Vexercise 3 Check In

[lola]

 Hi folks! How is Vexercise 3 treating you? Are you trying the rhythmic editing, the sound editing, or both? Run into any questions/issues/confusions/fun discoveries? Found any inspirational videos or tutorials to share? 

Also, there've been a couple questions about process, specifically about whether people are making subclips, using pancake timelines, or just scrubbing through episodes. What have you been doing so far with the vexercises in terms of clip prep? What's been working for you? (or not working for you? :D) 

Comments

[airawyn]

I just clip as I go. When I want a clip, I pull up the episode in Quicktime, trim it, and save with the episode number and a couple of words about the clip. I feel like there should be a more efficient way to do it, though.

[nu_breed]

So I have MOSTLY clipped The Untamed completely (6 eps to go) and have started to properly index into search bins so that I can search for certain images/characters fairly easily and then drag them into a pancake timeline

I’ve done the rhythmic editing (both versions) And had great fun making it! I wanted to also try the audio layering supercut but I also have a premiere to complete for VidUKon so I may run out of time.

[naye]

Indexing into search bins is a new concept for me but it sounds super useful. Would you be willing to say a little more about that part of your process, or link me to a tutorial?

[nu_breed]

Oh absolutely! What program are you using? This is for Premiere:

https://larryjordan.com/articles/premiere-pro-cc-create-and-use-search-bins/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc_zu7B8iTQ

[nu_breed]

(I'm away from my vidding computer right now but when I'm back I'll add some screenshots so you can see what it looks like)

[nu_breed]

Here's a glimpse at what my search bins look like. I have a Master Project and then just create new timelines for each vid and drag the appropriate clips into the pancake timeline:

[naye]

Oooooh!

[naye]

I'm on Premiere too, so these are super useful! Many thanks. ♥

[nu_breed]

Oh awesome - and no worries! LMK if you need any more info/help <3

[shopfront]

I went for sound editing because that's totally new to me and it's been really interesting! It took me a fair bit to pull together a cohesive idea just because it was so unfamiliar but I've learnt a lot more than I expected to from playing around with Fairlight.

I've just been importing full episodes and scrubbing through them within Resolve. I'm trying to stick with the spirit if not the technical letter of the 2-4 episode aspect to the challenge (I've currently got about 7 to hand at the moment, out of four seasons) so it's still been simpler and quicker that way. I also know this canon very well, so I can easily guess roughly where to find specific shots in each ep.

It's definitely got me more focused on being creative instead of bogged down in clipping and juggling source which is great for its own reasons, but this is probably the first exercise where I can also really see the source limitations shaping my vid. The episodes I'm using are heavily weighted towards a season long violent/polticial conflict plot and it totally pivoted my original concept once I started pulling clips and remembered which scenes I didn't actually have access to. It's interesting to look at the end product and think about how different it might be if I was using different episodes. I might go back and made a 2.0 version of this one sometime and see how they compare, actually.

[naye]

I started vidding with clips I'd made for giffing, which I'd named so I'd recognize the scenes at a glance - this is for a canon I knew inside out, so the episode number + "kitchen scene" would've given me plenty of information. I've kept this up with character names (abbreviated) + keywords in the clip names, which means I can search for them.

But as of this Vexercise I decided pancake timelines were probably going to be more useful and switched to that method and - it was a steep learning curve, and I don't think I'm all the way there yet, but it makes a huge difference when I'm working with a source I don't know by heart. It also helps find those scenes where people are moving left and right, or shot from above, or other things I would never have thought to include in the clip names. And I quite enjoy the meticulous work of cutting up my clips and sorting them into the different sequences - it's a good way of getting to know a source from a vidding perspective.

I'm super keen to learn more about all the different ways people work, because there's so much useful information I have yet to pick up!

[allheadybooks]

Man, I really tried the pancake timeline thing (in Premiere) and could not really wrap my brain around it. Now I just name my clips with keyword strings covering most things I would want to search for, then sort them into bins covering about 40-60 minutes of source (one TV episode or a section of a film). I wonder if my method works better for people who like to tag comprehensively, and pancake timeline works better for people who identify clips more visually?

[scytale]

I'm going to try the rhythmic editing. I have a song but it may not be the most rhythmically interesting and I may be too distracted by the words, so I'll have to think about it a bit more.

