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Tutorials - Blender 2.43

[edit] Collecting and Organizing Footage

Video is huge and even a screaming machine can take a half-hour to encode a three-minute segment. Accidently deleting or overwriting a source file is disastrous, as there is no way to go back in time and reshoot a live action scene. There are many ways to set up your file structure, so this topic is just a suggestion.

[edit] Gimme Some Room

When organizing your files for a major video project:

  • Check with your LAN administrator and watch your disk space usage, ordering additional disks before you crash the server or workstation. Each 1 hr DV tape takes 20G of disk space; just the raw video. Seven hours of shooting is 140G, and if taping a five day class, you're looking at a terabyte just for the raw video (no clips extracted) and audio files.
  • Create a non-destructive structure and process where it is virtually impossible to accidentally overwrite a source file
  • Buy extra backup tapes; you'll need them.

[edit] Media Directory Structure

Here is a suggested file/directory organization chart, just to get you started thinking about how best to organize your files. In concept, you have

  • Standards that you want to adhere to, such as procedures for uploading video, or settings you use in generating video clips so that they are all consistent.
  • Library of media you can re-use from project to project
  • Project-specific media, shot for a specific purpose.

As you work through a project, keep an eye out for things to add to the Library. As you discover new tools to use, add their identification and use to Standards. When you start a new project, create a folder for that project:

C:\Media - all media goes here
C:\Media\Standards - all your checklists, procedures, settings
C:\Media\Library - anything you might be able to re-use
C:\Media\Library\Stock - stock photos and clips you license. Create a subfolder by source, and then subfolders under that by topic. In the subfolder that has the source, put a copy of the license agreement
C:\Media\Library\Public - public domain images and sequences and textures
C:\Media\Library\Corporate - logos, powerpoint templates, letterhead, building pan, show-off area pan, interior corporate shots
C:\Media\Library\People - head shots of employees, clips of them acting. Create a subfolder for each person. Include in that subfolder a scanned copy of their signed release.
C:\Media\Library\Clips- clips shot and owned by the company, salvaged from prior projects. Create subfolders based on topic (Training, Ads) and the subtopics (each class, each ad campaign)
C:\Media\Projects\xxxx\

The project-specific area is where you will be spending much of your time and energy; create a folder, where xxxx is the project name. Under that folder, I suggest you create these folders:

\PreP - Pre-Production concept development, scripts, budget, storyboards, timeline, casting call, notes go here. Most importantly, a shooting script goes here that lays out each scene and possible shots to take.
Scene-Shot-Take
Each scene tells an important part of the story, and may only be a few minutes. The director may shoot that same scene from different angles, under different lighting, or just give different direction to the actors. For each shot, you may have to film multiple takes until the actors get their lines right.


\Prod - Production starts when principal photography starts. All raw footage, as well as extracted, acceptable, clean takes are put here, from all the stuff filmed. These clips are cleaned and scrubbed, samples, video works in progress go here. Your input tothe VSE comes from here as you work.
\raw - raw video uploaded from videotaping. Files named by date they were shot, with spreadsheets to index their contents
\clips - useful clips extracted from raw video, named by Scene-Take-Version-Description, such as "05-19a-bad lines.mov" for Scene 5, Take 19, original version (a). Good clips are named with the word "good" in the filename.
Dailies
Finding good files for a specific date is thus easy, and called a "daily" because the editor reviews each day's shooting ("viewing the dailies") to see the good stuff coming in from location. The bad stuff is still clipped and saved for the gag reel.

Good clips can then be colorized and processed using Blender nodes, resulting in a new version of that clip.

\stills - In here are stills taken on-set, or to be used as backdrops and matte paintings.
\CG - guess what goes here-your .blend files! Name your files by act-scene-take or just scene-take-name, such as "07-04-Emo flips out.blend"; from project Orange, the world's first Open movie, and the first European HD release, named their files "act-scene-description.blend"; there were 8 acts and about 20-30 scenes in each act.
\CG\render - your intermediate renders and output from rendering, compositing. When you are ready to share, copy the .mov or .avi to the \clips folder.
\comp - This is the CG equivalent of the "clips" folder, where the output of the VSE goes when used to composite footage rendered out in layers.

[edit] Levels of Compositing

There are two levels of compositing:

  • Process multiple renderlayers to get a CG strip (put in the "\comp" folder).
  • Process the background, live action (green screen removed), and CG together to get a final strip (put in the Post-processed folder). Use the VSE within the CG directory to process the different renderlayers into a final CG product. Also use the VSE to produce the final composite; the VSE does either one well. The final composite in put into the "comp" directory, and may be formed from many layers:
  • Add the background image as a strip to a channel, usually channel 0
  • Add processed live background action
  • Add CG scene or sequence or movie output for CG elements on top of background
  • Add processed live action that goes in front on CG elements
  • Add blending CG elemements and overlays like lighting, fire, mist, smoke dirt, fog, watermarks
\post - Post-Processing - the composited footage for each scene, as well as final cuts, sequenced using the VSE, go here. You may produce, for your project, three cuts (the PG cut, the R cut, the Director's cut, etc). Also here are CD sleeves, poster art, cover art, silkscreening masters; everything needed to master the final product

Files in the "\post" are spliced using the VSE. A single .blend file can hold the whole movie, and should be named based on what it produces. The editor may produce several versions of the entire movie, making a linear cut and a flashback cut; an "R" rated cut and a "PG" cut; a commercial release and an extended edition cut. Each of these cuts would be placed in the "\post" folder, along with the VSE .blend files used to produce them.







Redirects to fix

  • Manual/VSE Examples → Doc:Tutorials/Sequencer/Examples
  • Manual/Working with VSE → Doc:Tutorials/Sequencer/Working with VSE
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