Tips on saving good clips from video

[adseguy]

I'm about to start editing a video here and wanted to know what you guys do when you are going through the raw video. I always find the hardest part is taking the time to watch all the clips and I've either written down by hand the time of the good stuff I want to keep or I start clipping immediately and start pilling it in the editing timeline in no particular order to later have to sift through again.

What do you guys do? I lately have been putting time markers in the clips themselves to come back to and start grabbing clips like that. I'm sure there's a better way so let me know!

[FSP]

Not the answer you want but, i could only guess the pros get so attune at knowing what they are looking for at the shooting stage that their overall footage is a fraction of what it was when they first started their career. Seems after a while your material really gets cut down to much less at the end of a shoot, because you know way more about what you want and start to see whats going to be worthy as opposed to shooting so much volume when your new? As an art director, we actually dream up what we want, then story board it and then go for it as a shoot, so scripting what you want is huge for a pro and budgets.

Technically, I would then think saving out a "rough" version would be good, then saving out subsequent files that go from "rough", to "refined" and "final" etc.. would allow you to narrow it down in stages you can go back to, should you want.

I am pretty sure that a camera guy at pipe knows right away just by looking at the outside whether he will even record way before the guy catches his wave from lots of experience. Lighting, background and other aesthetics are just as important as subject so really learning what the shot needs to be is going to produce a whole lot less average material to begin with.

[adseguy]

I totally agree. Before i even go shoot the film I always have a song picked out and that sets the tone for the shots I take. I probably take like 30-40 clips through the day. I don't just strap a GoPro on a let the battery drain. I still have lots of footage though and it would be easier to watch it once and just "key frame" in a way so I can go back again later to edit it. I'm just asking if it's something obvious I missed or it's just the pain/pleasure of editing a vid.