Video Editing : Logging Software, Evolved (page 2)

Tape logging isn't the most glamorous part of the video producing - but it's often one of the most important.

Countless times in my career, I've come back from a field shoot thinking that I knew which takes were the "keepers" only to discover that there was a hidden flaw in a "good" take -- (or a hidden gem in one I thought wasn't as good!) I've uncovered unexpected audio glitches, distracting background actions or some other facet of the take I was counting on that would change from the perfect shot to less than ideal for my finished program. Or I've taken another look at a bit of shaky camera work I didn't like when I shot the scene, only to discover that slowed down, frozen, or filtered, that very footage was useful for some part of my final video.

The point is that unless you dig deep into your footage -- typically during the log and capture process, you might miss these hidden gems.

So I've come to look at log and capture operations not as a chore, but as a golden opportunity to get my head into my footage and - for me at least - that's almost always "step one" on the path to a really well edited video.

Bill Davis writes, shoots, edits, and does voiceover work for a variety of corporate and industrial clients

One basic reality of shot logging in the field is the need to get your shot information out of your camera and into your database. The low-tech solution of having a camera operator simply call out the timecode reading at the head and/or tails of each shot is still the cheapest way to accomplish this. But like all production tasks, technology has tools to automate this common task.

Current solutions requires a small timecode transmitter that hooks to a pro camera's timecode output and broadcasts the timecode data to a small receiver that can be hooked to your laptop or PDA. Once the link is established, hitting a hot key on you laptop or tapping with your stylus on your PDA screen will capture the timecode address in an instant.

As I write this, I'm sitting on an airplane bound for Chicago. In my briefcase alongside my laptop is a small hard drive loaded with more than 8 hours of off-line raw footage for a project I'm doing for a client.

This was a three-camera shoot of a stage performance and the client elected not to do a live switch, but to create the finished show in post.

Back in the old days, I would have painstakingly logged all my tapes, and done a "paper edit" -- with pages of notes about which camera to use each point in the show. Instead, with low-rez offline footage and NLE "multicam" software running on my laptop I can literally "switch" the show -- after the fact -- by simply clicking on the various camera shots in real time. All while sipping a cold drink at 30,000 feet -- and without "logging" a single tape.

It's editing "on the fly" -- literally.

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