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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Video Editing Log Jam

Whether you use film, flash files, or videotape, every editor needs to have the footage on their editing machine before they can start cutting the project. Keeping that transfer route organized will cut your editing time tremendously.
 
The task of importing footage from the source to the editing system is usually referred to as Logging and Capturing. Depending on the nature of the production, logging and capturing can be a huge undertaking. In fact, for many professional productions an assistant editor will be solely responsible for logging footage into the video editing system. Many of us don't have the luxury of an assistant, but we can put to use some common tools to do most of the hard work for us.

Log It Right

There's no need for someone to log footage if a log of shots has not been taken in the first place. Whenever possible, always keep a shotlog of each shot you record. A shotlog marks the in-point and out-point of a shot. The points are timecode stamped from the camera's internal clock. You need to simply record the in-point (i.e. the starting point) and out-point (the ending point) into your shotlog which is usually a piece of paper. From here you'll give the shot a scene number, shot number, take number, a short description and make note of whether or not the shot was good or bad. This shotlog is your logging map, telling you where on the tape (or many instances, on a memory card or hard drive) the good shots are. Without this you'll have to manually search through each clip later to know whether or not to import it into your program. Needless to say, this can save you a great deal of time.
Don't forget, you'll also save yourself a lot of storage space too. Many editors who don't log their shots end up importing all their footage. This can be terabytes of data for a single project. In a typical production with a 6:1 shooting ratio (6 minutes of footage for every 1 minute used in the final production), it's easy to understand just how wasteful it can be to import everything. Now you've just given yourself upwards of six times the amount of footage you'll unnecessarily need to wade through and cut away. Save time, save storage space, save money!

Log and Capture - Videotape

Log and Capture refers to the process of the editor logging shot information into the editing software, then instructing the software to go get the requested shots from the source media (the tape). The mini DV tape format was the first consumer level tape format that allowed for such a simple yet powerful system of capturing footage. Timecode was standard in this tape format (although, a bit problematic to begin with ­ remember blacking tapes?) and the FireWire (IEEE 1394) connection between mini DV camcorders and computers allowed editing software to control the camcorder and capture clips with exact-frame accuracy. This technique is borrowed from the professional world of videography, which has used timecode in camera systems and editing equipment for many years, but mini DV brought it to the masses, followed by HDV.
Although greatly simplifying the process, many consumers and even many serious hobbyists have never really taken advantage of this log and capture technique. Again, it starts with logging your shots. Then, as the editor you launch your editing software, launch the Log & Capture module and then start doing all the data entry. Typically, you start with entering your in-point timecode then your out-point timecode. From here you can name the clip and add any notes. We recommend naming your clip using a standard naming convention (e.g. Scene-01-Shot-004-Take009) or for shorter projects you can use descriptive text (e.g. Gramps-fly-fishing-big-catch). From there some software applications will allow you to enter additional notes or ratings. Then, you hit the log button, instructing your software that a clip that you desire to capture exists between those two points in the timecode and it assigns a new file to your project with that name. It has not yet captured the footage. It simply knows that you want that clip in your project.
You can now pour through the rest of your shot log as quickly as possible. In this way, it's just data entry. But when you've logged all the shots in your project, you can tell your editing software that it's time to capture the footage. With the camera properly connected to your computer, the software will automatically cue up each clip and record it from in-point to out-point. The process of actually capturing the footage to your computer's hard drive, as you probably know, can take quite a while. But with logging all your clips in advance, you can leave your computer to do all that work without you around. That's the beauty of logging your shots!

Log and Transfer - Solid State

Since many camcorders have started recording to solid state memory (i.e. memory cards, hard drives and flash memory), these recordings have the benefit of having the clips already separated into different files. With the tape format, video is recorded in a stream of data, which is why it needs to be captured. In these solid state mediums, video is recorded in self-enclosed files. When you hit the record button you are actually starting a new file on the recording medium, rather than a continuous stream of data as on a length of tape. For this reason, the process of Log & Transfer is slightly different. You can still log your clips, but rather than enter time code you can simply select the thumbnails of clips with numbers that closely represent the timecode you wrote down. In some cases, these camcorders will allow you to flag the good shots and then you can filter them based on this flag. In any case, once you've selected the clips you want to get, you'll then instruct the computer to transfer the footage.
This process can take a long time as well, depending on what video format the computer wants to use to edit the footage. Many times the software is not only transferring data from the camcorder to the computer, but also transcoding the files to a different video format that is easier to use or of higher quality. Transcoding, as many of you know, is not a quick process. So that's why logging is important. Simply specify the clips you want and let the computer do the rest while you go for a stroll around the neighborhood.

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