Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

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houldsworth1

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Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

PostThu Jan 17, 2019 1:56 pm

Lately, I've worked on several projects covering parties and producing a short (1-2 minute) showreel for the client's social media page.

Each event will have 2 people with cameras moving around, plus several other cameras strategically placed to capture action at certain stations.

The good news is that this provides plenty of footage to create something great. The bad news is that it creates a ton of footage to scrub through. Usually about 5-7 hours of footage per event for a 2-minute video.

I've been doing this by scrubbing through footage in the preview views on the left, marking in an out points, and then dropping those clips onto the timeline to create clips we might be interested in using later.

But this is very time consuming and, for longer single clips, the scrub speed with the mouse is super-fast and difficult to control.

I'm still pretty new to this world (about a year) I keep thinking someone knows a way to do this that is MUCH more efficient.

If you have a trick that works I would love to hear it!

TIA!
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Igor Riđanović

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Re: Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

PostThu Jan 17, 2019 7:09 pm

You may want to sublip your long clips first.

Or you can drop all of the clips on the timeline at which point you can zoom the timeline in and out to give yourself a better gestural response. You can also use the J-K-L keys to shuttle through either the source or the record viewer.
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houldsworth1

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Re: Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

PostThu Jan 17, 2019 9:20 pm

Igor Riđanović wrote:You may want to sublip your long clips first.

Or you can drop all of the clips on the timeline at which point you can zoom the timeline in and out to give yourself a better gestural response. You can also use the J-K-L keys to shuttle through either the source or the record viewer.


Thanks. I thought about dropping them on the timeline to give finer control.

I also thought that if I did that I could cut out the pieces I want to keep and move them up to a different timeline (e.g. V2) when I find a piece I want to keep.

Thanks for the feedback!
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Jeff Brass

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Re: Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

PostThu Jan 17, 2019 9:23 pm

I don't know the "best"way, but for this sort of thing I tend to dump everything onto a timeline and play through 2x speed, mark cut and delete as I go.

Often I'll put footage onto say track 3 and 4 (one track for each camera) , when I find a piece I think I may use I'll cut it and drop it down to track 1 or 2. Then I have tracks 1 and 2 with footage that is worth reviewing more. I also color code my clips as I go. ie - orange is a great clip, lime is possible etc etc.

generally once I start going through I quickly get a feel of what I have and what else I need. With that much footage you won't get to show all the really good stuff, so concentrate on what is needed to tell the story.

just my 2 cents worth :)
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houldsworth1

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Re: Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

PostThu Jan 17, 2019 9:48 pm

Jeff Brass wrote:I don't know the "best"way, but for this sort of thing I tend to dump everything onto a timeline and play through 2x speed, mark cut and delete as I go.

Often I'll put footage onto say track 3 and 4 (one track for each camera) , when I find a piece I think I may use I'll cut it and drop it down to track 1 or 2. Then I have tracks 1 and 2 with footage that is worth reviewing more. I also color code my clips as I go. ie - orange is a great clip, lime is possible etc etc.

generally once I start going through I quickly get a feel of what I have and what else I need. With that much footage you won't get to show all the really good stuff, so concentrate on what is needed to tell the story.

just my 2 cents worth :)


Great feedback - thanks for the tips. I like the color coding into great and possible. I do something similar myself, but this might be a faster way to do that.
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Peter Cave

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Re: Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

PostFri Jan 18, 2019 2:02 am

You could also add all clips to a timeline and then use that compile in the source viewer to edit your selections directly into a second sequence. The beauty of this approach is a clean 'source' timeline that always contains everything from the shoot and can be colour coded, add markers and flags at a clip level etc.
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Jeff Brass

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Re: Fastest way to scrub through a lot of footage?

PostFri Jan 18, 2019 3:31 am

Peter Cave wrote:You could also add all clips to a timeline and then use that compile in the source viewer to edit your selections directly into a second sequence. The beauty of this approach is a clean 'source' timeline that always contains everything from the shoot and can be colour coded, add markers and flags at a clip level etc.


yeah forgot to say once I have clips moved to track 1 & 2, I copy them to a new TL - thus giving me a complete TL plus the editing TL
Win10 Pro x64 | i7 5930k|64GB RAM |GTX 1080 8gb | Mini Monitor | DR Studio 16.2

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