Help me appreciate FinalCut

[Walter Biscardi]

[Steve Connor] “42 Terrabytes – Yikes!!!”

Yeah, I thought we had a lot with 7 and we’re adding another 2 – 4 next month.

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

[Shane Ross]

Your darn TOOTIN he has assistants. Too expensive to pay editors to do that, and they are busy enough.

42TB? I thought it was 47. Remembering wrong I suppose.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Ben Holmes]

[walter biscardi] “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.”

On reality? Oh yeah, and dancing girls.

Editec 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

[Bret Williams]

Or Multi-Cam shoots. There’s a many reasons to load in full tapes.

[Boyd Mccollum]

I think there’s a general misconception that folks who capture an entire tape don’t log and just start editing haphazardly. This may be the case among some less experienced editors, but it’s not so among more experienced editors. The term is Log & Capture, but it could just as easily be stated as Capture & Log. In addition, there are workflows where you capture directly from the camera(s) into FCP, not to mention folks shooting with the HVX-200, where they capture directly to a P2 card, and then download into FCP. The term Capture (or having captured your footage) doesn’t mean you are ready to edit, nor does the term Log & Capture (or having logged & captured) mean that you are ready to edit either; the term Ready to Edit (and all the elements that go into using that term) means you’re to ready to edit 🙂

Another misconception seems to be that once you capture an entire tape and log it, that you are somehow stuck with entire tapes/clips for the duration of the edit. Using markers, subclips and bins, the common workflow would be to do what other editors who log first and capture in small chunks do – organize footage based on the requirements of the project at hand.

OTOH:

There are media/technical issues that need to be addressed, as Walter and others have brought up, when you capture an entire tape, especially if you will be sending clips to other apps such as Shake, Motion or STP (per the original topic of this thread). An entire tape or very long clips could prove to be problematic in many many instances. Again, It may not be problematic for every project, but that is a consideration that every editor should make when addressing the workflow they will be using. As I mentioned in my earlier post, one interesting workaround that bridges the two workflows (Log & Capture/Capture & Log) would be to capture an entire tape, log using markers, make subclips, batch export subclips as self-contained QT files, then delete the original tape capture.

At the end of the day, with the way technology changes so quickly, this entire discussion will probably be moot within a couple of years. We’re all going to wake up one day (sooner than later), and be living in a tapeless environment.

[Mike Smith]

Excellent points, Walter. The advice on logging should be standard issue to new editors .. something for software documentation teams to consider.

[Todd Skougor]

I learned from some antiquated Avid’s back in the day to capture the whole tape, but to capture it in 5 minute chunks. It helped keep the system from bogging when down loading such a huge clip into the viewer.
Helped in managing media a bit too.

Work smarter, not harder,
Todd

[Jim Waterwash]

Log&Capture work-flows aside, I am really surprised that I cannot edit audio as easily and in as integrated a way as my video edits. I’m really on the verge of going back to Vegas Video. I’ve watched the whole training series on FCP, Motion, and Soundtrack on lynda.com (Great resources by the way.) and I’ve made a few 30 minute movies in FCP. My focus is documentaries for internet distribution.

Within FCP, I hoped that if I sent an audio clip as a STP audio project, by itself, that I could then modify the begin and end points of that clip’s audio within FCP and that when I reopened the project within STP, the begin/end markers would be updated. Instead, they were totally erased! I understand that if my audio file is from a clip that was logged and captured in the traditional way, at the beginning, using Log and capture, that every segment of audio on my time line should simply begin and end at the file’s begin and end, and that relying on markers is then not an issue.

As it turns out though, I often split clips and move them around and so I need to be able to modify both their video and audio. I need to be able to modify the audio of a newly defined clip, without having to dig through it’s original container clip, to find that portion of audio. Being tied to a clip’s begin and end point, as defined at the time of log and capture is just way to confining for me.

Is there really no way that I can retain an audio clip’s newly modified begin and end markers when returning back to STP? Honestly, If I’m the only one facing this problem, either I am missing something or my needs just don’t match this production environment and I’ve made an expensive mistake.

Thanks for everyone’s feedback so far.
Jim

[Mike Smith]

I can’t help you with these STP specifics.

What I can say, though, is that it’s important with whatever software tool you take up to take a little time to find and work out what you’ve got, and then develop a workflow that accomplishes your goals, but also works with the “grain” of the tool, rather than trying to force it to do things in the way of some other tool you used before, or how you think it “ought” to work.

If the subclip handling in FCP doesn’t suit you, you could render / export new clips as you go. Personally, I find capturing long clips and then sub-clipping them always puts extra load on the computer in editing and slows down performance and responsiveness unnecessarily.

FCP has much to offer – as Vegas probably does too, though I’ve never used it. I’ve no doubt that there’s a way to do what you need using FCP – so many users, so many programmes completed with this tool suggest that it can get the job. Whether you can find a way to accommodate your specific workflow needs, only you can decide.

[Keyframe]

[paulos] “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”

Thank you. I agree.