Hack 13. Digitize Lots of Footage Quickly

If you have 100 hours of footage to capture and only two days to capture it, using more than one computer to transfer the footage will buy you more time .

Although digital video has promised the ability to transfer footage from tape to disk faster than real time, no editing systems have included the feature. To overcome a shortage of time, many people use multiple editing systems to transfer their footage from tape to disk. The problem is, unless you have a shared disk array and the software to share it among your computers, there's no way for one computer to "see" the footage digitized on another machine. Fortunately, you can work around this limitation by following a few easy steps.

1.14.1. Setting Up Your Systems

Unfortunately, to use this hack, you can't overcome the fact that you need more than one computer and an equal number of video cameras or decks. So, gather as many as you can and set them up just as you would if they were going to be used to edit. There are two approaches to configuring your systems, depending on how you plan to edit. Both involve how you name the drives where you will be digitizing your footage.

• If you have a lot of external hard drives and plan on using them to edit, make sure each drive is named differently. All of the drives will be attached to your editing system when you are finished, so you do not want conflicting drive names.

• If you do not have a lot of external drives, or if you plan on keeping your footage on a single drive (or array), give your drives the same name. Taking this approach will allow you to transfer your footage to a new drive, while tricking your editing system into reading the footage off the new drive.

1.14.2. Digitizing Your Footage

On average, the time it takes to digitize your footage is 1.25 to 1.50 times longer than the length of footage you have acquired. For example, one hour of footage takes up to one and a half hours to digitize. This average takes into account the physical act of loading a tape, rewinding it if necessary, organizing bins, dealing with timecode breaks, and so on.

1.14.2.1. Determining the number of systems needed.

If you have 100 hours of footage, you can safely assume it will take 125 to 150 hours to digitize. Therefore, if you have only two days before you are scheduled to edit, you can gather three systems and more than likely be done in time. The math breaks down like this:

3 (systems) x 48 (hours) = 144 available digitizing hours

Of course, to utilize every hour in the day, you'll either need a lot of caffeine or someone to work a couple of graveyard shifts.

1.14.2.2. Determining the amount of storage required.

When digitizing your footage, you need to make sure that you have enough drive space available. If you have 100 hours of footage and three available systems, you will need at least 34 hours of available space per system. Considering that one hour of DV footage takes approximately 13 GB of space, you will need about 450 GB of storage per system. The math breaks down like this:

100 (hours) ÷ 3 (systems) = 33.33 hours per system

33.33 (hours) x 13 (GB) = 433.29 GB per system

Plan on being able to move the drives you use to digitize to your editing system, or to have an equivalent amount of storage available on your editing system.

If you don't have enough drive space, you might be able to capture your footage using compression, such as the OfflineRT setting in Final Cut Pro or the 10:1 setting on Avid.

1.14.2.3. Running a final check.

After you have configured your systems and checked that you have enough drive space, run a final check to ensure your footage will all be digitized as expected. Basically, make sure each system is set to digitize the footage with identical settings. For example, each system should be set to digitize NTSC DV footage at 29.97 frames per second and 48kHz two-channel audio. If your systems have different settings, your footage will more than likely be incompatible with each other.

After running your final checks, start digitizing.

1.14.3. Consolidating Your Footage

After you have captured all of your footage, you need to consolidate it to your editing system. There are a few steps involved to accomplish this, some of which depend on how your drives are set up. In a nutshell, you need to move the footage from your digitizing systems to your editing system and import the references to your digitized footage into your project.

1.14.3.1. Moving your footage.

Depending on how you set up to digitize your footage, you have to do one of two things to move your footage. If you have elected to digitize your footage to differently named drives, you simply need to detach the drives from their respective systems and attach them to your editing system. If you have digitized to identically named drives, you have a couple steps to follow.

First, you need to copy the footage from your digitize systems to your editing system. You can do this by setting up a network connection between the machines and copying the footage, or by using a large portable drive and copying the footage from the digitize systems to the portable drive. Either way, you should initially name the drive you are copying to something different than the drive you are copying from . Only after you have copied all of your footage should you rename the drive to its originally intended name. For example, if your digitize drives are named AVD, then name the drive you are transferring to XFER . Once all the media is transferred, rename the XFER drive to AVD.

1.14.3.2. Linking your footage

After all of your footage has been moved from your digitize systems to your editing system, you need to be able to access it. Because the footage was captured on your digitizing systems, you should go back to them and obtain the necessary information. Again, you have two options:

• Copy the projects from your digitizing systems to your editing system.

• Export a digitize list from each digitizing system and import it to your editing system.

The preferred and easiest method is to copy the projects. You need to open the digitize projects on your editing system and copy the bins from your digitizing projects to your editing project. When you have finished copying the bins, you should close your digitize projects and keep your editing project open. When using this solution, your media should automatically link.

If you choose to export digitize lists, you need to import the lists into your editing project and relink your media.

Export a digitize list:

Avid

File Export Avid Log Exchange

Final Cut

File Export Batch List

Premiere

Project Export Batch List…

Import a digitize list:

Avid

File Import

Final Cut

File Import Batch List at 29.97 fps…

Premiere

Project Import Batch List…

Relink media (you might need to select the clips that are offline):

Avid

Avid Bin Relink

Final Cut

File Reconnect Media

Premiere

Project Link Media

After moving, importing, and linking your footage, you will be able to start editing your project sooner than if you had pursued digitizing with only one system. When you're against a submission deadline for a film festival, editing time is a precious commodity. At times like those, a few systems to help you start editing sooner can be priceless.

1.14.4. Hacking the Hack

If you have a set of tape logs[Hack #5], you can import them into your digitizing systems. The best approach is to break up the logs by importing sets of tapes into each system. This approach effectively breaks up your digitizing task into manageable pieces and keeps you organized (and less confused) during what is usually a hectic time.

People who are lucky enough to have a shared disk among their systems can still use part of this approach to transfer information from one system to another. Since digitizing information isn't shared between systems automatically, you must either open one project in another or copy the bins between the two.