CINGHE GROUP

You can import media into your project in several ways. At the top of your bin is a file folder icon.



Media from a Disc
Capturing Media from Tape-based Cameras










Now, how to go about the process of capturing video. Edius gives you a couple of options. For quick, "down and dirty" captures, simply hit the capture icon, indicated by the red arrow. For more serious capturing, we need to take a look at the" Batch Capture" tool of Edius, EVEN IF YOU INTEND TO CAPTURE YOUR WHOLE TAPE.
For those of you new to video, in days gone by, editors use to "log" their tapes, carefully going through their footage, marking the best shots with an "in" and an "out" point, using the "time code" that is electronically marked on tapes during the recording process. Then, when it was time to capture the footage, they could simply have the software automatically capture the segments they had chosen, using the "Batch Capture" tool. They would need only check in once and a while and insert the next tape, in a ritual that I came to cal, "feeding the beast".
I use to be a diligent logger and spent many hours tediously going through all my tapes. I have since found it to be a whole lot easier to bypass the logging and batch capturing process altogether and simply capture the whole tape. Edius can be set up to break up up your capture into individual clips for each time your camera was paused when you were filming. I pop in a tape, set the capture going and turn my attention to other tasks. An hour later I return to Edius and find that I have on average, about 160 individual video clips. There are several reasons why I switched methods.
1. Huge hard drives are now cheap!
2. HDV video, by nature of its compression scheme, is harder to log.
3. Capturing the tape in one pass puts less wear and tear on tapes as well as the deck or camera.
4. It is less tedious and time consuming.
Yes, I may end up with a lot of unusable clips in my bin, but as I sort my clips into folders, I simply throw the unusable clips into a folder called "Trash" and once a day I "take out the trash".
(By the way, once you get used of working this way it is hard to go back. I have had a few occasions where I have had to do a edit in Premier Pro. As of CS4, PPro is not capable of automatically dividing clips at timecode breaks with HDV tapes. It was very frustrating to go back to the old method!)
For the purposes of this tutorial, lets take a look at both methods.
Logging Tapes and Batch Capturing
There are a couple of ways that you can log tapes, but by far the easiest is to use key board shortcuts. Once you have confirmed that Edius is communicating with your camera or deck, and you can control your player device with the buttons under the "Play" monitor, you should also be able to control your deck, using your keyboard. The "space bar" can be used to start and pause the tape. The "K" key also acts as a pause button. Hitting the "L" key once acts as a play button. Hitting it a couple of times scans your tape in the forward direction. The "J" key plays your tape in reverse, hitting it a couple of times makes your tape scan backwards. Once you get the hang of controlling your deck with the key board, you can start to log tapes. Play or scan your tape looking for good shots. When you see one that you would like to include in your project, mark the segment with an in and an out mark, using the "I" and "O" keys ("I" for the in mark and "O" for the out mark). When you are happy with your "in and out point, you can add your clip to the batch capture window by pressing "Ctrl/P". These default keyboard shortcuts in Edius are very similar to other NLE software, so if you are an old hand at logging tapes, you should feel right at home. If you are brand new to video, you may find this a little awkward at first, but in no time you will develop that muscle memory and you will be shuttling your tape back and forth, logging like a pro.
One keyboard shortcut that I changed was the "Add to Batch capture" (Ctrl/P). I set that to the "enter" key to keep it a one hand operation, as well as emulate what I was used to in Premier. In order for your computer to work like mine for this tutorial, go ahead and make this change as well. Go to Settings/Application Settings/ find the keyboard shortcut option, sort on Operation, and look for Add to batch capture list, and change the Assignment to the Enter Key. (If you are unsure how to do this, check out the tutorial on How to Change Your Keyboard Settings) One important thing to note, if you are using the keyboard shortcuts, is that in order for them to work properly, especially the "Enter" key, your "focus" needs to be in the Batch Capture window. Hit F10 to open the batch capture window and click once inside the window, to let Edius know that you want to work with the Batch Capture Window. Now all of the keyboard shortcuts will work as expected, in association with this batch operation.


With this window moved a little to the side of your "play" monitor you can watch as your selections are added to the batch capture list. After some time your batch capture window should look something like this ...