collection is a MASSIVE plus and could never see myself cutting the way I did 7.

[Tony Sarafoski]

and I second that Jeremy…. very annoying indeed..!