Re-capture 83 HDV tapes Q1 - Workflow

I recently decided to add a whole lot of RAID disk to my editing system so I can keep my older "good" footage accessible and to reduce the risk that the original tapes will become too obsolete to access in the future.

There are 83 such tapes (just counting my HDV tapes, I might think about loading up some of the really old DV tapes later). I have the original FCP project file for all these HDV tapes, although some of them were saved in earlier versions of FCP.

I was wondering about the best way to capture these tapes.

a. Should I just capture them fresh and log them again, weeding out any really bad stuff (e.g. camera running wildly for 3 minutes)

b. Should I use FCPs reconnect feature and try to reload them against the original FCP sequences, just capturing the video that I actually used (with a long handle)

Has anyone here ever done anything like this before? Any pitfalls to watch out for? Any clever ideas?

Regards

Peter

I hired 2 high school kids over a summer to edit and transcode to HDD, in exchange for using my workstation with FCS and lessons using FCP. I had a HDV deck and camera which they used to remove the non-money shots, following my shot lists accumulated over the years (generally dropping anything that had rapid camera movement, roll-ons etc, with 3 seconds rolls before & after a good shot). After they hit tape 487 (including SD stuff), I had about about only 150 hrs of DVCAM/DV/HDV (or about 1.7TB).

Being in Singapore, you may want to advertise in one of those tech schools like NTI or La Salle which have film editing classes for someone to do it for you. Much easier to have someone do all the leg work then you just fine tune after the grunt work

I hired 2 high school kids over a summer to edit and transcode to HDD

I did something similar with thousands of photos that I had on 120mm roll film. Paid an arts student to scan and clean-up all the keepers.

But, these days, Singapore is too much of a wealthy country. I'd probably need to pay a reasonable salary, benefits, insurance...

I'll try to find some help but I envision doing it myself slowly over several weeks / months.

How well does the "reconnect media" feature work in FCP7?

Regards

Peter

How well does the "reconnect media" feature work in FCP7?

 

Regards

Peter

It works pretty well Peter. If FCP can't find the media where it last was then you just point it to the location that the media has moved to. If you have say 1000 files in one project that all have moved from the same location to the same location then it will do all 1000 files as soon as you show it where the first file is. I'm forever moving files around and reorganising scratch disks and I've only ever come across a couple of bugs, so it doesn't always work perfectly, but you could just always recapture those tapes rather than all of them.

Cheers, Simon

Agreed ... That little feature has stopped me from pulling my hair out many a time and for technophobes like me 'every little helps'

Dive safe

DeanB

I remember using a program that allowed me to firewire from up to 4 DV cameras at the same time.

They may be something around for HDV now.

But you would need two or more cameras plus cords and ports.

It works pretty well Peter. If FCP can't find the media where it last was then you just point it to the location that the media has moved to. If you have say 1000 files in one project that all have moved from the same location to the same location then it will do all 1000 files as soon as you show it where the first file is. I'm forever moving files around and reorganising scratch disks and I've only ever come across a couple of bugs, so it doesn't always work perfectly, but you could just always recapture those tapes rather than all of them.

 

Cheers, Simon

Does FCP match the clip by the clip's file name or on its position on the reel?

How important is it that I name the clips the same as I named them the first time?

I guess I can always look in the FCP project file to work out what name sequence I did use previously, but it would add to the complexity of the recapture.

Regards

Peter

Peter,

The clips listed in the browser of FC are only reference movies to the actual clips in your capture scratch folder. If you change the name of the clip, it will not be able to find the original clip in the capture scratch when offline. Fortunately, this is an easy fix for Studio 3 FC users as now you can right click on the clip in the browser and go to 'change file to clip name' or 'change clip name to file name'

I use the change file name to match my new clip name quite frequently.

Steve

I'm now ready to go with the recapture of my 83 tapes. I'm going to try one FCP project first (about 11 tapes, each carefully labelled with the original capture reel number).

I have the original FCP project file and all the audio tracks on my MacPro. I don't have any of the video files as I deleted these when the project was finished.

I now have enough disk to capture all the "good" video back to hard disk so I can use it in future projects.

The video is on HDV tapes. I have the Sony HC3 camcorder that I used to capture and upload the video originally.

My question is about workflow in FCP7 and the FCP settings to get the video back on to disk and re-link it into FCP.

1. For each project, should I "Log and Capture" it all again start-to-finish, carefully using the same filenames then use the "reconnect" feature in FCP. Then I would need to use Media Manager to copy the whole project, trimming out the unused / unwanted footage? Is it important that I capture to exactly the same codec (Apple ProRes HQ)

2. Should I use Batch Capture by selecting the Main sequence and capturing clip by clip. I assume that this will capture just the used footage (plus a handle)? What are the best settings in Batch Capture?

3. Or is there some other better way that I don't know about?

Which process will be the easiest and most reliable?

Regards

Peter