2009

For more information, search for “batch capture list” in Cinema Tools Help.
Import Edit Decision Lists
You can also import an Edit Decision List (EDL) into Final Cut Pro to use as a starting point
for ingesting media. An EDL is a text file that describes an edited project as a series of
events. Events can include cuts, transitions, and sometimes superimpositions that make
up an edit. When you import an EDL, you end up with an edited sequence and a bin in
the Browser named Master Clips that contains each offline clip, ready for recapture. EDLs
are useful for moving projects from other editing environments into Final Cut Pro, if there’s
no other XML-based solution or third-party utility for doing so.
For more information, search for “importing EDLs” in Final Cut Pro Help.
Choosing the Best Ingest Strategy for Your Workflow
The way you ingest your media affects the way you’ll work with it during editorial
development as well as what additional steps you’ll need to perform in order to finish
and master your program. One of the most fundamental workflow decisions you have
to make is whether to work in an offline/online manner or ingest your media at online
quality right from the beginning and work at full quality all the way through the finishing
process.
No matter what kind of media you use, there are three general approaches to ingesting
and working with your media.
Ingest, edit, and finish at online quality
Using this strategy, you ingest all of your media at its highest native level of quality. You
edit at this quality, and when you’re ready, you finish your project by color correcting
and mastering it using the same media that you originally ingested. All the way through
your project’s development, you’re working with your media at its most pristine.
Ingesting all your media at its highest quality means that when you’re ready for finishing,
there’s no need to reconform, which saves time. However, this can require large amounts
of disk space, especially for uncompressed HD, 2K, and 4K formats. Furthermore, some
video formats are processor-intensive and reduce real-time performance while you’re
editing, which can slow you down.
Whether or not this method works for you depends on the type and amount of media
that was originally acquired. For example, the source footage for shorter projects or those
using a compressed acquisition format (such as DV-25, HDV, or DVCPRO HD) can be
realistically captured in its entirety at the highest native level of quality. On the other
hand, projects that have a large amount of source material (for example, documentaries
with hundreds of hours of footage) and use a high-bandwidth format (such as the
Uncompressed 10-bit or Apple ProRes 4444 codec) may be more difficult to manage this
way.
30 Chapter 2 Ingesting and Organizing Your Media