Why Bother with In/Out Points?

[hatchmo]

Why do you need In and Out points on SOURCE clips?

Before you answer that, consider this:

In the old world (tape) you returned from a shoot with a long lump of linear tape. Before you could edit it, you had to break it up into clips by writing down (logging) In and Out points for a number of segments on that tape. This remained true for non-linear editing systems.

Fast forward to today. You return from a shoot with clips already created on a card or hard drive full of folders. Your clips were created in realtime at the source. Once you begin editing, why do you care what their in and out points are? You certainly don’t need them to determine the duration of the clip.

Here’s a simple example. I shoot clips A, B, C and D in that order. I import them into Final Cut or Edius. I edit those clips into the sequence ACBD. I output, and my client pays me on time. At what point during this process does it matter to my editing software what the timecode was on the clip BEFORE import?

I first encountered this pair-’o-dimes shift in conversation with the nice folks who publish HD Log. It’s difficult and kludgy in HD Log to retain In/Out times for each clip if you want to maintain only a lo-res Quicktime version. Tangentially, they suggested that In/Out doesn’t matter.

The only reason I could think of is that I need to know the ORDER in which the scenes were shot. (Did the Yamaha come through Turn 11 before or after the Kawasaki?) But I can retain that shot order with a simple number field in my database. If I have that, the exact IN and time OUT isn’t useful information anymore--not even to know the duration of a clip--so it can be discarded.

Am I missing something here?

 

[hatchmo]

My partner just made a good point: To perform an insert while editing a multicamera shoot, it helps to be able to send your editing program to the same timecode on each camera's clip. But my response is: So every clip starts at 00:00:00;00. What difference does it make, as long as you know the shot order? You still go the same number frames into the clip to make your match edit.

 

[morisato]

You need in and outs when you online.

Also, your response to the multi-camera answer is a bad response. If every clip started at 00:00:00:00, it would be fine to do an insert ONLY IF ALL CAMERAS START RECORDING AT THE SAME TIME. If I had a 2 camera setup and one camera started rolled 5 mins earlier than the other and both cameras started at 00:00:00:00, then my inserts would be 5 minutes off.

 

[bbalser]

In and Out points are not the same as Media Start and Media End points.
Makes for a more flexable NLE.
I use I/O points a lot in my editing, so that I can communicate with other folks on the project via EDL lists.
No, the scenerio you discribe wouldn't need I/O points. But many of us are working in scenerios that aren't so east as just laying four Master Clips down on a timeline. In which case, I/O points can be very helpful.
Just cause the tool is there doesn't mean you have to use it. It just means someone somewhere needs it.

Again, In and Out points are not the same as Media Start and Stop points, and all this is used in many, many different ways by many, many different editors.