Dealing with Massive Amounts of Footage
So if your dealing with hundreds of hour of footage, or even just on hour of tape, this tutorial will help you with a work flow that is very easy but also very thorough. The key features of this tutorial are that it will walk you through organizing your tapes, capturing footage, and making every time the camera stopped and started become it’s own clip and processing your media files so you are ready to edit. This tutorial doesn’t cover how to actually edit the footage.
SHOOTING AND LABELING TAPES:
After shooting a bunch of tapes or sometimes as we go, we play back the last few seconds that got recorded onto the tape to get an end of tape time stamp. Some cameras can’t display date and time and some simply need that to be turned on in the display settings. We write that time and date on the tape and then we set out all of our previously unlabbled tapes on the table and sort them based on when their date and time stamps are. Then we label a two letter and 3 digit numberWe use VB 207 for example. Then we are ready to digitize these tapes
*Ignore the step numbers, an intern added those and went a little crazy adding new step numbers too often.
1. Put in tape and rewind it to the beginning.
2. Choose a bin you’d like to catpure footage into. I usually have a bin called “Logged Clips From Tapes. To select the bin you want hold down control and then click the bin and then from the drop down menu choose “set logging bin.”
3. In the Final Cut Pro menu select user preferences.
4. In the General Tab make sure it’s set so that when time code breaks are encountered FCP will “make a new clip.”
6. In the of the log and capture there is a “logging tab” where you can type in a Reel name that was on the tape followed by a date stamp that was written on the tape as described above in the labeling and dating process. So for your reel name you might enter something like:VB 207 09-03-2007
7. In the clip settings tab make sure both video and audio are checked off.And if you want to hear your tape through the computer speakers while it plays back and gets captured then check off “preview”. Also make sure the input channels are set to 2.
8. Make sure the Capture settings are set to DV NTSC 48 kHz.
9. Special Note:If you’ve shot pal or HDV or DVC-PRO HD then obviously you’d need to choose those formats here. I don’t shot on those formats so this tutorial hasn’t been tested in those formats but should probably work. The other thing to note is that I sometimes shoot with advanced pull down. There is a setting that will remove advanced pull down at this point in the process however, I avoid that setting so I can do it as a later step which adds a bit of processing time but I’ve noticed that less dropped frames occur when I leave the pull down removal for a later date.
10. Then hit the Scratch disk button and in the new window check off video, audio and render files and hit Select and choose the root directory of a hard drive meaning just click that hard drive on the window and hit choose. I don’t make a project folder because final cut pro will make a project folder within the “capture scratch” folder it creates on that drive.
11. By the way, while your here, it’s no biggy but you mine as well also set your waveform Cache, Thumbnail Cache and Auto Save Vault to this same drive. This will help avoid minor processing time if you move your project from one computer to another but these files aren’t essential to your project. They are just files the FCP user interface uses.
12. Note about hard drives. See our Hard drive tutorial to learn more about what drives to use for video editing.
13. Note about Hard drive space. A 1 hour tape takes up about 12 gigs. And you should never let a hard drive have less then 2 gigs. 1 gig is really pushing it. Also don’t forget to back up. Check out our tutorial about creating a network drive back up system for more info.
14. Now hit the stop button and then the rewind button in the log and capture window to get your tape qued to the start.
15. Now hit play in the log and capture window to start the tape playing and 10 seconds into the beginning of the tape hit the “now” button to start the capturing.
16. Your screen in final cut will be taken over with the image, but meanwhile you can open up the application text edit or hit Apple and Tab to switch over to that application and have it be a skinny so you can still see the video that is taken place. Now what you can do is take notes on the footage while it’s capturing. Later you’ll be able to paste these notes in various markers in your footage they will be in time. So because you’ll sync the notes up later, you don’t have to write down any time code. What you want to do is type everything that happens. If you see a dog run by type, “dog runs by. “Imagine there is a court hearing and you are just transcribing everything that takes place. So anything that is said you want to write down as quickly as you can type. You of course will have to skype some sentences or paraphrase but just get the main ideas across so that the data can be search able but also so that notes can be reviewed when in the writing and editing process.
