Need to log a ton of footage for a documentary, is Prelude the solution?

[Bryan McCullough]

I've got quite a bit of footage that I need to log, I've never worked on something of this scale before.

Essentially I think all I care to do is make notes for each clip (location, kind of shot, subject, etc.). But the main thing is to have something that can be easily searched through later.

Is Prelude the system for this? What's the search ability like? Is there a way to export notes so other people can read clip descriptions?

I don't want to start down a path of logging only to find out it's not user friendly on the other side.

I just don't know much about Prelude at this point and I can't find too much information out there regarding it.

Thanks!

[Wes Coughlin]

I would be interested to hear what other people think as well. I really think there is a huge gap in software for managing large amounts of digital content like video.

Here is what I have done in the past and it has worked out well for finding stuff later on.
On the Mac, OS X has the ability to "tag" files, but its pretty cumbersome to actually do so. So I've used the program "Leap" (Leap : Ironic Software) to tag large groups of files quickly. This way, you can either search in the finder app for the file or using the Leap app (the leap app actually does lots of pretty nifty things as well) The downside is that this open meta data format is not supported by Adobe (although it is supported by stock photography sites like istockphoto), so there is no searching for these keywords once inside an adobe app like Premiere or Bridge.

An example of using leap in a production environment would be cataloging car footage (I used to do a lot of local car commercials, and had to keep track of different models of cars with about 5 years worth of footage.) Doing a quick finder search for "ford escape car lot" would show all the clips of Escapes shot on the car lot.

For documentary work, I know some places that actually transcribe all audio into text (and include timecode with every couple of paragraphs). They then do a rough paper edit before any editing actually starts.

[Battle Vaughan]

Here's some tutorials from Adobe TV that might answer your question (I'm just gearing up for CS6 so I don't have any first-person knowledge of it)Products | Prelude | Adobe TV

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Originally Posted by Bryan McCullough

I've got quite a bit of footage that I need to log, I've never worked on something of this scale before.

Essentially I think all I care to do is make notes for each clip (location, kind of shot, subject, etc.). But the main thing is to have something that can be easily searched through later.

Is Prelude the system for this? What's the search ability like? Is there a way to export notes so other people can read clip descriptions?

According to what I've seen with Prelude, it comes very close to what you are looking for.

But the main thing is to have something that can be easily searched through later.

You can create metadata and markers that can be searched and referenced quite easily. All this can be passed down to editors as file metadata - if you are round-tripping withing CS6.

I haven't used it for a big project yet so can't say how it will work with tons of unorganized footage.

[Kawika Ohumukini]

I've only scratched the surface of Prelude but my initial impression is it's geared toward an organization and not single editors. If I had a long term project with multiple editors, had to regularly give updates to producers or had multiple sources of footage spread out across a network or even remotely then Prelude would be a great tool. GL