Day Of Video Editing for viewing?
 

What program and what would you do to go about for the day of edit? I am interested in getting into it. But not sure how or where to start? Thanks...

Ryan

Don't quite understand the question. But thats not unusual for me.

I guess what im asking is...

1. WHat editing program and computer you use? Laptop?

2. WHen does it take place...the editing that is?

3. When do you display the video?

Some use Edius, some Vegas, some Premier I think some use FCP. Depends on what your primary NLE is. I've done same day stuff with Vegas and found it to be fine as long as ALL graphics, titiling,stills and anything else I can get in the timeline and rendered out in advance are ready to go. Then drop in the video footage you want. This is true no matter what program you use. You need to keep somesort of log as you shoot so you know where the footage you want is rather than trying to scan an hours (or more) worth of footage while under the pressure of knowing you have say 2 hours to complete the job. When do you edit? Well, immediately after the ceremony. This is why a 2nd shooter is nice to have although there are folks out there that do it by themselves. ME? I don't need an ulcer ;-) so a 2nd shooter. While they shoot the post ceremony and pre reception stuff I can be editing on my laptop with a FW HDD in the car (ugh, I can get carsick) OR my choice at the reception venue. I get there as fast as possible and set up in a corner where no one will bother me and edit edit edit. Render to AVI and play off of laptop OR print to tape and play tape OT burn single play DVD and play that. Depends on how much time I have but most often I have simply rendered to AVI and played off of timeline. Works just fine. (My laptop has both a compostie and S video hookup for the projector).
Now having said all of this, please understand I don not do many and plan to do fewer. I think last year I did all of 3 and I'm hoping not to do any this year. WHY you ask. Fair question. Since I AM for the most part a one man band and have been for all the years in the business (and prefer to do it that way) I really don't need nor do I want the added stress, BUT that's just me.
Anyway they can be fun and exciting to do and watch. BTW some show them during dinner (the wait staff hate that) so the best time is either just before dinner (before or the toast depends on the room manager) OR right after dinner BEFORE the dancing starts.
Anyway maybe some that does more SDEs will address this but you asked, I answered.
OO
\_/
Don

Hi Ryan,

We call them Wedding Day Edit, WDE. To answer your questions.

1. We use Edius by Grass Valley, formerly Canopus. Our old laptop was a Toshiba laptop. After about three years we replaced it with a Dell laptop. We use Edius for all of our editing, not just WDEs. We like Edius for many reasons, but the two biggest are its stability and it's real time performance. Both of these are especially important for WDEs.

Our first laptop was a Toshiba Pentium 4 2.8 with 512 mb of ram. With that laptop running Edius, our WDEs were done in real time. We did things like B&W, Color Correction, Slow Motion, 1-2 second dissolves and audio filters. All of this was in real time. Just to clarify what I mean by real time, not only do you see all of these filters in real time playback on the monitor, but when the edit is complete, we just hook our camera up to the computer through firewire and hit the space bar. No rendering or encoding.

All of that was done with equipment from 4 years ago. Our current laptop is running Edius with a Core 2 Duo 2.0, and 2 gb of ram. We are able to do HDV edits in real time until it is time to output to tape. If the edit is going to be shown in DV, it is still real time. Just hook up the camera and output through firewire. If it is going to be shown in HDV, then the edit has to be encoded for HDV and then out to the camera.

2. The goal is to capture prep and at least have some of it edited before the ceremony starts. It doesn't always happen that way, but that is the goal. Then once the ceremony is over, Trisha captures the ceremony and edits until it's time for the First Dance. When she is done shooting the First Dance, she is back to editing.

3. The goal is to show the WDE after the cake cutting and before the general party dancing begins. The later it is shown, the less people will see it. We have projected the WDE as soon as 2 hours after the ceremony ended, but that is really pushing it.

You can see a few WDEs on our website.