I'm beginning to collaborate with several freelancers, spread across multiple facilities and areas.  My frustration at this point has been finding a simple solution for moving media from one system to another without shipping tapes and having a re-digitization needed.

What I am hoping to accomplish is an easy means of moving just the multi-cam media I need from my Assistant's rig in Manhattan (she'd be in possession of the tapes), to my own in NJ, then *only* the media displayed in the final edit off to Brooklyn for Color Correction.

While the move from the Assistant's logged, digitized, grouped, and roughed media/project file has been easy enough, where I run into a snag is passing only the portions used in the final timeline to the Color Correction system.  As a multi-cam edit, I wind up with the entire section of footage for each camera, rather than the selected clips, resulting in 5-8 times the amount of footage I really need to transfer.

Outside of this, knocking out media files to a clean partition using consolidate seems to work ok for preparing the media files to accompany the project folder, but the process still feels... "clunky."

Can anyone offer any methods for moving only those selected shots from a multi-cam group edit?

In addition, can anyone direct me to a resource, application, or simply suggest methods for improving this work-flow? 

Eventually, this could prove rather moot, as technologies using CompactFlash cards , P2, and other tapeless capture become more prevalent.  For now, we're still using DV source footage at this phase, and sticking to about 5-10 min across 5-8 cameras, so the resultant media files have been rather easy to manipulate, but I can always use a more efficent means of doing this.  After all, the ultimate goal is to collaborate with anyone, anywhere, isn't it?

steve maio:

where I run into a snag is passing only the portions used in the final timeline to the Color Correction system.  As a multi-cam edit, I wind up with the entire section of footage for each camera, rather than the selected clips, resulting in 5-8 times the amount of footage I really need to transfer

If you consolidate your final timeline, you will create a sequence that only contains the related media used in it, plus clip handles with a length you define. You can then use the media tool to show relatives of that sequence, then reverse selection to show all non-relatives and delete those.

 Right. 

The issue however becomes the fact that we are using Groups to do a Multicam edit.  So when I use the above method, I wind up not only with the portions you see on screen, but the hidden, unused portions of the other 5-8 cameras.

For example, lets say I have a 5 camera shoot that lasts 5 min.

I digitize all 5 min of all 5 cameras. 

I sync and group all 5 of those clips.

I edit the group to a timeline, starting with Cam 1 active.

At 0:01:00:00 I cut to Cam 2.

At 0:02:00:00 I cut to Cam 3.

At 0:03:00:00 I cut to Cam 4.

At 0:04:00:00 I cut to Cam 5.

I consolidate this timeline to an empty partition in preparation for moving the media to a new system.

What I've been winding up with here is all 5 min of footage from each camera on that partition.

What I want is only the 1 min portion of each that the timeline used.

So, what simple, I'll slap my forehead and kick myself for forgetting step did I skip to only wind up with 5 min of media in that partition instead of 25?

steve maio:

So, what simple, I'll slap my forehead and kick myself for forgetting step did I skip to only wind up with 5 min of media in that partition instead of 25?

Hi,

I'm not in front of a machine at the moment, so this might be way off, but in this particular case wouldn't you have to decompose the sequence before you consolidate it?

good luck,
Carl

 Carl:

I thought about recommending that, but unless I'm mistaken, that will take everything offline, requiring re-capture and re-import.  I didn't think he'd want to do that.

Larry Rubin:

I thought about recommending that, but unless I'm mistaken, that will take everything offline, requiring re-capture and re-import.  I didn't think he'd want to do that.

Ah, you're right Larry.  I forgot about that.  Thanks for catching it.

adios,
Carl

I may be forced to do that in the end, though it certianly isnt a streamlined workflow. 

Thanks for the suggestions so far though!

If I'm not mistaken the consolidate function as a check box for group clip consolidation which I suppose should be left off.

Alernatively you could decompose (without group clips option) and then re-link to existing media. Should have the same effect.

So I'm clear, and I'm not sitting in front of the machine at the moment, the process is:

1) Decompose at the same resolution

2) Relink to the existing media

3) Consolidate to an otherwise empty drive, with "consolidate all clips in the group" DE-selected (this should create new media clips covering only the portions visible in the timeline)

4) Move that drive to the new location (or copy its contents to BRD(s) to be overnighted, or whatever)

Or are #s 1 and 2 unnecessary?

 I believe you can skip steps one and two and proceed directly to three and four.