VS10 Editing Questions

[TrevorS]

I am unsure how to approach my first project. I have 2 issues:
(1) I have 3 x 1.5 hour Hi8 tapes that I have captured to AVI Type 1 files (using a Canopus ADVC55 Analog to Digital Converter - excellent results).
I expect to heavily edit these files, including deleting and repositioning clips, and I am sure I will end up having to move a clip from Tape 2 to within Tape 1 etc. Is it wise to deal with 4.5 hours (60GB) in one Project? Can having multiple Libraries within 1 Project provide any advantage?

(2) Just to complicate life a little more, I also have an MPEG file from a DVD Camcorder that I would like to insert (after some editing) into the middle of the final project. Does VS10 allow me to have clips of MPEG and DV mixed at the editing stage and then render OK.

Thanks for any help.

[maddrummer3301]

.

[Ken Berry]

I can only endorse in the strongest terms MD's advice about breaking your project into several 'sub-projects' (in reality, separate projects). 60GB of raw video is an awful lot of real estate for any computer to handle. Just think of the whirring that is likely to go on as your HDD has to move between a scene at the end which you have decided to cut and move to the beginning!

More to the point, though, it is a question of logistics. Keeping track of what goes where, what goes altogether, and what effects to apply etc, is difficult enough with a short project. And, as MD has already said, it really doesn't matter if you produce several 'sub-projects' in DV format and later join them together in one, as the format remains exactly the same -- no re-rendering is involved and thus no degradation in quality.

I am also wondering whether these 4.5 hours of yours are all on the same subject? Are there any individual sub-themes which you can identify and handle separately? An example: I recently completed a project involving about an hour in total of DV Type 1 video on Rio de Janeiro, but which was shot on two cameras -- one by me, and one at a completely different time, by a friend. Naturally, I wanted to blend them together. Now, an hour of video for me is already something I gulp about before trying to handle as a single project (let alone 4.5!!) So I created several sub-projects -- Rio/Copacabana-Ipanema; Rio/Corcovado; Rio/Downtown; Rio/Streetlife; Rio/Gloria etc. Creating libraries for each made it easy to allocate the video from the two cameras to separate libraries. And thus much easier to edit and bring the two sets of video together. Then at the end, when I had finished, edited DVs, I brought them all together, added simple cross fades, background music, voice-overs, and rendered to yet another single DV file. I then could go on and convert this to mpeg-2 and burn it to DVD with some other projects on Brazil.

Now I didn't try to interpolate any mpeg video in all this. But MD has provided what, to me sounds like a sensible work-around (rendering your original DV work into two mpeg-2 files and then interpolating your odd-man-out mpeg file in the relevant area).

Depending on how long your final video is going to be, and how much time you have on your hands, though, you could actually try simply adding the mpeg video in with your DV files. It is presumably high quality, so any potential degradation through re-rendering it would be minimal, and perhaps not even noticeable to the naked eye, if the bitrate you use in your final conversion of the whole project to mpeg-2 is kept high.

You may be aware that there is a sometimes heated debate over the advisability of editing and re-rendering mpeg video, and the jury is out. I personally have mixed mpeg and DV in other projects, and it may have been luck, but it worked. In a major project like yours, though, my tendency would be to take the safest route, and again I can only say that MD seems to have provided that to you.

[sjj1805]

You may be interested in a similar debate here:
How should I go about doing 6 tapes of editing?

[TrevorS]

MD, Ken and Steve,
Thanks for this guidance. I will study what you have suggested and plan my attack. The project is on a 3 week trip to China my wife and I took late last year, so splitting it by city / area is logical.
Steve, like you I started on Super 8 film (30 years ago) when you needed to make the most of your 3 minutes (it was rather expensive). Last year I had it all (14 x 7" reels) converted to mini-DV (also expensive), and I also have many hours of Video 8 and Hi-8, so I have a many future projects to keep me off the streets.
Again, thanks guys.
I'm sure I'll still have a few questions over the coming weeks.
Trevor

[sjj1805]

Trevor.

You may be interested in another of my tutorials
Converting Super 8 Films

OK yours have been professionaly converted - but take a look at how I later presented them.