How do I automatically log a DV tape with an external capture application?
Assume you are about to start editing from a DV tape and want to log the start and end of each scene. The traditional way to do this involves wearing out your tape and camcorder by painstakingly logging each scene by cueing and reviewing the tape itself. Instead, a better approach is to capture the whole tape to disk first and then log the scenes from disk.
If your editing application has the facility to capture an entire tape unattended, use that. Otherwise, you may need to capture the tape manually, but if you have batch capture one way to do this is as follows:
- Cue to the end of your tape and note down the last timecode value recorded on it.
- Use the Whole Tape Capture Log command within CatDV and enter the tape name and final timecode value to generate a series of equal length clips that cover the whole tape. Some capture applications have a limit of 2GB per file, others even 1GB (about 9 minutes or 4-1/2 minutes respectively), but apart from that the size you enter doesn't matter.
- Select, then export these clips as a batch list suitable for your particular editing application using the Export as submenu.
- Create a new temporary project within your editing application and import the whole tape capture log, then use your batch capture command to capture the entire tape to disk. You don't need to capture any additional trim handles. After you have successfully captured the long clips to disk you can delete the temporary project.
Once you have captured the tape to disk:
- Import all the long captured movie file(s) into CatDV using either the Import as QuickTime Media or Import Directory command, or by dragging the files into a CatDV window. This will scan the movies to identify each scene and extract thumbnails for them.
- If you had to perform the capture in several smaller files it's likely the scene boundaries won't exactly fall on capture boundaries. Check the Auto-join DV clips Preference option to merge such clip fragments automatically during import. (Alternatively, use Summary mode or the Join DV Scene Fragments command.)
- Open up the Clip Details dialog for the first clip and view the thumbnail or the movie and give each scene a meaningful Name, or description in the Notes field. Mark the clips you want to use with the mark checkbox, or by setting them as "good".
- Select all the scenes you want to use in your project then either do Export As Movie(s), saving normally allowing references (if you want to keep the original capture files on disk without modifying them) or use Consolidate Footage (if you want to chop the original files into separate scenes, without recompression, and trim any unused material).
- Create (or open) the editing project in your NLE, then import all the movies you have just generated. Start editing!
As described, this will trim hard up to each automatically detected scene boundary, giving you the maximum available material while eliminating any risk of inadvertently including rogue frames from an adjacent scene during a dissolve. You can also set In and Out points within the Clip Details window and export just the selection if you prefer.