There are basically three strategies for capturing or digitizing material into a nonlinear editing system. In FCP you chose the strategy you want with the buttons at the bottom of the Logging window. In FCP’s nomenclature, the capture options are Now, Clip, and Batch.
Direct capture to the hard drive, called Capture Now in FCP, is the simplest way to work, but gives you least control. It also requires that your material is properly shot without time code breaks that can cause havoc with any capture, particularly a direct capture.
In most NLEs, to capture directly to the hard drive you simply put the deck into play mode, click the appropriate record button, and then save the file after you stop recording.
In FCP a capture screen comes up that begins recording as soon as it finds your drives and a video signal. FCP records your clip onto your designated scratch disk until it either runs out of hard drive space, hits your preference time limit, or you stop the process by pressing the keyboard’s Escape key.
After your capture is complete, the video appears in an untitled viewer. You simply drag the clip into a bin in your browser. A dialogue box will appear asking if you want to save the clip. Name it and save it into the folder you assigned for the scratch disk. That’s it.
With this method you can bring all your video material into your computer where you edit into smaller subclips, rather than using your deck for making selections of clips.
Consumer and prosumer camcorders and FireWire-controlled DV decks are not instantly responsive to control commands such as start, stop, fast forward, rewind. Nor are many of these devices really designed for the heavy work of endlessly shuttling and jogging tape. This places great wear and tear on your deck’s drive mechanisms, and if you’re working with a DV camcorder, you’re putting a lot of strain on very tiny tapes and tiny drive mechanisms that wear out quickly under heavy use.
What tape players are not very good at, moving large amounts of data very quickly, computers do effortlessly. Direct capture leverages the computer’s strength and uses nonlinear, non-destructive editing to its fullest. Also, working with long chunks of video lets you do what NLE and computers do best: Move lots of information around quickly with a great deal of freedom.
Final Cut Pro and other NLEs offer wonderful tools for those working in digital video and using the Capture Now option or long capture method to suck material into their computer. FCP is one application that can automatically note shot changes using DV Start/Stop Shot Detection and create a new clip at each point on the tape where the camera was stopped and restarted.
Copyright © 2002 South Coast Productions