How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

Some of you may have read about my big adventure shooting a horse training clinic...

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/spc-sing...ity-check.html

So now I've been asked if I could put together a highlights video. I am a Creative Cloud user and I am decent enough with Premiere Pro but, this seems a very daunting task. I have about thirty hours of video from this clinic. How do you guys scrub video for the best nuggets in a situation like this? Is there a way for me to watch at 4-8x and set rough i/o points? Do I have to import all the video into Premiere Pro or is this a task better suited for Prelude, which I have used for basic ingestion only? What's the best (i.e. fastest) workflow here?

Bob

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

I have had similar tasks, my plan was: (1) have a plan, know what you want to show...that is, know your material and think out what you need to show and at least a rough sequence. (2) go to those clips (Prelude is good for this) and extract what you need. (3) Inevitably, go back and find b roll and bridge material to smooth the parts together after you have your rough cut.

I used to have to do 3-minute pieces for a news website, on deadline, from 3 or 4 hours of video from an "important" commission meeting or such. I made notes as I went, with timecode, planned out the highlight reel driving back to the office, and pulled those clips from the tapes (!) and got them on the web as quickly as possible. It can be done, but most of it is the mental process of planning your story before you start pulling clips.

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

I know it's kind of late advice to give now, knowing that your event is already over... but. I've filmed a lot of dog Agility.. lots of short clips 2 to 3 minutes long each. Perhaps 1000 to 1500 clips over the course of a weekend. What I would do is keep a notepad & pen with me at all times. When filming something out of the ordinary such a dog running over the top of a tunnel, (not very common) or an excellent performance or what ever, I would note what ever details I need on my notepad with the date & time so that I can go back and find the clip later when I want to review it again. Definitely a low tech approach to a high tech problem!

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

Hi Bob,

I've ever been much of a pen-and-paper planner myself and do things on the fly. So with a wedding video for instance, I might have a 90-minute full-length version all edited on the timeline. I'll copy and paste the contents of the timeline to a NEW timeline, so as not to mess with the original edit.

I can then quickly scrub through and look for the best moments for the highlights segment. I like to use the "Mark In, Mark Out, Extract" method. At the bottom of the Program Monitor window there are some buttons (hover the mouse over them to see labels). There are also keyboard shortcuts, I believe I, O, and ' to do this, unless they changed with CC.

I use this quick method to cut out the stuff I do NOT want, leaving the good bits. The Extract closes the gaps when removing material, so after cutting all the fluff, I'm left with a short timeline of "the good stuff" and can then further whittle and tweak and move the short clips around as needed to build the highlights.

You asked about playing at faster speed - that would be the J-K-L keys. Tap L a few times to speed up playback. But I usually just scrub with the mouse, as I don't want to "watch" everything I just edited again, even at faster speed. Scrubbing is much more efficient to find the good nuggets.

Hope this helps

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

My advice would be...stop with the philosophy, ingest everything and start scrubbing and cutting.

The workflow you mentioned is great for scripted work, when you have everything, well, scripted and you just have to find the best takes.

Here you're faced with something I call "guerilla editing".

First go through everything and just cut ALL of the shots you find interesting. Don't split hairs here, do only fast rough cuts for now.

For this you'll be fastest and most efficient right on the timeline. Think about it, for the time used to view the clip in a 3rd application, mark the IO points and extracting it, logging or whatever, you've already cut a dozen of useable clips right on the timeline.


That way you'll cut that 30 hrs of material down by a large margin and relatively fast (btw. 30hrs of footage ain't that much). Now you're left with the selection of shots that are usable and it's time to let you creative juices flow.



The only real editing advice I can give you here is to be careful if you shot the material you're editing. Don't be very sentimental with your shots. Sometimes you'll have a beautiful shot, perfectly lit with immaculate framing, everything just right. But it won't belong anywhere in the story. Don't force it in.

Been there...

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

haha, I like your advise Zoran.... Just get in there and start chipping at it! Or in other words... Git R` Done! :) That is advise that I need to take to heart more often as I will sometimes look at a ton of footage and get overwhelmed with the amount that needs sorting & logging so much so that I'll begin procrastinating on an edit until I get too close to the deadline.

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

If it's not scripted which it isn't, as Zoran said, jump in with both feet, stay objective, don't fall in love with any shot, set a rough cut then start going thru with a fine tooth comb. Then do it again!
30 hours should actually be fairly quick to get thru especially since you shot it and pretty much know what you want to do with it.
Oh yeah, get a large supply of eye drops and a very large pot of coffee!
Good luck and don't be afraid to walk away for a while.

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

Ditto!

Been there too...

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

Thanks for the input guys. I have decided that I am not going to do this project. I had not yet committed to it and they are not willing/able to pay me for that kind of time. I'm certainly not up for doing a 40-hour freebie. I've become very sensitive to working for a loss over the last couple years.

Bob

Re: How to reduce thirty hours of video to 2-3 minutes?
 

+1 for making this tough decision Bob. I'ts not always easy to make the decision if a project for a loss is worth the promotional aspects of doing it cheap or free. From my experience doing cheap or free work, people have no clue how much effort goes into doing video work. They have a tendency to think it's a simply Point, click, burn, done. process... like a printing your own money kind of easy.