what steps do YOU take when manipulating your videos?

[breadbin]

i've just come back from 2 weeks in Fuerteventura and have over 64gb of video. i used a GoPro 3+ and a Lumix GH2 to capture the video. i was snorkelling, swimming, climbing on volcanoes, playing mini golf, trip to the zoo etc. and all was captured with these 2 cameras. i want to put them all together into one movie with music, photos and text eventually but the video files are huge. i have access to Sony Vegas Pro for the editing but was wondering how to go about it. i find it daunting to think about loading them all up into the editor. i was thinking of trimming the videos and getting rid of all the boring bits but i'm not sure can i do this without losing quality.

what i did last year was cut all the videos first individually to get the good bits and then saved them to a new project folder with the music and photos. i used the GoPro editor to edit the videos and i think i added the Protune filter onto them. i didn't realise that i was making the video quality worse and worse each time i edited the videos. someone said just work with each video once to avoid losing the quality each time and aim for just one transcode.

so just wondering how do other people organize their projects. do you keep all your videos or trim them? can i trim and edit the videos without transcoding them? i found using the GoPro studio alot easier and quicker than using Vegas but is the quality going to be as good? should i stick with just one editor?

[johnmeyer]

If you have a lot of "junk" that you'll never watch, you can use ffmpeg to cut your video files down to size, but without losing any quality and without taking all the time needed for a render. Nick Hope posted his method of how to do this in the Sony Vegas forum. I have my own way: I put the files into Vegas and do a "cuts-only" edit. I then save that as an EDL (Edit Decision List) file. In older versions of Vegas, this was done as an option in the Save As dialog. In the newest versions of Vegas you use the File --> Export option.

I then created an Excel file that lets you open this EDL file and it automatically creates the syntax for each file. You then cut/paste these cells into Notepad, save as a batch file (just add ".bat" as the extension instead of ".txt") and then execute that batch file to start the cutting. Here's the Excel file, if you want to try it out:

Vegas EDL Cut Video Files Parser.xls

Nick's method is quite different, but has the advantage that he documented it and had other people try it out. However, he was trying to solve more problems and therefore it is more complicated.

GoPro Studio forces you to transcode everything which isn't a bad thing, but it takes more time and space, and then you have to figure out what you want to do with all those intermediate files. I'd do everything in Vegas. I see no advantage to GoPro studio unless you want to do something with the embedded GPS information, but of course that's not available underwater, so you won't be needing it for that footage.

The other thing you'll need to decide is what to do about underwater color correction. Coincidentally, the same Nick Hope I just mentioned happens to be a world-famous underwater photographer who lives in Thailand. Post a question for him and I'm sure he'll tell you what he does. I've tried correcting underwater footage and you can make things look pretty bad if you do it wrong. It is definitely a specialty.

[racer-x]

I use XmediaRecode to trim out the crap and export stream copy so no loss, you just need cut on key-frames. XmediaRecode is an excellent front end to ffmpeg. I usually export as mov or ts.

[breadbin]

thanks for replies, i had a look on the sony forums and didn't see much about lossless. i searched for posts by nick hope and only saw one post which was a bit complex to tell the truth. the thoughts of using something like xmediarecode seems alot easier to be honest. i did find a nice tutorial on cuts and transitions on the vegas forum which was very good. haven't had a chance to try the editing yet but should get a chance tomorrow!

i was using the Protune filter in the gopro studio and that seemed to work well in the past. but again another transcoding! i'm sure i can replicate the look in vegas?

[SameSelf]

I have to admit I am a little confused. You say you have access to Sony Vegas Pro, and that is a full fledged NLE designed to take hours of footage and cut, trim, and edit away all the useless stuff that belongs on the cutting room floor and create a movie with music, text, and photos just like you mentioned. I would avoid the free tools if I were you. They are like rabbits. For every one that someone suggests, there are at least half a dozen others that do the same limited things, just in a different way. And it can quickly become confusing keeping them straight (not to mention all the stuff you end up downloading on your computer), and if you are not careful you just end up introducing unnecessary steps into your workflow. Stick to one tool, learn it, and you will be much better off. I have never used Vegas but I would be shocked if you find it limits your creativity.

As for your 64 GB of video, Are you serious about wanting to delete portions of it forever? With storage so cheap nowadays, 64 GB hardly stretches a budget. Think of this video as your master footage for archival purposes. Queue it all up in Vegas. Create your timelines. Then export as needed as your final step. That way you avoid unnecessary transcodes which as you say degrades the video. And unless you don't like Vegas's embedded encoder, you shouldn't need to mess with lossless exports.

Finding satisfactory workflows can be tough. But yours should be as simple as:

GoPro and GH2 videos -> Vegas -> export to final encode

[breadbin]

i can see why it is confusing i must be a bit OCD or something. I have probably 200 videos taken with the GoPro and the start and end of each video is me looking into the camera making sure it is on and running and then turning it off. I had a look at some of the snorkeling videos and sure enough some parts look fantastic but there is alot of nothing too. I have it recording just waiting for some nice fish to pass by. I went to the zoo too and I had it recording waiting for the animals to do something funny so I know there are loads of parts of just nothing happening.

I know you're right @Sameself about putting them into Vegas and getting stuck in, but for some reason I'd prefer to edit the video individually and take out what I'm going to use later and bin the rest. I have a folder from 2003 with photos and videos in that i copy onto 3 different hard disks. In 2014 it was about 55gb in size and was so easy to backup. 2 years later its 400gb! i suppose that's part of where I'm coming from. I need to just get started with Vegas and see what happens.

[smrpix]

Please, please, please re-read SameSelf's post.

Load your clips in Vegas. Either trim out the parts you don't want or choose the parts you do and save them (virtually) as subclips.

This is what NLEs like Vegas are made for.

It will preserve your quality until final encode, create no additional media on your drives, and allow you to work with only the parts you need.


(If you INSIST on pre-cutting, GoPro makes it's own editor for that.)

[SameSelf]

i can see why it is confusing i must be a bit OCD or something. I have probably 200 videos taken with the GoPro and the start and end of each video is me looking into the camera making sure it is on and running and then turning it off.

It may sound weird, but that brief shot of you looking into the GoPro to turn it on/off can add some interesting creativity to your final edit. And certainly, archiving hours of boring footage with nothing happening can seem pointless, but that is what timecode and metadata are for. So you can log your clips. Also, that is what NLEs are for: to enable you to scrub your footage quickly and easily to find the bits you want to keep. And yes, video takes up a lot more space than photos. I shoot primarily in ProRes HQ, and 1 hour of video is 100 GB. Welcome to the wonderful world of video!

Rather than think you are OCD, start thinking like a director!

[johnmeyer]

I gave you the answer. It is trivially easy to use, and it will let you pre-cut your video so you don't have to store it all.

As someone who has almost two dozen hard drives filled with media, I totally disagree with the idea that you should archive hours of footage that you'll never look at. For instance, I did a four-camera shoot of a wedding. I put one camera behind the couple, down low. It provide two amazingly dramatic shots, and the rest of it was total junk. Do I want to archive 60 minutes of video just to access those two ten second clips? Heck no. It isn't just a matter of storage costs, but of clutter and finding stuff. If I ever want to find those clips, do I want to have to scan through hours of footage (remember, I have hours of video on those other cameras as well). No, I do not.

I gave you a solution that is easy and works well. Did you make any attempt to try it? I gave you the link to ffmpeg and to the spreadsheet. I guess that was a waste of my time doing that.