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Please Help! Regarding subclips, masterclips and markers-
In an effort to avoid digitizing and batch capture hangups (that I ALWAYS run into) I decided to try on new way of digitizing and organizing my footage. Now that it’s time to CUT I’m a little confused as how to make it work.
What I did is captured the ENTIRE contents of the tape (60 minutes) as one big clip. If there was a timecode break final cut would just make another clip… so in some cases an entire 60 minute tape would end up being several big clips.
Next I selected the clip (or clips) in the browser and then from “Mark” I would select “DV Start/Stop Detect”, at which point Final Cut finds every single time I pressed record on (or off) while I was shooting. Final Cut adds a MARKER at each one of these points. So now under each clip are a bunch of markers that will take me to where ever I pressed record…. sort of like an “in camera edit”. Next I select each one of the MARKERS and then I select “MAKE SUBCLIP”. So now I have a bunch of Subclips which are based on the original markers that can be edited together in a timeline.
The only problem is that In many cases the subclips are fairly Long and are NOT exactly how I would’ve chosen to capture them if I was batch capturing. So now I would like to cut the subclips up into smaller more manageable clips to organize BEFORE I start cutting this thing together. I’m NOT exacty sure just how to do that. Do I use markers again? And then make MORE subclips from the first subclips?
If I do this then what happens to the original subclip? This is just getting to confusing!
I feel like this could easily end up being a really complicated and hard to manage workflow. How will I keep track of what’s what? Or end up having a ton of duplicate clips and subclips that fill up my harddrive for no good reason.
Any sugguestions would be greatly appreciated! I’m just sick and tired of trying to BATCH CAPTURE! I find that time and time again in doesn’t WORK properly. Can’t find timecode… some sort of failure or error. It’s been never ending… I just really want to find a MORE EFFICIENT way to work. It seems easier to just get EVERYTHING into the digital realm and THEN organize it (when I’ve got more control of it)…. as opposed to arm wrestling with a dv camera deck hooked up through a firewire!!
PS- I have no extra money to buy fancy equipment. Below is what I’ve got to work with.thank you!
My system for now is:
Powermac G5 dual 2.0 Ghz (Tiger 10.4.3) dual monitors
2.5 GB DDR SDRAM
Final Cut Pro HD 4.5
320GB G-RAID
Using Panasonic DVX-100 as deck -
3 Replies
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I think you need to read up in the manual a little bit about subclips. You seem to be confused as to the difference between clips and your media. Your original media file is one long file. By creating subclips the way you have done it, you are not cutting up the original media file, it still stays as one file. All you are doing is creating clips that reference that original file. These clips dont really take up much space on your hard drive as they are just a reference file. You can create as many of these as you like. For instance drag one of your subclips to the viewer and mark in and out points for part of the clip and then create a subclip from that. Then you could drag that to the viewer and make another subclip from that one. As a test, see how much space is on your drive, then make 10 subclips and see how much extra space is used.
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Frank,
Thanks. I’m in the process of trying this now.
thanks!
Michael -
You could also bypass the dv start/stop detection (you could start over and trash those subclips). Open what you’ve captured in the viewer, then place a marker where you think it should be. Hit M on the keyboard to create the marker, then hit M again and it will open a window which allows you to name the marker (good habit, as you can end up with hundreds of markers and they become meaningless at a certain point if you don’t name them). After you go through your captured media, turn all the markers into subclips. Don’t forget to use bins (just like folders in finder) to organize your media. Standard ones to use are audio, clips, sequences, stills/photo’s etc. Within each bin, you can have more bins, ie interviews, b-roll, and so on.
Boyd
“Go slow to go fast”
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