Best way to catalog clips?

[rungabic]

This is a rather basic question, to which I've so far found no great answer. I have hundreds of M2T files, named simply in date-time format.

Obviously, I need to do a lot of manual scrubbing through these to (1) identify what's what, and (2) identify what portions of each clip, if any, are "keepers."

Can anyone suggest the best way to do this, using Edius (Broadcast) or any other app?

Right now I can't think of a much better solution than adding clips to Edius in batches on one monitor and creating an Excel spreadsheet on the other monitor, inputting filenames, timecodes, descriptions, and ratings as I painfully go along. I'm not looking forward to this process.

My keywording and organization of my still photos isn't so hot either, but at least with photos you can scan through the thumbnails, and what you see at a glance is everything you need to know about each file.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[GrassValley_KH]

Remember that you can export a bin's contents into a listing to then further edit in something like Excel...

So load up a Bin folder with clips you want to keep (remembering that there's the Add to Bin keyboard shortcut), and export that Bin..

[rungabic]

Thanks for that tip. So does this mean that my proposed brute-force Edius/Excel workflow is basically the best way to do this?

Many of my clips are up to 14 minutes in length, with possibly only a few random parts being keepers and the rest junk.

Annotating all these timecode ranges by hand is going to be awful.

Does no one make any software (or is there a method/hack within Edius) that lets you set in & out points for your keeper segments in each clip, and then output those "good" ranges to a spreadsheet, where you can type in the descriptive text for each portion?

Or maybe that's what you're referring to -- you can see that I'm just dipping my feet in the Edius pond, so I barely know what's up -- I just know that I have a ton of work to do before I'll know what usable material I have, and I'm trying to make the cataloguing process as painless as possible...

[GrassValley_KH]

If you double click a clip in the bin, set an In/Out point and then add that back to the bin, a new instance of the original clip will appear with the new In/Out points you chose.

The only thing is that the name will be a subset of the original clip's name.

But if you rinse and repeat with the original clip, each time making new In/Out pairings, you'll soon have a Bin that is filled with many subclips built from the source clip.

Is this what you're wanting to do?

For a more visual means of identification, clips can be assigned different colours within a Bin, too. Just right-click a clip in the Bin and view its properties. Choose a colour from the appropriate menu.

[rungabic]

Thanks so much for your quick replies -- it sounds like this might be a workable solution to my problems...but I'll have to try this hands-on and see how the flow is.

Anyone with alternative ideas/methods, I welcome your suggestions!

[drgagx]

I do not use m2t files so this may not be appropriate to your needs. I use miniDV tapes which gives me a linear record. I guess that this might not work with solid state media.

I now capture each dv tape to a separate folder and, before capture, preset the file "name" to numbers starting 001. This gives me separate folders for each tape, with files split by date and tc numbered from 001 upwards, often up to 150+ per folder.

I import these into the bin. I use date and time to colour code the files by logical groups eg people or events etc. At the same time I add a short descriptive suffix to the first file in each colour coded group. Thus 001 to 020will be colour coded and the first file (001) be renamed 001 henry.

At the moment I am using this method to identify six or more subjects that appear in each folder. When editing I create separate sequences for each subject within the project and import the colour coded files to the appropriate sequence.

Some of my projects involve several folders like this, each containing files on a variety of subjects. The use of colour coding and sequences makes the job of untangling an otherwise unholy mess relatively straightforward.

[biopic]

If you were using DV tapes, then Scenalyzer is great as you can generate thumbnail filmstrips and display them in an html document, pretty well automatically. We index all our tapes this way, so in principle we can always find any shot to within about 1 minute of timecode.
Unfortunately you are using m2t files, so none of this is of any help to you :(

[rungabic]

I shoot straight to hard disk (Firestore), so unfortunately I can't make use of Scenealyzer (plus I thought I've heard that it doesn't work with HDV...)

Actually, virtually all of my clips are of the same subject -- our baby. The problem is that for every minute of good footage, there's probably 10 minutes of garbage...and the Firestore splits files when they approach the 2GB mark, so many of my clips are about 14 minutes long, with probably just a few good "subclips" in each.

So I definitely need to take the time to do this right from here forward, but I also have a huge backlog of files where I need to find the good timecode ranges and annotate them with a short description. I'm just trying to find the least painful way to do this...

[JimJulian]

Also, to organize a complicated edit you need to get in the habit of creating lots of folders. Start by right-clicking under the root folder in the bin and select new folder. I have separate folders for music, stills, sound fx, graphics, sequences, and usually a bunch of folders that represent each field tape. Because hard drives are cheap I usually capture the whole tape into their own individual folders labled tape 1, tape 2, tape 3, etc.

Things to try,


jim

[pehrbau]

I have hundreds of tapes (HDV and DV). Each clip on each numbered tape is registered with timecodes in Excel and also named with content. Takes a looong time to do but makes worthwhile when you once need a particular scene. Just search in Excel and load that specific tape.
I have plenty of time being retired.

[rungabic]

I have plenty of time being retired.

This, apparently, is the key! I work and have a one-year-old. I barely have enough time to shoot some video...editing any of it remains a dream, and obviously I don't even know what I have shot at this point.

However, I guess it's good to hear that I was on the right track thinking about keeping a shot list in Excel. I was just hoping that someone out there had actually made a media cataloguing program that would be very specifically geared to video (in terms of one slick program that let you load up your clips, scrub through them, set in & out points for good sections, and annotate those subclips with text descriptions, keywords, etc. right on the spot, and without flipping back & forth between programs or having to export data).

It remains to be seen how tortuous a process this will be...

[drgagx]

The method I described earlier is of video is of six grandchildren plus other topics. So my subject matter is essentially similar to yours.

With long takes I just load them all to the timeline and cut there - I have learned to be ruthless about this. It has also caused me now to go for shorter takes wherever possible, say 6 to 10 seconds, with editing in mind. The end products are shortish dvds (say 30 minutes max) of each of them growing up over the course of a calendar year.

[VideoOpp]

Consolidate

This is a rather basic question, to which I've so far found no great answer. I have hundreds of M2T files, named simply in date-time format.

Obviously, I need to do a lot of manual scrubbing through these to (1) identify what's what, and (2) identify what portions of each clip, if any, are "keepers."

Can anyone suggest the best way to do this, using Edius (Broadcast) or any other app?

Right now I can't think of a much better solution than adding clips to Edius in batches on one monitor and creating an Excel spreadsheet on the other monitor, inputting filenames, timecodes, descriptions, and ratings as I painfully go along. I'm not looking forward to this process.

My keywording and organization of my still photos isn't so hot either, but at least with photos you can scan through the thumbnails, and what you see at a glance is everything you need to know about each file.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

For your purposes, you may want to consider the consolidate tool. Put your M2T files on the timeline, find the portions that you want to keep, make a quick rough edit and consolidate. Your consolidated project will contain only the portions that you want to keep.

The consolidate tool still needs some work, but I think that you might find it helpful..

[rungabic]

For your purposes, you may want to consider the consolidate tool. Put your M2T files on the timeline, find the portions that you want to keep, make a quick rough edit and consolidate. Your consolidated project will contain only the portions that you want to keep.

Thanks for this tip. Does "consolidating" do any re-rendering, or does it just chop up my files and output the clips I want in their original, untouched quality?

[GrassValley_KH]

I believe the consolidate tool uses segment encoding where possible, in v4.61