Workflow Guide
 

Can anyone suggest a resource that would help me in defining a workflow for editing my videos? At this point I am pretty much stumbling around trying to figure out how to do things. If I had a basic guide I think it would help me not waste so much time.

Thanks for the help.

There are a lot of variables involved. First and foremost what type of video work are you talking about?

Weddings?
Events?
Live Performances?
Docs?
Training?
Seminars?

Knowing this would make it easier to help.
Don

Type of events
 

Hello Don,

At this point I am mostly looking at weddings and gymnastic floor routines. I might consider doing dance recitals at some time in the future depending on how much work I can find with weddings and gymnastics.

OK, now we're going in a direction.

When you say WORKFLOW do you mean a sequence of events OR step 1 step 2 etc for the editing?

Don

Workflow
 

Hello Don,

I am mostly looking for the "best practices" for getting footage to the editor and back out.

From the two cameras I was running last Saturday I have about 14 hours of footage. I have been importing the tapes all week whenever I was at home except for one hour Tuesday night and 1.5 last night when I was playing with the editor trying to determine the best way to handle multicamera coverage.

So, I'm not looking so much for a A-B-C guide to editing as for the best way to handle the process itself.

I am starting to wonder if this should be handled with two computers instead of one. Possibly using a hard drive in a firewire enclosure for the footage so one computer could be downloading tapes through the camera while I can actually work on editing on a second machine.

Do you just keep the original footage tapes in a safe place? 12 hours of footage would require about 216GB. A hard drive that large for each event would be cost prohibitive. It could possibly be broken up and saved on DVD but that would require about 54 DVDs. It could be saved on DAT but it would require about the same number of DAT cartridges as it does DVCs and the DATs cost more.

Do you edit the even in steps and just save the intermedite pieces? For example: On a wedding, would you just download the ceremony coverage and then do all of the editing to that. Save the final version and delete the raw footage then move on to the reception then the intro and credits?

WOW! Is that 14 hours from a wedding?
I just did a 10 day gig in Hawaii covering a business seminar and fun stuff and had that much! I never go more than about 4-41/2 hours on a typical wedding.

Oh well, anyway back to the question...The process itself is boring and time consuming (IMHO) but you're doing it pretty much the way we all do. Personally I capture all the footage and then start my edit. I do a particular style of edit and have a particular way of doing it. Very sequential and very much in order of the events. When all is edited, then I play it from the Vegas timeline probably about 5 or 6 times straight thru (of course I'm also playing back the sections I've worked on while I'm working on them) before I Print to Tape. I always PTT so I have a DV master, then I can remove the footage from my HDD's and either make my VHS's or DVD's. As for raw footage, I put all materials from that event together in an envelope and it gets labeled and put away. I do not go back to it to reuse tapes I only go back to make another VHS or DVD which does happen.

I do use 2 computers to edit but only 1 per event unless I'm on the road otherwise it can be confusing, at least for me. While I might have a wedding working on 1 I can do a sales seminar or social event or training video on the other.
The beauty of Vegas is it will run on pretty much any configuration of computer-very high degree of stability.

I hope that answers your questions although I probably raised more for you. Everyone has their own way of doing things mine goes back to lineal editing and also to needing to see everything in front of me to make my edit decisions.

Don

Thanks Don
 

Don,

I appreciate you taking the time to answer my request. Sometimes you think there ought to be an easier way and there isn't :-)

Darrell

Sounds to me like you're a prime candidate for portable hard disk recording. Check out my review of the Videonics FireStore and keep an eye out for the new FireStore FS-3 which will be on the site sometime soon. FireStore completely eliminates the video capture process, so you won't be spending all your free time digitizing. More about that in the link above -- hope this helps,