How are you capturing your footage?
 

I was wondering how everyone is ingesting footage? I am using Premiere Pro CS3, Cineform and the Canon XL-H1.

The most obvious methods to capture footage are (in my view):

1. Log and batch capture
2. Capture single clips
3. Capture the entire tape in one big file
4. Don't capture if you are using P2/SxS (later this year)

I currently capture the whole tape and work from there. I usually create subclips and work with them. The reason why I work this way is that these big files are really snappy/responsive. The communication between camera/computer is much slower... and involves foward/reverse which takes up more time. The advantage of this method is that you only capture the good footage and don't capture all the bad footage. With Cineform files being 40GB for 60 minutes of video this can be a major advantage.

However, when looking at the future... this whole capturing thing seems to become less applicable in the future. With P2/SxS... one just drags all the files to the computer and starts working right away.

Right now, I am still working with tapes. And I am looking for the best way to capture those to my computer. I would like to hear how other Premiere users are capturing to see if it is wise to change my capturing workflow.

Thank you for your feedback!

If the tape is part of a multi-camera shoot, there is no doubt the "whole tape" method is the only way to go. Once the two cameras are sync'd up, editing is easy. Trying to sync up each scene would be a real pain.

However, for single-camera stuff, where lots of useless footage was shot between scenes, I do the "log and batch capture" technique. This way I can log all the useful clips, name them with useful names, then let Adobe grab it all in a batch capture while I go eat dinner.

The one problem I have found with doing a "whole tape" is sometimes a dropout of just the right kind can skew the audio from the video from that point on. This requires yet another a recapture starting just past the bad point which is very annoying. Now twice the disk space is wasted!

I capture just the m2t and use scene detect. Then after I review the files, tossing the ones I won't use out, I batch convert with HDLink. I cack up the m2T files and not the Cineform AVI since I can always convert them again if necessary, so it saves space.

If I feel like I will use most of the footage, I let HDLink capture and convert it all, still using scene detect. But I know I shoot a lot of junk in between good shots so I ussually capture to m2t only.

I capture in 30mins per section. If my duration is 1hr :) I used to edit in a single clip. Too many clips split off may have hard time to rename each files :)

I've had a question about this for some time now. I realize the "best" method is to log the in/out points and batch capture. However, doesn't the wear and tear on the camera far out weigh the advantages of doing so - or am I missing something.

I mean you have to scan through the tape several times before you even begin recording. Now if I can convince my wife that I need a tape deck then life will be good.

I have carefully listened and watched and scene detect is the least painful on the camera.

I hope I'm not hijacking this thread by asking this, but I usually capture by logging and batch capturing a bunch of clips. For my latest project, I captured the entire tape, about 40 minutes worth of footage. I made a bunch of sub-clips, and now whenever I hit play in either the source panel or timeline panel, there is a lengthy delay before the footage starts playing. Also, the Program Monitor Panel doesn't update when I move my CTI in my timeline.
I opened up an earlier project, where I captured individual clips instead of one big one, and it plays no problem. This is all in DV Widescreen, standard def. Any ideas as to what is going on?

Is the camera still switched on? I have had real slow playback when my camera is still switched on.

Back to the thread, I usually capture the whole tape using scene detect, then trim down the good clips, I mark as good in the project window. I would like to know though, is it better to capture as Microsoft DV AVI codec or just the AVI codec? or totally uncompressed footage? I'd like to know if I can capture footage at better quality using a codec with better compression. I am currently capturing in Premiere Pro 1.5 - should I use a dedicated capture program then load the footage into Premiere instead of actually capturing in Premiere?

Russ

Luckily I have a firestore for my HD100 so I don't need to capture. Just plug the drive into a firewire port and begin editing in CS3.. very nice!

Now I just need to be able to afford cineform although I have to say editing the native .m2t files with a quad core is like a hot knife through butter :)

Julian

I run Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and now prefer to capture a tape as one clip.
Seems simpler these days, although it does seem to require more HD space. I also like tyhat there's no long batch capture required, and no need to try to re-batch capture clips that did not for some reason make it in the first batch capture. Honestly, that used to drive me crazy.

Actually one of my machines running PP 1.5.1--when I just dump a whole tape into Premiere, it will (Premiere, that is) break it up and create a new clip for every point where I stopped and started shooting. A cool feature, but why / how does it do that?

Premiere Pro version 1.5.1 used the Cineform codec, and that probably had something to do with it.

I had a great experience capturing HDV directly to hard drive using OnLocation. As long as I am in a studio setting, I will always want to do it that way. It is just a bit difficult to take a laptop everywhere I take my camera, so for that, a Firestore would be nice.