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File-based media is great, but without a set of videotapes or film negative as a backup, there is a serious risk of losing (or maybe just losing track of ) your media.

In this chapter, we’ll explain how to set up your project for the highest quality and the lowest margin for error.

Organizing Your Media

Making a movie requires a lot of media. Scripted feature films have a shooting ratio of 5:1 for lower budget films and upward of 10:1 for bigger movies. That means 8–15 hours of footage, not including additional sound media, effects, graphics, and any other elements that will factor into your postproduction process. Unscripted projects have even more media—a ratio of 100:1 is not unheard of for documentaries and reality TV shows. Whatever the scale of your project, organizing your media carefully before you start to edit will save you lots of headaches later on.

Setting up your project will involve the following steps, and they should be done in this order:

1.If tapeless, back up your camera original media and store it off-site.

2.Create a naming system and rename your files.

3.Transcode (file-based) or capture (tape-based) your media to an intermediate codec for editing.

4.Sort and organize your media within your editing application.

5.Synchronize sound and picture if you shot double-system.

6.Group multi-cam clips (if applicable).

7.Start editing.

Because a typical editing project can contain hundreds of separate pieces of media—video clips, audio clips, still images, and computer-generated media—spread across several hard drives, it’s crucial to have a numbering and cataloging system that lets you find any piece of media quickly and easily.

Imagine this scenario: you’ve just finished whittling 30 hours of dailies into a 90-minute feature film. You’re about to screen the final cut for an executive producer who may invest finishing funds into your film, and then your computer crashes. After you restart, you realize that about 30 percent of your media is corrupted or missing. What do you do?

If your project is well organized, you will probably be able to reconstruct your edited sequence in a few hours, possibly even using batch operations. If not, you’ll have to reconstruct from memory. Depending on the degree of disorganization, you might have to search through several drives to find the correct shots, re-import your footage, and so on. Worse, you may have lost or accidentally deleted media without knowing it. The resulting cleanup job could take days or even weeks.

The longer and more complex your project, the more likely it is that you’ll encounter problems such as corrupted or lost media, the need to re-import or work on a different editing system, and the need to bring in many different types of media from various sources.

Even without these troubles, staying organized will speed your editing process and make changes easier later on.

Create a Naming System

If your project is a scripted feature film with slates and a lined script, the numbering process has already begun. Each shot will be named according to scene/shot and take number, such as 35A-1.mov. In addition, if the film was shot with double-system sound, there is probably a corresponding audio file called 35A-1.wav.

If the project you are editing did not have a media person on the set, the raw media files from the camera may not follow these naming conventions. If that is the case, we recommend renaming the raw files according to the information on the slate. The best way to do this is at the OS level of your computer before you import or transcode any media into your editing application.

If you are doing an unscripted project or don’t have slates, you will need to figure out your own file naming system. Every file in your system should have a unique name. Usually, a combination of the shoot date followed by numbers in the shoot order will do, such as 082511-001.mov. However you decide to name your files, keep them short. We recommend no more than 10 characters (not including the extension). If your project is tape-based, hopefully the tapes will have been named in the field. If not, a numbering system based on the shoot date should suffice. As with files, each tape should have a unique name.

Back Up Your Camera Originals

Before you do anything to change your raw media files, be sure to keep a backup copy on a special hard drive that you store somewhere safe (not integrated into your workstation).

When you import digital files, the editing application will use the existing filename and keep track of where it is on your drives. If you end up moving the file to another folder, the application will ask you where the file went. As a result, it’s important to know the name of the file and also the location. Many applications will let you change the name of the file once you’ve imported it into a project, but the name of the original file on your drives will remain unchanged. This can lead to much confusion, so it’s best to name your digital files intelligently from the beginning at the OS level and avoid changing them after that.

