Wrestling Capture 101

bbq wiz wrote on 3/25/2006, 5:24 PM

Would like to get input on what I might do differently next year to save time in making the HS Wrestling highlight tape.

During wresting season team had matches on Wednesday nights and on Saturday. Typically Wednesday night was against a single school with JV wrestlers going up their counterparts and then the Varsity team right after they are done.

There are 14 weight classes and each match has 3 periods and is theroritically 2 minutes long for each (sometimes there is 1 minute period).

I was able to tape most matches from one of the corners and got some very good closeup scenes of the matches and a typical Wednesday night had me shooting under 2 hours of tape.

Saturdays was most of the day and multiple schools participated and the team might wrestle against up to 4 or 5 matches. Usually went through 4-5 tapes on a Saturday.

I would turn my camera on and off at the end of each period. When I captured it, I initially would capture by match and would name the clip by the wrestlers name. Would take a while when doing this to capture. Later (unfortunately much later) I learned about media manager and went back through over 1,000 clips to put a name or other identifier for each clip. I then lost all of the tags when I began moving hard drives between machines-ouch!!

So what suggestions would folks have on what I might of done better when capturing the information onto my PC? I'd appreciate your comments.

Wiz

Comments

vicmilt wrote on 3/25/2006, 6:30 PM

Yeh... that media manager is the devil itself...
I love it while it works, but I keep different jobs on firewire drives and have lost extensive mapping as well.

I'd say the safest method would be to use indented folders at the system level to store your original footage (dailies) -
1 - 060325 Wrestling - Wednesday
NOTE EDIT HERE - CAN'T GET THESE FOLDERS TO INDENT.
EACH FOLDER GOES INTO THE ONE PRECEDING IT, UNTIL YOU GET TO THE INDIVIDUAL SETS - THAT'S WHERE THE INDENTING STOPS.
SO: WEDNESDAY>MORNING> SET ONE, SET TWO, ETC.
2 - Morning
3- Match one
4 Match two
etc -
Now in each of the folders I'd create a new VEG of that Match. If you revise that match, keep the variations in that folder. In fact keep EVERYTHING having to do with that match, in that folder - nowhere else - stills, scripts, Voice overs, music, graphics, budget, whatever.

Three months from now, you will know exactly where everything is, even if you've forgotten it all.... OR... someone else without any knowledge at all will still be able to navigate quickly to any given match.

I'd also try to have two cameras on the action.... one can even be a lockoff on a tripod, but from a different angle.
And I'd try to have a visual slate for both cameras - an easy one is to point to each other and then slowly close a set of hands over one of the lenses - you'll set the hands close easily on both cameras - thus sync.

I'd keep both sets of dailies in it's appropriate folder for later editing together. If you use the hand sync and don't turn off either camera for the set, you've got two synced positions. Then use one of the multicamera scripts (see www.vasst.com ) and you're done, and looking slick.

In fact, if you design a boilerplate open and close, you can add a freeze from the match and a title to look VERY slick.
And I'd also lay some stock sports music under the match.
Sync up the end of the match to the end of the music - fade in the start of the music - one cut - wow.

When you've got a huge quantity of work that is similar, keep seeking the similarities and see if you can make your own editing shortcuts.

Hope this helps, it's the way I do everything.
v

bbq wiz wrote on 3/26/2006, 1:01 PM

One of areas I'm interested in, is time that could be saved by saving to a hard drive vs to tape.

Most of the product out there do not appear to have a large hard drive associated with them, but they do have a large price tag.

Does anyone have any experience with these as a recent article in Videomaker caught my eye about the time savings once I have left the mats and need to get it into my PC.

Wiz