If not, why not? -- Or how?

vitalforce wrote on 12/4/2005, 11:43 AM

At the end of a DV feature film project I have 270GB of avi and wav files taking up space on two drives that I want to free up for other projects. The wav files are the boom mike sound which is synched to each take, on a separate track under each avi clip in the 8 separate .veg projects that make up the film.

Backing up the media is no problem of course--wav to CDs and avi files are already on the original DV minicassettes. Delete the media on the drives and no problem.

The big question is, what if I decide to substitute another video take, or look for a better sound take on advice of my sound designer? I have Scenalyzer with its index files for quick location of the source video, but no quick way to re-match video with the synched sound.

Hope I'm not making the question sound too vague but the thing that would solve my problem would be to open a .veg file and be able to view the FILENAMES and THUMBNAILS on the numerous timeline events, even though the media is offline. Right now I think all Vegas will do trying to open a .veg file with offline media is to just display the words "media offline" in the event envelope.

Just wondering if there's any way to set Vegas to continue to display the thumbnail and filename inside the event, after the connected media is offline? If so, I would have a much faster means of locating offline material than just tracking it down in the Vegas EDL numbers.
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Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/4/2005, 1:05 PM

> Right now I think all Vegas will do trying to open a .veg file with offline media is to just display the words "media offline" in the event envelope.

No, that’s not correct. Vegas will display the actual media source name if you have View Active Take Information turned on or right-click the event and look in the Media tab of the Properties dialog.

One option is to save the project in a new directory and check the Copy and trim media with project. Then you will have 8 directories (for each of your 8 projects) and each only will only contain the media for that section of the project. Then archive that.

The easiest option is to an extra hard drive and just copy the whole thing onto that if you think anyone is going to be coming back to you with changes. Get an external firewire enclosure and you’re all set. You can make the change in an afternoon rather then spending days trying to find all the right footage to reconstruct the project. Well worth the price of the hard drive if the project is that important.

~jr

filmy wrote on 12/4/2005, 3:12 PM

I think the big thing is in your comment of: or look for a better sound take on advice of my sound designer?

First I would see what they want from you. Chances are they will want only the rendered/locked project as far as picture goes. On that should be the production sound. The sound designer will take care of the rest of the audio editing and replacing of any audio that they feel needs work.

If it were me I would ask for a hard drive with *all* the production audio, including room tones, along with a very clear editors log. A lined out script would be ideal for this as well. My first step would be to clean up the dialog track, blend in room tone. Once that is diwn I would go back to the producer and say what things I felt needed ADR done. Than I would go through and make a production audio effects track, removing all the dialog. And I would build from that point - and from that point anything production related isn't going to be of much use.

The question of having an EDL or Veg project that will show thumbnails isn't going to do much for the sound designer anyway. They *need* the locked picture to work with. What is more important is the lined script and an editing log. I can take it one step further and say that if you wanted to clone the hard drive as is and do a "save as" for the project, except replace all the video tracks with only the rendered fine cut that would help out because the sound designer could open up the project and have the raw audio more or less where it needs to be. They can just savve themselves searching for the audio to start off with. If the audio on that take is really bad they will have to find, and listen to, other takes.

vitalforce wrote on 12/4/2005, 4:45 PM

I can see I'm overthinking this thing, trying to imagine every reason I might have to go back and find video and audio after the picture is locked. So I plugged in a spare HD and used the copy & trim with media setting, with 2-second handles. One other thought in my mind as the film goes through the festivals was that someone might advise me to change something in the film, but that's no reason to hang on to the entire 270GB.

My thoughts about the sound designer weren't meant on the video aspect of the question. I already handed off a firewire drive with a full copy of the locked picture as a .mov file with the timecode and scene numbers burned in. The scene numbers correspond to the numerical audio filenames for each scene--I gave the sound man all the audio in the project, including room tone, my "draft" of the sound FX and even the music.

So thanx filmy and JohnnyRoy, thanks for the info about the event envelopes. I did have the feature turned on so should be OK should it ever come down to it.

vicmilt wrote on 12/5/2005, 4:14 PM

Gosh - if you've gone to all the trouble to make a feature length video - I have to ask:
Why bother to archive and erase?
You can get 300Gig drives now for under $150 - easily.
I just got one on sale for $70 or $80.
Take the drive out or firewire EVERYTHING to a new drive, exactly the way you cut it all.
Keep everyting on that drive; media, sound, music, art, special effects, even the scripts, revisions, and budget.
Put the drive on a shelf - you are covered.
No matter how small your production budget was, you'd be foolish to save money at this point -
v

DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/6/2005, 4:53 AM

Great advice. We picked up 3 more drives during the Thanksgiving sales, and came up with a rotation plan. Each project gets its own 200 GB drive, when the project is complete every asset is on that drive. By the time a drive cycles through and comes up for use, the project has been delivered and complete for several months, so deleting the data on it (events and weddings) is not a big deal. If it's a really important project, then the cost of a HD is factored in and it goes on the shelf like Vic said.