billmi
06-07-2007, 01:56 PM
OK, don't take my head off here - I'm not saying it *is* outdated, just pondering how much I've liked the idea of batch capture in a work flow because it is what I am used to, vs. it really being an advantage anymore.
In light of this thread:
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69349
and of previous discussion about it not being included in Speed Edit (yet?) it got me thinking and asking myself questions as I sit here during an Autochop capture. I was really surprised to not see batch capture in SE 1.0, especially since it's in most NLEs at the same price point. But now that I think more about it, is it really as important as I've been thinking it was?
In what situations would I want to batch capture anymore, given faster alternatives?
1 – Capturing initial footage, that was shot in separate shots, to individual clips .
Arguably that is the number one reason I've used batch capture in the past – and Autochop takes care of it. For a long-form webcast show that I do I'll often be shooting paintball games that I don't want split up into separate shots when captured, but want the games separated, and the interviews split. I resisted Autochope her, until I realized it was faster to capture with Autochop, then grab all the clips that make up one game and throw them into a subproject, dealing with them from then out as a single clip on the timeline. This newer approach turns out to be substantially time saving vs. shuttling through the tape to find my in and out points for batch capture, and then batch capturing.
2 – Capturing footage that was shot in a single continuous shot, but which needs to be broken into shots by scene for editing.
Previously I would have thought this a great argument for batch capture, but the more that I think about it, that's the slow way to do it.
Capturing the tape as a single file, then scrubbing through it in SpeedEdit, and chopping it with the C Key, will create instances that refer to the clip. They can then be dragged en-masse to a folder in the filebin, and edited with just as if they had been created as separate clips by batch capture.
There are two differences between this approach and batch capture. First, physically on the drive there is only one actual clip that is being referenced, but since I'm doing the editing in Speed Edit, that doesn't matter – my instances handle in the Filebin timeline and story board exactly the same as if they were referring to separate files that were created by batch capture.
The second difference is speed. Instead of spending my time shuttling the tape back and forth like I did in the 1980s to find my in and out points, I'm scrubbing through the video off the hard drive to find those points, like with a non-linear editor. It's hands down faster, for ultimately the same result.
3 – Recapturing footage later, to be able to re-edit a project – First I so rarely am going to come back to a project that I hardly ever worry about this, but there is occasionally something I know I will have to re-edit, and archiving the already captured footage to random access media just makes so much more sense. For me, a typical project has at most a couple hours of raw footage. With Raw DV footage, that's 4 Data DVDs to back it up. For bigger projects, the cost in my time to set up and do a recapture, making sure the filenames are all correct so they will be red by the project, etc. is going to be greater than the cost of an external hard-drive big enough to simply back up the files in one swoop.
4 – Getting a tape from a client, and having to edit clips based on their EDL – If I could import a capture list and autocapture from that list, then yes, batch capture makes sense here, but if I'm going to have to generate that batch cap list myself to edit to their list, it's going to be faster to capture at once, and break up instances, as in number 2. Even if I'm keying in the in and out keys with the 10-key pad rather than shuttling to them, it's still faster to cut after than batch capture, because the capture itself happens in a single pass.
5 – Limited drive space – This might be an argument on my notebook where I've only got 20 Gigs free for video – it's advantageous to capture just what I am going to use.
In light of this thread:
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69349
and of previous discussion about it not being included in Speed Edit (yet?) it got me thinking and asking myself questions as I sit here during an Autochop capture. I was really surprised to not see batch capture in SE 1.0, especially since it's in most NLEs at the same price point. But now that I think more about it, is it really as important as I've been thinking it was?
In what situations would I want to batch capture anymore, given faster alternatives?
1 – Capturing initial footage, that was shot in separate shots, to individual clips .
Arguably that is the number one reason I've used batch capture in the past – and Autochop takes care of it. For a long-form webcast show that I do I'll often be shooting paintball games that I don't want split up into separate shots when captured, but want the games separated, and the interviews split. I resisted Autochope her, until I realized it was faster to capture with Autochop, then grab all the clips that make up one game and throw them into a subproject, dealing with them from then out as a single clip on the timeline. This newer approach turns out to be substantially time saving vs. shuttling through the tape to find my in and out points for batch capture, and then batch capturing.
2 – Capturing footage that was shot in a single continuous shot, but which needs to be broken into shots by scene for editing.
Previously I would have thought this a great argument for batch capture, but the more that I think about it, that's the slow way to do it.
Capturing the tape as a single file, then scrubbing through it in SpeedEdit, and chopping it with the C Key, will create instances that refer to the clip. They can then be dragged en-masse to a folder in the filebin, and edited with just as if they had been created as separate clips by batch capture.
There are two differences between this approach and batch capture. First, physically on the drive there is only one actual clip that is being referenced, but since I'm doing the editing in Speed Edit, that doesn't matter – my instances handle in the Filebin timeline and story board exactly the same as if they were referring to separate files that were created by batch capture.
The second difference is speed. Instead of spending my time shuttling the tape back and forth like I did in the 1980s to find my in and out points, I'm scrubbing through the video off the hard drive to find those points, like with a non-linear editor. It's hands down faster, for ultimately the same result.
3 – Recapturing footage later, to be able to re-edit a project – First I so rarely am going to come back to a project that I hardly ever worry about this, but there is occasionally something I know I will have to re-edit, and archiving the already captured footage to random access media just makes so much more sense. For me, a typical project has at most a couple hours of raw footage. With Raw DV footage, that's 4 Data DVDs to back it up. For bigger projects, the cost in my time to set up and do a recapture, making sure the filenames are all correct so they will be red by the project, etc. is going to be greater than the cost of an external hard-drive big enough to simply back up the files in one swoop.
4 – Getting a tape from a client, and having to edit clips based on their EDL – If I could import a capture list and autocapture from that list, then yes, batch capture makes sense here, but if I'm going to have to generate that batch cap list myself to edit to their list, it's going to be faster to capture at once, and break up instances, as in number 2. Even if I'm keying in the in and out keys with the 10-key pad rather than shuttling to them, it's still faster to cut after than batch capture, because the capture itself happens in a single pass.
5 – Limited drive space – This might be an argument on my notebook where I've only got 20 Gigs free for video – it's advantageous to capture just what I am going to use.