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Help me appreciate FinalCut
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I too am in the log and capture camp…it’s just the way I prefer to work…there are plus’ and minus’ on both workflows.
Walter I think people are referring to your original “black and white” statement/command
Walter Biscardi: “You should never capture entire tapes. You log and capture what you need….. Nobody I know captures entire tapes for editing no matter what NLE they’re running.”
I think we all need to remember when we answer on the boards, it should be with the proviso that it’s our opinion or what works for us with the possiblity that there just might be a better way. ” Biscardi Creative” workflows might be great in Georgia, but they don’t necessarily work for everyone.
Let’s temper our replies with a little more grey…especially cow leaders (your voices are a little louder than the rest of us 🙂
G5 DP 2.0 (Power PC)
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QT 7.1.3
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Another advantage of digitizing the entire tape is that, after it is in the computer, you can scan your footage at 2 or 3 times speed. So watching 10 hours will only take me a few hours and not the whole day. Also, I use that time to create graphics, audition music or record VO etc.
In addition, I often will create timecode dubs for clients/producers at the same time that I am digitizing. (they often want to see everyting that was shot.)
Cheers,
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[paulos] “Walter Biscardi: “You should never capture entire tapes. You log and capture what you need….. Nobody I know captures entire tapes for editing no matter what NLE they’re running.”
I think we all need to remember when we answer on the boards, it should be with the proviso that it’s our opinion or what works for us with the possiblity that there just might be a better way. ” Biscardi Creative” workflows might be great in Georgia, but they don’t necessarily work for everyone.”
I still stand by that statement and I’ll tell you why.
1 – I’m not talking about Biscardi Creative when I say nobody I know captures and edits that way. I’m talking about the dozens of editing professionals I work with and know throughout the country and even around the world. Maybe we’re all old school, but nobody I know captures entire reels and then subclips them later.
2 – You capture an entire tape. You break it up into 200 subclips. You decide next month that you don’t need shots 25 and 26 anymore so you make them Offline and delete the media from the disk. You’ve now blown away 200 clips from your project and need to recapture the entire tape. That has popped up on these forums numerous times through the years and I’ve fielded calls from people who did this very thing. Nothing to do but recapture the entire tape.
3 – Long clips which are broken into subclips are ripe for throwing Final Cut Pro or any NLE into a file management issue because you have dozens of subclips referring back to a single main clip, instead of a unique name for each piece of media. I’ve seen numerous instances of FCP for whatever reason suddenly thinking a file is corrupt and I have to recapture the clip. If that were to happen with a 60 minute file, all the subclips attached to that will be taken off line. Instead of having to capture the one clip with the problem, i have to stop down and capture a 60 minute reel.
4 – Often people who capture entire tapes will spread their media over several drives because as noted, they are rather cheap these days. I never recommend this as the longer the project goes, the more likely performance issues will creep into the project in the form of dropped frames. I like to keep my media storage all to one drive and keep everything to a minimum.
[paulos] “Let’s temper our replies with a little more grey…especially cow leaders (your voices are a little louder than the rest of us :-)”
When we give answers, we’re giving our own personal and professional opinions. Very often they come out as black and white, as in this post. I do not recommend a workflow of capturing entire reels, so there’s no “grey” there for me.
If that’s a workflow you want to follow and it works for you, by all means go ahead. But I’m not going to advocate it as I don’t think it’s a proper workflow for professional editors. I’m saying as my own professional opinion, you should never capture entire tapes as part of your workflow, you should have all clips logged and captured individually or in groups. Whether you choose to follow this advice is purely up to you. There are many answers to this question and it’s up to you, the reader, to decide what direction you want to go.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[walter biscardi] “If that’s a workflow you want to follow and it works for you, by all means go ahead. But I’m not going to advocate it as I don’t think it’s a proper workflow for professional editors”
OK – I don’t think I care enough about the hair-splitting tedium of capturing footage to get into that. Many professionals use many different workflows – let’s just leave it at that, m’kay?
Ben Holmes
Professional EditorEditec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
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Workflows are like opinions – everybody’s got one and everybody is convinced theirs is right! 🙂
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I’ve gotta add, though, from my experience of working on many different systems since v.1, FCP plays a lot nicer when *clips* are captured, as opposed to whole tapes, especially when you’re working on a large and complicated project. For example, I’ve never personally had to deal with the dreaded ‘preparing video for display’ problem that so many have.
Further, I personally can’t stand having to shuttle through hour-long clips in the Viewer. I find it very clunky. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could zoom into the playhead area. If I’m searching for something through an full-tape clip, I dump it into a timeline first.
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[walter biscardi] “I don’t think it’s a proper workflow for professional editors. I’m saying as my own professional opinion, you should never capture entire tapes as part of your workflow, you should have all clips logged and captured individually or in groups.”
ooooh. I can’t let this go unanswered.
I work in reality TV. We generate thousands of hours of footage per season. We digitize it ALL. Every tape. Top to tails. Because we use “Time of Day” timecode, a one hour tape creates anywhere from 5 to 15 clips. I’ve got almost 42 terrabytes of media on-line at any one time. We simply don’t have the time to “selectively” log and capture everything. We take an “all in the bucket” approach, and leverage the functions of X-SAN and FCP to make this much media accessible and manageable. And, yes, I’m a professional!
Mark Raudonis
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[Mark Raudonis] “I work in reality TV. We generate thousands of hours of footage per season. We digitize it ALL. Every tape.”
Ok, there’s a perfect exception to my recommendations. Yes, with Reality TV there are “moments” all over the place so yes, you would want to digitize entire tapes because in addition to wanting everything I’m sure your turnarounds are ridiculously quick.
Excellent point to bring up reality TV Mark. Do you have Edit Assists helping you with that? Man I could really use some of those here.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Another scenario where capturing whole tapes is beneficial is if you have more bays and people than decks. I worked at a post house for a while that mainly shot on BetaSP but started shooting more on Digi and even some HDCAM and while each of the 12 bays had a BSP deck there were only 4 Digis and 2 HDCAM decks that had to be shared. So the AE’s would keep the tapes rolling while the loggers subcliped out the ingested footage. At my current gig our workflow is such that it’s faster for me to capture whole 2hr tapes in 20min chunks and then scroll through and drop markers on what I need than to log & capture ahead of time.
While I personally prefer logging then capturing, I’ll use whatever workflow is best suited for the project.
-A
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42 Terrabytes – Yikes!!!
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