17. Special Note about transcribing:You might have to sit there for an hour straight. So you can’t have a phone or iChat or friends around. It requires a lot of focus and after you’ve done an entire hour I recommend a walk around the block or checking email or text messages and then turning all that stuff off and coming back to it completely shut off from the world. It requires a level of meditation to stay focused for that entire time and not miss the chance to accurately take down what is happening and what is being said in the footage.
18. So during the “capture now” process described above all of the material will be captured and when ever a time code problem comes up, it won’t capture that little short section. If a serious chunk or almost none of the footage gets captured, then maybe a different camera would work better for playing back the tape. Check out the tutorial on avoiding tape drop out.
19. Once capturing of an entire tape is done, highlight all of the newly captured footage by drawing a box around it.
In the “Mark” menu choose “DV Start/Stop Detect” and then walk away or do something else while it process, actually maybe this is when you walk around the block after having taken notes on an entire tape.
20. Then hit the triangle next to your clips that have them and highlight all of the “Segment markers. “Use the apple key to highlight more then one section of markers.
21. Then choose make sub clips from the modify window.
22. Then re-name all of your subclips.
23. Some quick tips about naming clips in FCP:
Don’t use capitilization, spaces, punctuation or any of these types of characters when naming files:
!@#$%^&*()+:” < > ? /.,’;] [= – ~`¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–≠œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøÀ“‘«åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æΩ≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷
So for example this would be wrong:
But this would be the best:
24. The reason the final file name would be best is because it uses the “_” between each word which is good if you might transcode raw footage to share with co-editors on the web or in other character sensative environments.But the main reason the last one is the best is that it was more specific. There is probably only going to ever be one clip that would make sense to call “susan_laughs_at_curtains_on_fire_joke” because that isn’t the kind of thing that happens over and over gain in your raw footage. Even if more things then that occur during the clip, it’s still a good name, cause it describes the most unique thing that happens in the clip. The biggest risk with naming clips in FCP is that you might name two clips the same thing”susan laughs at joke” might happen 10 times in your raw footage and if you have two different pieces of footage both called that you will have major problems late in the game where FCP will not know the difference between these two files and your edit will get messed up.
25. Another thing to note is that if you have a tape where you’ve shot 60i and 24pa both, then you should label each of your sub clips with some indication of the frame rate. To do this double click on the video.
26. The video will open in the viewer. Then set the viewer to 100 percent.
27. Then arrow through the clip and if look for interlaced images.This is what an interlaced frame looks like:
Notice the jagged edges.
This is what a non-interlaced frame looks like:
Noticed how the edges are normal, it just looks like a still photograph.
28. Well here is how you tell what frame mode your footage was captured in. As you arrow through if every frame is interlaced then it’s 60i. This is standard video and most of the time will be the case. If you shot on the DVX-100 in 24pa then every 4th frame will be interalaced and the rest will not be interlaced. And if you shot in 24p, well, I pitty you because FCP 5 has problems with 24p. But what you’ll see is 2 frames in a row that are interlaced and then three in a row that are not. So make sure you label your clips with either 60i, 24pa or 24p. Unless everything on the tape is the same and you know in which case you might not need to worry about it.
29. Once all of your sub clips are named highlight the first one on the list.
30. Then in the File Menu choose Media Manage:
31. Then use the following media manager settings shown in the image below and here is why to use these settings. Choose Copy because you’ll be making a copy of the media in this sub clip.
Don’t include render files because their probably aren’t any and if there are they probably won’t reconnect anyway. Check off “delete media from selected clips” because as shown in the screen grab, you don’t want the original long clip of unused media, you only want the small amount of content that is in the sub clip.
Don’t check off “use handles” because in this case handles would be completely pointless.
For “base media file names on” selected “clip names” because that way all of your careful naming of each sub clip will become the names of the files which will make navigating your hard drive and bins much easier when finding clips. Don’t check off “duplicated selected clip and place into a new project because later you’ll just drag this clip into your current project from the finder.
Select a media destination that makes sense for how you are storing files. I always choose the root volume meaning I hit “browse” and then selected the external hard drive in the window and then hit “choose.” Final cut will create a folder on the drive I select called “media” and a folder inside there with the projects name and put all if the clips there. So basically this gets all of your media in one place and lets final cut do the folder creating for you.
