Looking for tips on workflow for making clips

[gpvillamil]

Hi there, I was looking for tips on a workflow for creating video clips.

Basically, what I have come up with is:

1) Capture DV to a directory called /vidcap/
2) Do some first pass processing ie. chop up the vidcap into the invidual clips, put the results into /sourceDV/
3) Do some second pass processing ie. effects, looping, re-encode to MJPEG, put this into the video library for use in a folder named after the theme

then trash /vidcap/ since it exists on DV tape, and backup /sourceDV/ onto DVD-R.

Anything I am missing here?

[topherz]

Hey Gian!

Sounds good, only thing that comes to mind is to somehow store references to which clips you got where. So that even though you trash VidCap directory you can get the clip back again.

Im not sure how you are doing the capturing.
If you are capturing individual clips via a batch logging file. Then you can also archive the batch logging file. Makes it easy to get the clip again.

If you are capturing a whole tape at one go to the harddrive, then a nice aid later is to render out a clip at x60 speed. Compress the 60 minutes to 1 minute. Keep this clip around, it is a great reference when you want to see what is on the tape later. You can just scan through the clip - and since it is x60 speed, you can use the timecode to know where it is on the tape. Seconds = Minutes, if you get what im getting at.
Added bonus, your whole tape at x60 might look quite nice anyways.

-topher

[loboy]

whats up gp.

i go through the same process, except I capture all my dv to an external hard drive. So when I am doing some heavy editting on large video files, the external drive can spin at a certain rate, and my internal drive can access large .cache files of renders more quickly.

All the dumped footage on the external drive gets pushed through some editting programs, then all those fresh new edits get saved to a different folder. Those new edits get mished and mashed again and again, until I find a good balance of what I am looking for.

All the final edits get placed on a timeline within a non-linear editor. This again is overlayed and editted even a fouth time. The final product is then exported as DV at 720X480, ready for DVD burning.

:::

I try to keep all my files the same format and same dimensions, that way I don't encounter encoding problems, and generally the workflow is smoother. Some apps don't like .avi, some apps like .mov, some apps can't do 1280 x 960 30 fps..., so I try to find what works best with whatever setup there is.