Production Power

As a start-up video production company, we had just finished our first commercial product, a 70-minute boating "how-to" tape. We were happy with the quality and content but knew if we were going to be cost-effective and productive, we needed some more production tools to help us. Rather than search for and invest in video-production specific software, we turned to the productivity-suite tools we already had installed on our computer, the Microsoft-Office applications.
Most PCs delivered today have the Microsoft Office products already installed. But there are a host of other products available. The ones we use are MS-Access, a database, MS-Excel, a spreadsheet, MS-PowerPoint, presentation software and MS-Word, a word processor. All of the principles taught here will translate to whatever similar applications you work with on your PC or Mac. Since we were already familiar with the operations of these software packages, we were able to adapt them to our video needs quickly, and we found that it was quite advantageous.

Labels, Logs and Content

That first production of ours used up the better part of 28, 60-minute Mini DV tapes. We soon realized that we would need to label and track all of our tapes. The first step was to generate the tape labels for our DV tapes. We found that a standard address label would just fit on the plastic DV case and, best of all, we already had these on hand.
We set up a spreadsheet in MS-Excel to print the labels. The label consisted of two bordered boxes with the tape ID printed both horizontally and vertically. Borders made a nice frame while we generated the tape numbers using a simple formula based on an arbitrary starting number entered outside of the print area. We placed the labels on the exterior of the plastic case with the same number written on the much smaller DV tape label.
We then used MS-Access to build a tape log database containing the tape ID, the tape type (VHS-C, Mini DV, etc.) and the date we recorded using the tape.
Once we had numbered all of our tapes, we could then begin tracking the contents. We shoot our video in the order we are doing the work, not necessarily in the sequence the final tapes will appear. Without keeping track of the tape contents, we risked missing scenes, in editing, that we shot or possibly reshooting existing shots unnecessarily. We built the tape contents log using MS-Access database software. It's a simple database that contains the tape-log number and a brief description of its contents.
When we had several different topics on a tape, we made a separate entry in the database for each topic. We tried to keep the descriptions of the projects the same, so "Replacing Ports," for example, might appear on three or four different tapes. By using the Sort function in Access we could then get a listing of all tapes with "Replacing Ports" shots. This saved us precious time when we began assembling the shots for editing.

Edit Decision Lists

Sitting there with 28 hours of video, we had to decide how to put it all together. Once again, we turned to MS-Access to build our Edit Decision List (EDL) database. This database was a bit more complex, though. In addition to the Tape ID, it also contained Start Time, Stop Time, Sequence, Description, EditDV File Name and Segment fields.
Let�s discuss our editing process so these fields make some sense. We capture clips from our Mini DV camcorder. We edit on a PC with two 20GB hard drives, so space is usually at a premium. To help save space, we preview all of our tapes and only capture the clips we plan to use. As we preview and select clips, we enter the tape ID, the starting and stopping points and the description in the database. We try to review tapes as often as possible; ideally the same day we shoot the footage.
Now this next step really starts saving us time. Once we've got all the shot information for a batch of tapes entered into our database, we print out a capture report. This report lists all entries in our database with a blank filename. The report is sorted by tape ID and start time, which gives us a complete list of the clips we need to capture in the session. The report tells us where the clip will start and stop and they're all in sequential order by tape.
We open up our capture utility and begin capturing the clips we want. As we capture each clip and save to disk, each is assigned a filename, which we write down on the capture report. When we have finished our capture session, we go back and enter the filenames in the database. This will notify our MS-Access database that we have already done the capture and not to print that entry again.
We use MS-PowerPoint to do our titles, PC-screen prints and graphics (more about this later). Each PowerPoint page is saved as a .jpg and the filename is entered in our EDL database.
Then, once we've captured all of our clips, titles and graphics to disk, we are ready to start editing. We start by assigning each entry in our database a sequence number. This is simply the order in which the clips or titles will appear in the final presentation. We break each production up into a number of smaller segments. We enter the segment number back into the database.
With our printed EDL report and list of filenames on the PC, we simply go down the filename column, add those files to our project bins and begin editing.

Titles, Screen Shots and Gra…