Archiving and Re-Importing Your Wedding Videos

[Eric Holloway]

I've been curious about how others are archiving their edited wedding and event videos.

I'm specifically asking people who using Adobe Premiere Pro. I've been keeping all my video projects on the original tapes I recorded them on and making an ISO image of the finished video and burning to dvd. I also keep a cd of project related files in case someone wants some new edits done to their video then I can re-capture the tape, bring it into Premiere Pro, and the video would line up correctly on the timeline.

But that wasn't working since Premiere Pro doesn't import all audio tracks from tape. I recently found the software "Scenalyze" which imports all audio and video tracks from the minidv tape.

So my question is, how exactly do you Premiere users re-capture your video to the computer and line it back up on your *edited* timeline and get it back to where the original finished product was when it was last edited?

Thanks,

Eric Holloway

[Rob Lohman]

I don't use Premiere, but I backup everything on DVD's, including the
captured files (also because I rename them etc.)

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Eric,

"So my question is, how exactly do you Premiere users re-capture your video to the computer and line it back up on your *edited* timeline and get it back to where the original finished product was when it was last edite"

I use FCP but I might be able to give you another perspective. I give people a finite amount of time to specify changes - usually two to four weeks. After that changes are possible only by re-capturing the DVCAM master and working with it from there. From a workflow perspective you'll drive yourself nuts with all that backing up and re-capturing from the original tapes and you'll never make a decent wage doing it. I've invested in enough FireWire hard drives to archive whole weddings in the event someone comes back with a change request after the final DVDs have been delivered. That's never happened but I have piece of mind by keeping the original footage around a month or so after everything has been delivered and payed for. After I make the final DVD and DVCAM master the drive gets erased, the project file is archived (usually about 20mb), and all the associated graphics files are trashed. The only stuff I save are the label and insert assets and psd files. Time to move on to the next project as efficiently as possible...

[Eric Holloway]

Joe,

Thanks for the info. Why would you archive your project files if you don't archive the captured video? Is it because if you needed to, you could recapture your DVTape back to the computer and line things up again?

And do you keep your original DV footage permentantly on the orginal tapes it was recorded on?

Thanks,

Eric Holloway

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Eric

"Why would you archive your project files if you don't archive the captured video?"

I often use old project files and sequences as templates for current projects. If I like the way something turned out and how it works with a certain piece of music its easy to open the old project file and fit-to-fill new content. If you're going to do something again (as we do in this business) make it as easy as possible the second (or third and fourth and fifth...) time around. There's the trap of cookie cutter productions, but I haven't fallen into that yet - my programs continue to evolve.

"And do you keep your original DV footage permentantly on the orginal tapes it was recorded on?"

I reuse my mini-dv originals.

[Young Lee]

That's brilliant, Joel. A very good way for more marginal returns.

[Christopher Lefchik]

So my question is, how exactly do you Premiere users re-capture your video to the computer and line it back up on your *edited* timeline and get it back to where the original finished product was when it was last edited?

You should be able to use Scenalyzer to recapture your clips, then open up the old project and point Premiere back to the recaptured clips when it prompts you. It shouldn't be too hard, as long as you gave the clips the same names. Premiere will then take care of lining everything up. If the clips were recaptured just as they were originally (same in and out points) everything should match.