Using Scene Detection for Long Media Clips

Getting the Logging Tool to digitize a long clip is all well and good, but you still end up with a large slice of media sitting on your hard drive. It will, at some point, need to be divided up so that it can be usefully manipulated.

This is done by

• Going through the clip and manually marking each scene yourself, creating subclips from these markers (see Chapter 14).

• Sending the media clips to the Clip Viewer and using the Scene Detection tool (see Chapter 14).

• Getting the Logging Tool to detect the scenes on the tape while digitizing takes place.

This last option is possibly the most elegant because it allows the Logging Tool to capture the whole tape, without you having to hold its hand. At the end, you are presented with a Rack full of media clips, each one representing a single scene on the tape.

To set up scene detection during capture

1.	With the Logging tool open, click the Properties button and select Properties from the drop-down menu.
2.	Open the General tab and check the box marked "Use scene detection if available" (Figure 2.29). Figure 2.29. The check box for enabling scene detection, labeled "Use scene detection if available" is in the bottom-right corner in the Automation section. There are two further choices here: Selecting Create subclip creates one long clip plus a number of subclipsreference clips to the master. This is useful if you decide you want to expand a particular clip or if you need to reference the whole tape at a later date. Selecting Create Master with inside handle length creates single media clips that are independent of any other. This is useful if you require a physically separate set of media clips for every scene. You'll need to experiment to see which suits your particular workflow.
3.	Close the Properties box by clicking the check mark, and then follow the instructions given earlier for digitizing either the whole tape or part of it. When the digitizing process is finished, you should find a large number of subclips and/or master clips sitting in whichever Rack you defined (Figure 2.30). Figure 2.30. The finished result. The top sets of clips are examples of master clips; the bottom set of highlighted clips are examples of a master clip with its family of subclips.

Tip

• When creating master clips or subclips using scene detection, nothing will appear in your Project Browser until digitizing is finished. So don't be alarmed if at first nothing appears to be happening.