New to FCP help clipping/logging whole tape

Sven

Sven

Active member
I'm new to FCP. What's the best way to make independent clips out of a whole sequence. I've captured a whole tape and want to organize it into bins. right now the only way I know to do it is to preview the footage in the viewer and set In and Out points and then cut the footage and organize it. But I know there is a better way (each clip is still linked to the master clip and i want them to all be seperate) I couldn't find any info in the archives.
 
Subclipping. Truth be told- for many reasons you'll be much better off logging and capturing on a clip by clip basis. It's a little more work than taking in a whole tape at once but it will pay off bigtime down the road and is typically essential for automatic pulldown removal.

Noah
 
Yes- you log each clip and then do a batch capture. I go over this and lots of other recommended DVX and FCP practices on my DVD btw. :)

-Noah
 
I totally recommend the same as Noah, breaking up tapes into small clips. A non-subclip option though if you have larger clips (or in this case a whole tape), you could use markers as well. You can even give the markers durations (set it to just the "good" stuff if you say have slates and such). Then you can quickly jump to points of the footage and edit sections into your timeline. Again, I wouldn't call this a good solution by anymeans, but just something you can do without having to go the sub-clip route (I've personally not had all the greatest luck with subclips when having to online and/or go back out to tape).

cheers.
 
Noah, Varicam, couldn't agree with both of you more -- and this is from someone who used to think logging at capture was such an antiquated process, what with all that space out there on drives these days...

Then I started doing more work in a TV workflow with pros on the avid suites and... EHHHH. There are countless reasons why logging and then batch capturing is better (unfortunately, most of them involve situations where things have gone wrong and because you logged everything correctly, it's a simple matter to fix. Unfortunately, that you should of logged only becomes clear once you're already way, way up a well known creek).

But logging before capture is also a good practice because it saves SO much more time in the edit than time saved by not having to log at capture. In fact, it likely save many times the extra hour it can take to carefully log a reel simply by relieving you of having to shuttle back and forth through your footage during subclipping.

(And I've also had some very strange and time consuming errors crop up with subclips -- Varicam, what's up with that? Have you gotten those In Out point error messages as well?)

I've never had any formal education in editing -- unless making every mistake possible counts as a formal education -- but I've had the honor to work alongside some of the more talented editors in this fairly small world, here's my take on the workflow and logging and, in many ways, the bigger picture of editing: The earlier you introduce structure and oranization to your work, the better. Everything will work better at the next step if it comes in organized.

And, really, that's the whole point of editing: Applying order to chaos. So with that overwraught sentiment, I'll just pop my monocal back in, grab my cane and my top hat and, right, cheerio!, fire up my steam powered time contraption back to the Victorian age.
 
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