Below are the exact settings you should use when media managing a sub clip to make it it’s own file on your hard drive.
I’m going to be honest. This is where the tutorial falls apart. I don’t know if it matters but I’m very concerned about all of my subclips becoming their own files. Maybe this isn’t important. I don’t know. But my thinking is that if the plan is to go from an offline to an online edit then it’s important to not use subclips in the editing. But instead use whole complete clips. Now, to create whole complete clips, you need to do the media manage process above one clip at a time or use this special trick. Now, before I show you the special trick, I’ll just say this, you could probably get away with just highlighting all your clips and hitting media manager and then using the settings I defined above but changing one thing which is to put everything in a new project. If you do it that way, the files on your hard drive will be named kind of dumb but in your new final cut pro project you’ll have a bunch of small subclips which you can continue to add marker information to and then edit.
So here is the trick. First you resort the clips in your bin based on size. Then you hold down “Shift” and click on the “duration” column to secondarily sort by that “duration.” Now what you see is all your clips sorted by size and then secondarily sorted by duration. This means that all the longest sub clips are at the top of the list and that subclips from the same master clip are all next to each other. Now with this trick, you have to take only the largest subclip from each master clip. The reason why is that if you take more then one, then you won’t get individual files, you’ll get one file that contains both subclips.
You can repeat that process until you get all of the substantial clips encoded and then you can probably just encode clips one at a time listening to some music or whatever.
Once you are done you should go to your hard drive and see all of the resulting media files. You’ll want to have a bin in final cut where you are putting all of what I call your new smaller clips. Drag the clips from the finder window into the bin in final cut. I call the bin in final cut “shrunken footage – ready to edit”.
39. Below is an example of highlighting the clips on the hard drive.
40. Below is an example of what you have in final cut once you’ve dragged the clips from the finder into your bin “ready to edit” bin.
41. Now the final thing is to delete your originally captured long clip. What you do is you highlight your sub clips.
42. Then you choose “make offline” from the “modify” menu.
43. Then you want to select either “move to trash” or “deleted from disk. I choose the later because sometimes just moving to trash doesn’t sever final cuts link to that media file on the drive. Not sure why that would be though. I know it’s scary to delete stuff. But you can always cancel and go double click on your newly brought in individual clips just to really trust they are all there. And if it’s all good, hit “okay” and that large media will be gone.
You now have an individual clip for every time the camera was started and stopped as well as any other sub clips that were created using marker points.
PROCESSING YOUR FOOTAGE TO PREPARE FOR EDIT:
44. Now you need a to process your footage if you’ve shot in 24pa or if you want to work in offline quality mode.
45. So now if your like me and you shoot on the DVX-100 and sometimes record 60i and sometimes record 24pa or even sometimes record 30p, you are going to have to remove advanced pull down from some of your material. Just a side note, if you are shooting on the DVX-100a I think you shoot in 24pa mode, read the FCP user manual for more about what that mode is. But the basic concept is that everything is captured in DV NTSC mode, but because you now have individual clips for everything that was recorded, you have individual clips for 60i material, 30p material and 24pa material. You can change frame rates mid-recording so if you follow the above instructions I know this is true. So what will happen if you highlight everything and FCP to “Remove Advanced Pulldown” in the tools menu, then it will remove the un-needed frames in any footage that has advanced pull down. And like the 60 clips, if it doesn’t have advanced pull down, it won’t remove it. So just highlight all of your material and then choose to remove advanced pull down.
46. So now you may want to convert all of your footage into offline quality mode. This will take 60 minutes down from using 12 gigs to using around 1 and a half gigs. So it saves huge money on hard drive space. And lets you edit everything off say your internal powerbook drive.
Check later tutorials we’ll post on making your footage be offline quality.
Also check a later tutorial we’ll post on doing film style slow motion with 60i material.
If you have any questions about this tutorial, I or another reader will try to answer them. Just post below. Also if you have any work flows that are better then above, I’d be glad to hear what they are, just post those below too.
