Uploading All Footage to External Hard Drive

J

jazzman

Member
I just posted about the more important matter - digital glitches - but I also wanted to ask to see if anyone has any advice on capturing all the footage we're shooting onto an external hard drive to then log in Final Cut Pro.

I'm doing this partly because we don't have a deck and can't really afford one right now but don't want to stall the project because of it.

So instead, I purchased a larger external hard drive than I initially planned since it only cost about $100 more. I'm getting a LaCie 500GB Extreme external hard drive tomorrow and am planning to upload all of our 20 hours of footage onto it using the "Capture Now" function in FCP. I'm doing this largely because of the "digital glitches" we've experienced on the footage we've shot. I don't want to set in points and out points and capture like that using the camera, since it seems the less rewinding and fast-forwarding we do on the camera, the better. (It's a brand new camera, so I can't understand why these glitches appear - see previous post.)

Just wondering if there's anything I should know before uploading all this footage onto the external hard drive. I've read that the breakdown is 1GB = 5 minutes of video, so by that, it seems that 1 60-minute tape requires 12GB of storage. Therefore, it seems that 20 hours of footage will take up about 240GB of space. (We'll probably have another 6 hours of footage to add, which it seems would be an extra 72GB of storage space on the hard drive.)

Anyways, you get the idea. Just wondering if anyone has had any experience doing this that they'd care to share so we can avoid any problems ahead of time.

Thanks a lot, everyone.

Jay
 
I do that all the time.
I wouldn't advise "Capture Now" though. I don't think the timecode from the tape comes in that way. I may be wrong, test it.
What I do is. mark in and out points about 20 min 30 sec. for the 1st clip then at 20 min (NO SECONDS) mark in for the 2nd clip 20 min. to 40 min. 30 sec. then the last clip at 40 min. (NO SEC) to the end of the tape minus 10 sec. of course.
This way the clips overlap 30 sec. and the camera/deck only has to re-que a few times.
 
Hey Marc,
Thanks a lot for the insights. I have the external hard drive, and I'm sitting here now ready to capture footage. But I just realized something. I'm thinking through the workflow here. If I go through and upload all the footage in 20 minute long clips and organize them into bins in FCP, once that's finished for all 20 hours of footage, do I then use the same project file and same Browser (in FCP) to actually go through and log individual clips? Or is that going to be a mess having all those files together in one big project file?

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jay
 
I'd create a bin for each tape your logging. Name the bin the same as ea. tape. So ea. bin will have the three 20 minute clips.
This workflow is strictly for logging all the clips without all the stop and start crap.
You can sit and watch each clip comfortably sitting and logging all the individual clips/shots you like along with their timecode. After you've logged and figured what shots you'll edit into your program then you'll make a batch list and batch capture all the clips on each tape. When logging make sure to include tape numbers because you'll want this info in your batch.

Now keep in mind. Your not editing with these 20 minute clips, just logging all the shots.
This FCP project file is strictly for the logging process.
When you have your info in a batch list file then bring that list into NEW FCP project file. Just import>batch list. Then just capture.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top