For a docu do people bulk load their material or are they selective?

R

Ralph nixon

Well-known member
Question for you experienced docu makers do you bulk load your raw footage into your editing system or do you select what you want and load it in?
 
We screen the material before writing and then load what is needed. Bulk loading wastes time and space on the computer.

It's better to start "editing" before you load. You can always load more if you need to.

Why load a thirty minute interview when you are only going to use forty seconds of what the person says?

We generally load all of the b-roll but, even then, not all of it.
 
Log it first. Get written transcriptions of interviews and other stuff. Do a paper edit. Then load...
 
In the spirit of an exception to every rule... If for any reason you did not record the sound to camera -- eg, if you had more mics than channels and had to use a mixer -- then you might want to dump all of it so you can synch up the multitrack audio to the video before editing. Otherwise, you end up having to search for and edit all the sound bites and then match them up with the video, and that's a lot of work.

My partner and I shot a kids show where we had 11 mics running into two Fostex PD6 mixers, and because we didn't have the hard disk space to dump the raw footage, we did it as described here (logged the tapes and dumped only what we thought we'd use). With 11 tracks of boradcast wav files, which we had to dump from multiple discs to the hard drive, editing and matching the audio to the video after the fact was a painstakingly tedious process...

If anyone has any suggestions about how we could have done it differently, please let us know!

ADD: BTW, We were editing on a PC using Avid Express Pro...
 
Definitely transcribe your interviews and start working on a paper edit before you capture them.

For cover footage I tend to scrub through the tapes and log and capture as I go. For me it's faster than making a VHS burn, logging and then capturing.
 
It's not really a "pro" tool, but for SD, there's an app called Scenalyzer I use sometimes. What's sweet is that it can scan entire tapes at FF speeds and record a 5-minute preview version of the entire 60-minute tape that you can save an scrub through (without audio). It'll also find all of the scene changes, and present a batch capture list (with thumbnails of beginning, middle, and end) that you can also save. But it doesn't have any sort of metadata capability, so this tool is somewhat limited, but I have used it in the past in some situations, and it can be handy to be able to scrub through an enitre viewable preview files of all of your tapes (albeit with a terrible low quality fast-forward look and no audio). Just a thought, but not really a substitue for log, transribe, paper edit, batch capture...
 
Bus No. 8 said:
Definitely transcribe your interviews and start working on a paper edit before you capture them.

For cover footage I tend to scrub through the tapes and log and capture as I go. For me it's faster than making a VHS burn, logging and then capturing.
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1) "Cover Footage" what do you mean by that term. And so you pick and choose as you capture and then do transcripts after?


2) How do you prevent wear and tear on the tape when doing transcipts?

3) Is it alright to watch the tape two or three times before loading it or does that increase the risk of dropouts?

4) What is the best timecode mode Regen or TC Preset?
 
I buy a shiny new drive for each project, and dump everything to it. Drives are cheap, and then you have two copies in case the tapes get pooched.

There's always a delightful surprise waiting for you when you're stuck when editing, and are reviewing what you have looking for a perfect cutaway.

After the project, the drive is pulled and put in storage -- instant archive.
 
What I'll do is take some good notes during the shoot, log the tapes well, capture the entire interviews to do transcripts. I find it more efficient and cleaner for your tapes/heads than scrubbing on a deck. You just gotta tab back and forth from your word processor back to the editor and hit space bar... pretty simple.
Then work it out on paper and go back to your excellent logs and capture your shots.
Time code really depends on how you're shooting, number of cameras and personal preference. Hope that helps!
 
Ralph nixon said:
1) "Cover Footage" what do you mean by that term. And so you pick and choose as you capture and then do transcripts after?


2) How do you prevent wear and tear on the tape when doing transcipts?

3) Is it alright to watch the tape two or three times before loading it or does that increase the risk of dropouts?

4) What is the best timecode mode Regen or TC Preset?
Click to expand...

1) Cover footage=footage that you use to cover the edits in your interviews. Also, known as B-Roll or cutaways.

2) Make a VHS copy.

3) Try to minimize the "passes" on your DV tapes. I've heard from industry pros that they are very flimsy and can break quite easily.
 
I've been using a program called scenalyzer, which is good because u can avoid the whole batch capture headache. This allows u to dump an entire tape into your comp, and it creates files every time there is a cut in your camera, so it is a convenient way to analyze your footage without the wear and tear on a tape of the other capture methods. It costs i think 40US$ but it has been a life saver, by letting me fit 60+ hours of footy into 600gb.
 
I like the idea of logging and transcribing and downloading only what one will use, but having the footage transferred to a VHS with a window burned for time code is expensive. Any ideas on how to this more cost effective?
 
I dump it all to disk and then log it in the word processor. Fast (SATA) HD space is cheap and it's easy to scrub on the timeline from disk.
 
Thanks slondon, but I forgot to mention that I'm working on a feature length doc and so far I already have 50+ hours of footage and have a 250 gig HD. Also, this is a bare bones budget, and I've just spend mre than I anticipted on my software and system so I'm broke. I anticipate shooting at least another 50 hours. will this be enough HD space for all that footage?

Thanks, Maria
 
100 hours * 13 gigs/hour = 1300 gigs or 1.3 terabytes. Well, maybe not exactly, but it sure won't fit on a 250 gig drive.
 
You might want to capture the footage in offline quality, and when you are done with the edit, you can link up just what you have in the timeline in full quality. As for transcribing, I have 50 hours and I know everything and where it is, I never understood the wisdom of having everything written down. Of course I conducted the interviews as well so I had a head start on what was said. Just take good notes when you log your footage into the browser.
 
Geno said:
You might want to capture the footage in offline quality, and when you are done with the edit, you can link up just what you have in the timeline in full quality. As for transcribing, I have 50 hours and I know everything and where it is, I never understood the wisdom of having everything written down. Of course I conducted the interviews as well so I had a head start on what was said. Just take good notes when you log your footage into the browser.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea I believe in AVID you can capture at 15:1 compression. However, you will have to go back and recapture everything before you get a lock.
 
Maria said:
I like the idea of logging and transcribing and downloading only what one will use, but having the footage transferred to a VHS with a window burned for time code is expensive. Any ideas on how to this more cost effective?
Click to expand...

What do you mean by a "window burned for time code?" As far as I know transferring to VHS is only expensive as the VHS tape that you are dubbing to. Your camera/deck that you are dubbing from will display the time code on the screen along with the images.

FP
 
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