I've been scrubbing through episodes and grabbing large clips that look interesting -- it's very ad hoc. Since the source for the exercises is constrained, it's working out pretty well, and also because for the last two episodes, I haven't really known what I wanted to do. For longer projects, I don't think that will work as well for me, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

[allheadybooks]

I did audio from the source last year, so I’m trying rhythmic editing this time around. This is the third vid in a row where I’ve tried to use Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” (perfect time-wise for Atomic Blonde) and then swapped it out for something very not New Wave 80s! I think I’m gonna have to save that song for another source because it doesn’t seem to play well with this one.

[caramarie]

I'm trying to do the audio editing one (properly this year!) I think it's going okay.... It's pretty out of my ballpark to use source audio -- part of my source-prep process is to strip out the audio, so I had to work out how to get that separately :p

This is my usual clip prep: when I convert the source to my editing codec, I save it out in 2GB sections. This was initially based on what my computer could handle easily, but now it just breaks the source up into useful segments. I bring all my source into Vegas, each episode in its own folder, and then I split the files I wanna use into numbered subclips. First I divide them roughly into scenes, and then for the scenes I want I go through and split the subclip up based on where the cuts in the source are. So I end up with a lot of subclips named things like raisedbywolves-s01e10.05.1.2.

This makes a lot of subclips I won't use, but because everything's kept chronological it's easy to find and grab the things I do want. I just like having everything in order! And it's quite useful for familarising myself with the source too.

[jinkyo]

I am a footage scrubber. For years, I only edited one show and I know that show very well; scrubbing was no hardship. Last year, I added 2 new shows to my "I'm going to vid the hell out of these" list. I don't have the same fluency with those so I pulled out my lined paper notebook and made log notes on each episode.

This year I've added a number of new sources and am in the process of clipping them into master power bins for Resolve.

The edit starts with the song. It takes 1-3 sessions to trim the song down into something I'm excited about, ideally 2 minutes or less. I'm also thinking about the visuals and doing some pre-editing at this point. Building the subtitle track usually happens here as well.

The actual placing of clips technique I use is...stupid. I tend to do a fresh round of clipping each time I edit, because I'm editing a different subject or character so, I didn't have those things clipped previously. Clipping happens on one timeline. I close up all the gaps and then bring my song to this selects timeline and copy/paste the song so that it repeats for as long as my clips (about 15-20 min worth of clips).

From there, I just watch in real-time. I might get lucky with a clip that falls on a good section of the song right away. Most of the time I'm visualizing which of these clips I'll *really* use for this project and making some preliminary sequences. Usually, I have some clip/lyric/music matches already in mind based on my time editing the song, so I'll grab those right away too.

I make copies of all my round 1 culled clips and move them over to the actual edit timeline. The clips that magically were perfect go where they need to go. The rough sequences are placed and I might do some rough trimming.

Then it's repeat, repeat, repeat: digging through clips that got selected but not used, going back to the source and making new clips, gleefully rewatching a 50% done video over and over again until I realize the vid won't vid itself and I need to get back to work. I don't use markers much in constructing the vid because the audio waves are more visible and I usually have a paper edit to work from.

Depending on how clear the vid idea was to start, start to finish on a full timeline can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Ideally, I have time to do the really fun part which is the frame by frame adjustments. Titles are last - I haven't developed a passion for titling yet.

That was a novel! Anyway, for this check-in specifically, I'm doing the rhythmic editing because I just did an audio layered edit earlier this month independently. Turns out my shiny new HD footage was actually gunking up my edit rig so I learned how to create optimized media (my memory is fuzzy, but I think this is the same as rendering a timeline in Premiere. DaVinci just doesn't do this automatically - it's a process). The other big tech learn was pulling out my old Stream Deck switcher. It's a macro pad that I used to use for Twitch streaming but have now re-keyed with all my Resolve shortcuts - gamechanger.

[actiaslunaris]

My editor can't handle watching in real time, but I too repeat the song on the timeline and then render a draft, to make notes on what worked well the first go-around! It's really fun for me to see a rough draft get refined through this process.

It's also useful for me, because I can't watch in real time, to keep a few drafts around in the process, in case I make a change to the edit that doesn't work well. I usually number them to keep them organized.