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Traditionally, editors always used to log straight from tape. Cueing to a point of interest, marking In and Out points, and the searching for the next clip to use. This has its origins in old tape-based linear editing systems, as there was no alternative to this approach.

With modern non-linear editing systems and cheap storage, a different approach becomes viable, which is simply to digitize an entire tape to disk first, as an unattended process, and then log from disk. There are two main options, capture at full editing quality, then use the files straight in your editing project after they have been logged, or capture at low res preview quality, log from the previews, then use batch capture to recapture the required clips at full quality when it comes to editing.

There are several advantages to this approach. It avoids wear and tear and risk of damage to the master tapes. Once captured, detailed logging of the tape can proceed much more efficiently, automatically even with image-based scene change detection, and you can instantly scrub to any portion of the file. Most importantly, your captured media builds up to become a valuable resource that you can refer to again and again. If people are working together in a team, need to recut the same material for different purposes, or ever need to refer back to library shots, working from disk means you never need to log or capture the same shot twice. Preview files are small enough to keep for ever, share on a network, copy to a laptop or pass around on CDROM, so producers can view material and add their own log notes at their leisure. Or use a SAN and keep full quality uncompressed media accessible to all your edit suites. And a powerful database means you can instantly find the shots you want.

10/3/06