Selecting the best footage for the home video

[ozshots]

How do you select the best footage for the home video? I’m struggling with this for years. I know from 3hr holiday video I need 30-40 mins max for a family movie (next one for friends 5 mins max). What I do is put everything I have in chronological order to timeline, in 4 batches 30 mins each. Next, I’m trying to reduce each batch to 10 mins – and that is so hard! I ruthlessly cut boring or not relevant pieces out and reduce all cuts to 4-10 seconds and still can’t get it short enough. I literally spending ages on this and movie is still too long. This could be mainly a psychological problem, like hoarding.

What is your favourite technique? How do you select the best footage, reasonably fast? Can you recommend a good book - my favorite "how to shoot video what doesn't suck"

[TreeTops]

Yes, your problem is common to all of us that take vacation videos. I used to put people to sleep watching my vids. Just too long. So now I cut each scene to several seconds and and maybe longer for those scenes that require longer shots like your loved ones eating cake.

Delete the scenes that seem boring to you as those are very boring to a viewer and you will loose them before the video is even half over.

[smrpix]

This could be mainly a psychological problem, like hoarding.

Yes. It's very easy to fall in love with your own material and think every bit of it is important. There's nothing wrong or unusual with you as far as that goes.

1. One trick to get past it is to know that your longer versions never disappear. You have them and can watch them whenever you like. Think of the short versions as being "for show."

2. Figure out the essential moment in any given clip and cut the beginning as close to the the start of that moment as possible, and cut out as soon as that moment is over.

3. Look for repetitions in actions or what people are saying and cut out the less interesting version.

Plenty more.

[budwzr]

Home videos are on par with wedding videos. Unless Uncle Joe is lighting farts, it's a no go.

[ozshots]

Thanks a lot guys!
I think it's also practice, practice.

I've played my reduced but still too long movie to the family, and they screamed: don't cut anything, it's great as is :

I think I need 3 versions: nearly everything with obvious bad parts cut off, a long 1hr version for the close family, and short 6 or 10 mins for the friends.

Home video editing is obviously different; I wonder if there are good books or website articles on this. I'm doing this for 9 years, very glad for priceless footage of my young kids and still feel like an early learner!