Curious About Capturing Philosophies

[Paul Vlachos]

In the past, I've organized my short movies by logging and capturing each clip from tape as needed, then organizing them.

On the project I'm currently working on, which is much larger in scale than anything I've done before, I'm dealing with many more hours of tape, much of it straight interviews with many questions.

I was thinking of a few methods. First, I was going to do log and capture of each one. Then, I thought about capturing whole tapes at once, then dividing them up using markers, converting these into subclips and going from there.

I'm thinking of settling on capturing whole tapes, then cutting the interviews into the clips I want in the timeline, then dragging them back up into the browser.

Does anyone have any opinions on this? I could use advice from people here.

Thanks.

[Vic Owen]

When you talk about capturing hours of tape, that indicates a massive amount of available hard drive storage. Personally, I would lean toward marking only the portions I wanted and doing a batch capture. Unless you really need all the additional footage, it seems like a waste of space. You still have to preview the footage you need, so why not do it up front? Extended 'Capture Now' sessions also can be more troublesome, introducing the potential for sync issues.

[Nicholi Brossia]

Hi Paul,
I have Final Cut Express which is basically the same as Final Cut Pro without all the super frills. One of those missing frills is batch capture. Not being able to batch capture was a big hassle so I had to get a little creative. After capturing all the footage in one swoop, I took it a step further with self-contained subclips.
Note: As long as there are no timecode breaks on the tape/footage, I just set an inpoint at the beginning and an outpoint at the end to capture one giant clip. The most I've ever captured at once is 20 minutes, but a whole tape should be doable. The audio may get a little out of synch, but you can adjust the entire thing at once this way.

It sounds like you aleady know how to use the dv start/stop detection to get FCP to mark your clips for you, but I'll list that procedure for future readers.

While the entire clip is in the Viewer window, select DV Start/Stop Detection (under the "Mark" menu) to automatically find all the points where you paused camcorder recording. FCP will put a marker at every pause point.
Now, in the Browser window, a triangle will appear on the left of your original clip. Click the triangle to see a list of the markers (red markers labeled segment 1, 2, 3, ...). Highlight all the markers (click on the first, then hold SHIFT and click the last) then choose Modify > Make Subclips from the menu (Command-U). Then each area between markers will become a new subclip. Keep in mind, each of these subclips are still 100% dependant on the original clip.

Now here's the full procedure...

1) Rename and organize the subclips. Use this step to divide clips into bins according to your own organizing methods. Also, any clips that you don't want should be deleted/cut from the browser. Remember when you delete from the browser, you're not actually deleting the captured footage, but just reference to it.

2) After organizing, control-click each usable clip, and select Export > Movie. Save these clips into a new folder that you will remember. Be sure to check Make Movie Self Contained. This then becomes its own, stand-alone FCP clip that can even be recaptured later with capture project if need be.

3) Delete the original clip and subclips from the FCP browser.

4) Find and delete the appropriate, original capture scratch. This will delete the original footage, but you will still have the usable and organized, self-contained subclips that were created earlier.

5) Import the self-contained subclips into your FCP project and you're all set. Only the used footage will remain on your drive.

Vic did bring up a very good point that capturing the entire tape will swallow a lot of disc space (about 13 Gb). My "self-contained subclips" method will take up even more space since those clips are redundant footage. However, as soon as you delete your original capture scratch, you'll free up enough to capture an entire new tape. I actually prefer this method due to less wear on my vtr heads (no ff and rew over and over again, just play through once) and prefer this method over batch capture.

I've posted on numerous editing and Apple forums. It seems as though no one else is using this method, but I feel it works very efficiently. Who knows... maybe I'm the only one using the "Nicholi Sub-clip" method ;). Anyway, if you decide to give it a try, let me know how it works out... especially if you improve on it.

[Paul Vlachos]

My partner and I decided to go with the tried-and-true method of logging and capturing. This is no project to mess around with and, it's true, there's no way around doing it one clip at a time.

Also, disk space is a factor.

Thanks to all who replied.

[Matthew Eastwood]

i have always used the "nicholi method"

beautiful and less wear-and-tear.

i feel like, just get it onto yer HD as fast as possible, and then work from there.

[Nicholi Brossia]

I thought it was pretty unlikely that I was the only person using that method. I love letting the computer do the sorting for me, and I'm sure my vtr likes it too. Matthew, have you captured an entire tape yet? If so, how did that turn out?

[Paul Vlachos]

I've used that method before, but many of these interviews that I've done are straight runs with no pauses, so it would be impossible to divide into subclips that way.

The trick, as with everything else in life, I think, is to stay flexible, teachable and on top of different approaches.

[Matthew Eastwood]

well, i was just thinking, i usually do not ever use the audio that is captured with the camera while filming. we record the audio later and synch the video up to it in post.

that's because i haven't shot anything like a movie yet. just commercial/corporate DVDs and TV spots with voice overs. so i guess the method works for me since i don't have to worry about the audio.

and Nicholi, no, i haven't captured an entire tape yet, most was like 30 mins.

[Nicholi Brossia]

Each method definately has its time and place. Like Paul spoke of, interviews literally can't take advantage of the dv start/stop detection. Plus it would be pretty counterproductive to capture an entire 1 hour tape just to use 10 minutes of footage. On a couple of my more organized projects, I've kept track of timecode with shot/take descriptions while I was shooting, then just typed it all in to batch capture (which, I'm sure, is the tried-and-true method you decided to stay with). That really sped things up in the long run, but became increasingly difficult to keep track of as the project grew.
I agree that the trick is to be flexible and know when to apply or improve the different methods. Each situation requires its own customized solution and this thread is a very good way to introduce the different possibilites. If anyone uses other methods, I'd love to hear them.

[Vic Owen]

<<<-- Originally posted by Nicholi Brossia : I agree that the trick is to be flexible and know when to apply or improve the different methods. Each situation requires its own customized solution and this thread is a very good way to introduce the different possibilites. If anyone uses other methods, I'd love to hear them. -->>>

Yep, there are lots of ways to get there. Most of the time I now use a Firestore and capture directly to a FW drive. That's eliminated 90% of the capture time I used to have to endure. My tapes are typically only for b/u.