Simple home video, ideas?

mikegb wrote on 9/14/2008, 3:51 PM
My video camera has perhaps 100 separate clips on them over the last 6 months. I want to compile them into a single video. I want to put the date on the lower left each time a clip starts on a different day.

Taking the 100 clips and dragging them onto the timeline is easy enough to do. Can be done by selecting them all and then drag drop. Now here comes my usability problems.

1.) With the 100 clips in the timeline, I cannot find a way to easily determine when the video was taken (comes from a DV tape). If I right click on a clip, and select "Select in Project Media List," I can find it, but doing so for all these clips is time consuming. Is there an easy way?

2.) I want each clip to cross fade into the next one. That's 100 crossfades. Two problems come from this. The first is that if I drag the start of one clip over the end of the previous, I get that cross fade. However, then all the clips to the right are now off by that time. That means I need to drag and reposition all 100. Related to this, even if did keep them aligned, doing this 100 times is tedious. Is there a shortcut?

I basically just want a simply home video with a basic cross fade between clips and the date to appear whenever the video moves to a new day.

Tips on how to speed up this process and make it less prone to human error? Thank you.

Comments

Terry Esslinger wrote on 9/14/2008, 4:47 PM
Unless your camera r ecords a timedate stamp when you record I think you may be stuck on that point. Can't help you much there.
But if you go to Options>Preferences>Editing> and tick the box for "Automatically overlap multiple selected media when added" and be sure that "Automatic crossfades" is turned on. The amount of overlap can be adjusted in the Cut tooverlap setting on the same page. Then you can drag multiple files from the project media onto the timeline and they will be all crossfaded into each other.
MSmart wrote on 9/14/2008, 7:56 PM
1) To view the clip name in the timeline, View > Active Take Information. Then view the Project Media tab and scroll over to the Path column. While it won't highlight the active clip in the Project Media tab automatically, being able to view the clip name in the timeline should help you find it quicker without having to bring up the Properties.
dibbkd wrote on 9/14/2008, 8:38 PM
How long (minutes) are the 100 clips total?

In my experience, nobody (not even the people IN the video), want to watch more than a few minutes of raw, unedited video of home movies from a particular scene.

Not sure what you have, but say you have an hour of video of your family at Disney. Cut that footage down to 5 minutes, seriously. You can edit it down good to something people will watch. It may seem like a waste of cutting, but it really makes the videos a lot better.
mikegb wrote on 9/15/2008, 8:09 AM
Thank you. That was very useful and worked great. As an FYI, the video comes from a DV camera which does have timedate stamps.
mikegb wrote on 9/15/2008, 8:11 AM
<<< How long (minutes) are the 100 clips total? >>>

These are 100 clips over 6 months of video taping. I now need to bring these clips into the computer and archive them onto my Media Center PC and also onto a BluRay disc. No real fancy editing needed. Just the date stamp and basic crossfades (at least for now, until I have more time to spend with the rest of the features).