Recommended Approach for Organising Source Media

JohnM wrote on 3/7/2022, 3:30 PM

I have collected a number of family videos from different sources and would like to collate the clips of interest and assemble them into videos in an order that makes sense. I imagine that there will be several different videos as the end product. Because the videos come from different people, I might even have footage from the same event in different files.

The source video is now on the computer, so my next task is to identify what is in each one. Many of these have come from tape so can be over an hour each.

So far I have used the trimmer to create subclips and rename them appropriately. This seems to work fairly well.

Should I create one mammoth project that includes all of the source videos and subsequent subclips? With this approach I could then clone this into a new project for each target/topic video and use the subclips of interest for that topic.

I think that will work but suspect that this is a process that many others have gone through, so thought I'd ask.

Comments

Dexcon wrote on 3/7/2022, 4:18 PM

Should I create one mammoth project that includes all of the source videos and subsequent subclips?

Think about what your audience will want. Will your audience want to sit through a mammoth project potentially going many hours without getting fidgety, pulling out their phones to check/send texts, having a quick nap and so on? IMO, a mammoth project for a family audience is a big ask. If you don't think that your audience will last the distance, then it would be better, IMO, to break it up into shorter themed projects such as birthdays, weddings, travel or perhaps periods of time (e.g. 2000-2005, 2006-2010).

Again, think about what your audience will most appreciate - that will provide you with the best guidance about which avenue to take.

JohnM wrote on 3/7/2022, 4:29 PM

I agree - nobody wants to sit through the pain of a long video.

My question is more oriented to the organisation of the source media within Vegas while creating shorter thematic videos. If I was creating a project on a child's birthday for example, there may be material that I want to source from 3 different files. Finding the relevant source material is a problem which is why I have started using subclips as a way to catalogue what I have available.

The end result may be a video of only a few minutes - short enough to avoid falling asleep!

Dexcon wrote on 3/7/2022, 4:54 PM

Adapting the approach I've taken for many years (though for different styles of projects), I would create sub-folders on the computer's hardrive with each sub-folder named for the particular project's theme, and the relevant media for that project moved to that sub-folder. This means that in Vegas (it would be helpful for others if you mentioned which Vegas Movie Studio you are using, and is it Platinum or not), you can go to Vegas' Explorer window and select a particular sub-folder thereby having the media showing there specific for that particular project.

If you have media that might be used in more than one project, there's the choice of either copy/pasting that media to the other relevant sub-folder/s or just having a sub-folder called, say, "Common" where multi project media is stored.

Former user wrote on 3/7/2022, 5:16 PM

@JohnM Hi, however you organise the media & subclips you use i would advise to copy the media 1st to a 'project' folder & sub folder/s, then don't touch the originals, put them to one side, it's too easy to loose, over write or get a file corrupted,

At the moment i have a project, 77 clips 54GB, i'm only half way through filming but when i come to editing i'll copy those to another folder & then use the copy, it's always good to have a back-up because there's nowt worse than loosing a file,

I know this means hard drive space but 1tb drives can be bought fairly cheap now & those copies can be deleted if wanted later, 👍

JohnM wrote on 3/7/2022, 5:19 PM

I am using Vegas Movie Studio 16 Platinum.

@Dexcon Your approach to organising files for a project is what I have done in the past where my goal has been to produce a specific video. It has worked well.

In this case, I am essentially exploring through these videos to see what they contain so up front I don't know what events or themes I have footage for. I am hoping that utilising the subclips I create in the initial project will make this task easier as I create clones of that project for the different themes.

Dexcon wrote on 3/7/2022, 5:22 PM

+1 @Former user ... Having a backup on another drive, preferably one not permanently connected to the computer, is essential.

JohnM wrote on 3/7/2022, 5:25 PM

Hi, however you organise the media & subclips you use i would advise to copy the media 1st to a 'project' folder & sub folder/s, then don't touch the originals, put them to one side, it's too easy to loose, over write or get a file corrupted,

Wise words. Many of my source files are large AVI files and already backed up to my NAS. It only takes losing files once to learn that lesson!

Former user wrote on 3/7/2022, 5:28 PM

@Dexcon 👍 I've learnt the hard way, i even Copy rather than Move my files from my phone, & check they have been copied correctly before removing from the phone, in the past once or twice for whatever reason i've Moved them & the PC has lost them, result no files on the phone or the PC 😡🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️😂😂🙈

Former user wrote on 3/7/2022, 5:28 PM

@JohnM 👍