There are several utility programs available, such as the BatchFileRename droplet for the Mac OS, which make it easier to rename large numbers of files in batches. If for some reason at a later date you need to re-transcode or re-import your media, the file names of your source media files are extremely important because your editing system will use these file names, along with the location of each file (for example, the hard drive, folder, etc., where it is stored) to find the source files. That means that the directory structure is also crucial. However you organize your media at this point, it is very important not to change it. If this link is lost or broken, you will have to tell the editing application where to find each source file on a case- by-case basis. That means that any organizing of the source media files on the OS level needs to happen before the files are imported or transcoded into your editing system. After that point, you should use your OS to lock or protect theses files so that no one can accidentally move them. Your editing system will not need them on a day-to-day basis to work with once the media is transcoded—they will exist as a secondary backup.

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If your project is tape-based, your editing software will use the tape name and timecode to keep track of the original location of each shot. If you need to re-capture your media from the source tapes, your editing application will ask you for each tape based on the tape names you entered when you captured the media the first time. Because your project is likely to be file-based from this point forward, you should now make a backup of your captured media files and store it on a separate drive. You can, however, always recapture your clips from videotape.

Don’t Overorganize Your Media in the OS

Too many levels of folders will make it complicated to find and import media. Stick with one folder for each day of shooting.

For large unscripted projects, you should also consider developing some keywords that will be assigned to your media before you start editing. Keywords allow you to sift and filter your media bins easily to find categories of clips. Keywords can be an invaluable tool for organizing, logging, and finding shots later in the editing process. Consider using the names of characters, topics in a documentary, and the locations.

Setting Up Your Project

At the simplest level, an editing application acts as a link between you and the hard drive(s) where your media is stored. Exactly how does the computer handle the massive amount of data that is being processed when you edit?

Each project that you create is stored in a folder, usually on the main hard drive. Some applications create a special folder for all the projects they create; others let you decide where to store the project folder. Inside the project folder are all the files that make up your project. Some applications store a master project file that includes just about everything. Others, like Avid Media Composer, store a master project file, a file for each edited sequence, a file for each bin, and a settings file for each project and each user.

What you won’t find in the project folder is the actual media for your project—the video and audio files that make up your source clips. These will be stored on your storage drives (see Figure 13.2). Some applications will ask you to define the storage drives, or scratch disks. Others will simply store media on the drive with the most available space. Whatever the case, you will want to make sure that your media is getting stored in the right place. In the last chapter we talked about how some storage drives aren’t fast enough to handle real-time playback of large digital video files. If you have a slow USB backup drive attached to your system, you want to make sure your editing application doesn’t store any media on that drive. Refer to your software documentation for details.

When you create your project, your editing application will ask you to choose video and audio settings. You should set the project up for whatever type of media you’ll be editing with the most. This will reduce the need for rendering later on.

Figure 13.2

Project files and other data files are usually stored on your main hard drive; media is usually stored on fast external drives.

Other Helpful Tools

Editing applications are designed to be all-in-one packages for capturing, organizing, editing, mixing audio, creating special effects, and outputting a final master. Sometimes, though, they can stand to have a little help from the outside:

nMedia cataloguing software like Final Cut Server or Adobe Bridge, and so on (see Figure 13.3 for organizing video, stills, and audio clips). Especially useful if you have multiple projects or multiple editors.

nStill image editing applications like Adobe Photoshop for preparing still images (if you have any) and for certain types of graphics and titling operations.

nDatabase software such as DevonThink Pro and FileMaker for keeping track of textbased documents; for example, field logs, camera reports, script versions, and so on.

nSynchronizing software such as Singular Software’s Plural Eyes and Dual Eyes. Especially useful for projects that require synchronizing and were shot without slates.

nProject Management applications such as Movie Magic Scheduling and OmniFocus.

nCloud-based filesharing such as Google Docs and Dropbox.

nLarge-sized file transfer tools such as You Send It or a private FTP site, for digitally distributing work-in-progress cuts of your project to people who can’t be there to screen in person.

nBlu-ray and DVD authoring software such as Roxio Toast and Apple iDVD. These simpler applications are great for creating work-in-progress DVDs. Later when you are creating a more complex DVD/Blu-ray Disc for distribution, you will want a more robust application like Apple DVD Studio Pro.

nWeb-based design tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash.

nThird-party compressors such as Handbrake or MPEG Streamclip for encoding or transcoding media in the background so that you can continue to use your editing application to edit. (More about these later in this chapter.)