Capture workflow for SD not useful in FCE?
 

Hi guys,

I posted a similar question on the apple.com support site but I am doubtful of getting a helpful answer over there.

I have been using iMovie for a while to import and edit Single-Def (and a little HD) footage, but recently made the move to FCE.

I really like the iMovie approach to importing footage (automatically making a new clip file for each press of the record button) as it breaks up the footage and allows me to delete a bunch of entire clips to free up hard drive space (since I film underwater I often end up with a large number of useless clips)

However, FCE seems to not be very useful in this regard. From what I understand, my options are:

1) use iMovie to import and copy the .DV files and import these to FCE.
I lose the timecode and audio (don't mostly care about audio), and I would then be relying on iMovie to import exactly the same length clips in the future if I need to go back to the tape masters to re-import.

2) Use "Capture Clip"
This seems to involve me sitting in front of FCE and manually watching over the footage to mark every in/out point, and a heck of a lot of fast forwarding/rewinding my tape (which I am nervous about is it is my backup)

However, this has the benefit of iMovie style (lots of small files so I can delete some) and I can then later do a Capture Project if I need to refer back to the masters (hard drive crash or got full etc.)

But this is really painful to do for many clips and many tapes.

3) "Capture Now"
Here, I can capture essentially an entire MiniDV tape into one or two clips, then use DV Start/Stop detection to make sublicps.

However, this leaves me with just a couple of really large clip files on my hard drive and no way to remove any of that useless stuff that I just dont want to keep lying around.

Am I missing something here? Or am I the only person in the world that wants to work this way ?

Maybe give this a try, although I have no idea if it's what your after: Set the device setting to "uncontrollable" in FCE so that it doesn't take control of your camera but still sends vision/audio (can't remember the specifics). Go to the capture window. Press play on your camera. Press SHIFT-C to start capturing and ESC to end capturing. This will basically just create new clips for each press of the record button (or more specifically the keyboard buttons). Easy!

Personally, I think your best option is just to get more disk space and just capture everything and log in FCE, but that's just me.

Hope this helps!

My thoughts are to use Capture Now to capture the whole tape. Then Mark In and Out points for the footage you want to keep. Then use the "Create Subclip" command under Modify. When you do this FCE makes the Subclip its own stand alone file. Then you can delete the larger Master Clip and get that hard drive space back. It would be basically the same as using the Clip Capture option without the wear and tear on the camera and the tape.

I believe that I have a good handle on the way that this would work. Let me know if this works out for you...

Kevin

Kevin are you sure creating a sub-clip in FCE creates a standalone file? I always thought it just referenced to the master clip. But I could be wrong...

I did try this and it seemed to just create subclips that referenced the master clip.

I guess I could just store all the data, but I have about 30 SD tapes that I want to import and a lot of it is not very usable.

It's also really nice to have the smaller files so if I want to I can use them in different projects, move them around etc. (something that FCE seems pretty weak at)

I think that what I almost want is a standalone application that works alongside the NLE. The app would be a "clip manager" and would handle importing from tape, Hard Drive, DVD, Computer files, and let me split things up, tag them with meta data etc.

then when I want to make a project I can pull in clips from wherever I want.

I guess I will try the uncontrolled device suggestion above. If it really works, it seems like it will work just like iMovie, which for now at least would be great.

I guess it all comes back to personal organisational skills. You could easily set up a logical folder structure and once captured using FCE/FCP you could assign to the appropriate folder. You could also log all your tapes during the capture process splitting up the tape into appropriately labelled clips.

I feel FCP (I haven't used FCE since Version 2) handles media quite well. The only problem I have with it is as I keep my projects on separate external hard drives I have to reassign the capture scratch, etc. every time I open up a specific project. But it only takes 20 seconds - nothing worth writing to Apple about.

A 3rd Party "Clip Manager" isn't a bad idea though if you tend to use the same footage for multiple projects. Have you considered iTunes? I presume it can handle any Quicktime compatible file? You could just set up Playlists to organise all your clips. You could also Tag all your clips with relevant meta data. I guess you could then just drag files from iTunes into the FCP browser. Never tried it, so I'm not sure if it would work.

Finally, keep in mind FCE lacks a lot of the more professional features FCP has, such as a Media Manager.

Good luck Nick!

Nick, I thought it was strange that this didn't work for you. Just to double check, I just started FCE v2.0.2 (older version I know) and set an in-point and an out-point on a clip, went to "Modify" and selected "Make Subclip." Now the icon beside the clip name does have the zig-zag sides, not the straight ones of the originally imported clip. But I can delete the originally imported clip from the project and the clip still plays. Furthermore, when I scroll across in the browser (I use the list option for sorting) under the heading "Master Clip" there is a check-mark in the row for the new "Subclip."

Am I completely in the weeds here? Did I totally miss something that is going on behind the program? Please let me know...

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin, I'm pretty sure, although I haven't tested it personally, that it still keeps the same master captured Quicktime file in the capture scratch therefore still using up the same amount of hard drive space. Check the capture scratch to be certain...

I forgot about the capture scratch file... I think that youre right Chris.

Right.
Someone on the Apple forums put me onto "Live Capture Plus" from Squarebox
that (mostly) does what I want (makes one file per clip but uses the DV Start/Stop detection etc.) it has a few flaws -- like it cannot add the clip# to the filename, and I have to mess with the Catalog links, but seems to work OK.

Sadly LiveCapture does not work for HDV yet but I can do that with FCE for now so I am (mostly) OK

This is probably of some interest to you Nick...

http://www.hdforindies.com/2006/12/a...of-artbox.html