Video Editing : Logging Software, Evolved (page 3)

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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