nLockable tracks: Locking a track can prevent you from making accidental edits. If you follow the traditional motion picture workflow and lock picture before you begin finecutting your sound, then locking the picture track in your software will help ensure that the edited picture doesn’t get changed.

nNetwork editing: For projects that need multiple editors and workstations, software support for networked editing can save lots of headaches. The biggest danger with networked editing lies in accidentally writing over a project that someone else has worked on and losing all their work. Software support for networked editing helps prevent these sorts of mistakes.

Organizational Tools

A good non-linear editing system should provide you with tools that will help you keep track of all of the media in your project.

In applications with good organizational tools, bins will display columns showing information about each piece of media—for example, start and end timecode, source tape number, frame rate, number and types of tracks, audio sampling rate, and more. For long projects, you’ll want editing software that lets you customize and add columns for your own comments, keywords, and so on. You should be able to Sort and Sift bins according to your needs, and use Search or Find commands to locate clips (see Figure 12.7).

Figure 12.7

Most editing applications let you add customized columns and headings when you view your clips in text view; shown here is a bin created in Adobe Premiere Pro.

262 The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, 4E

Importing Media

If your footage is file-based, you’ll simply copy your files onto a storage drive and then import them into your editing application.

Most editing packages work best when you transcode your camera-raw media to an intermediary codec (see Figure 12.8). This process can take a while, but you’ll be rewarded with improved playback performance that is crucial to editing. Be aware that different editing apps support different codecs, so make sure that the app you choose can work with the codec you need.

Figure 12.8

The transcoding interface in

Avid Media Composer.

If your footage is tape-based, you’ll have to capture the media first. Capturing digital media is much easier than capturing analog media because you don’t have to use custom settings. You will, however, want a capture interface that offers deck control so that you can let the application batch capture your footage after you’ve logged it (see Figure 12.9).

Figure 12.9

The tape-based capture utility in Final Cut Pro.