Behind the Scenes

The upcoming video will play dozens of hours. Of course. Getting from Crete all the way to Vardø in the very north takes time. Vanning all the material is a challenge and a fulfillment at the same time.

Since this is not an everyday task there is no experience I can base this on. Which software to use? Which does not crash on a 50 hours file. Usually you cut a 2 hours file, that is what most programs are optimized for.

I point out two pieces out of my software jewel Box. The first one is for organizing your stuff. Still one of the best programs to organize your Media files is Media Pro, now owned by Phase One. It lives a shadow live, which is a shame for a so very well thought through piece of code. Phase One does not seem to know what they are having with it. They bought it to integrate some features in their prime software.
Say you have a folder hierarchy on your storage system, containing several subfolders. Now you want to extract just the MP4s in just 3 mouseclicks? You create a new Catalog on the fly (importing does not empty your notebooks batteries, like other media tools do). Tell me how else this can be done in such elegance. This is just one example.

For cutting the video I decided to use ligthworks. It is a fully professional video cutting tool. The Kings Speech was done with it. The user interface is completely streamlined, so can start rather quick and improve on complexity later. It is straight forward.
And there is a reasonable  licensing model. Other companies would charge me a monthly subscription fee. Once I am moving on to my next (non-video) project I would still have to pay a few hundred Euro per year – just to be able to open my old files? That is not what I want to do, they call it plan.

Besides dealing with this in a very smart way, Lightworks is multi-platform as well. One day I will extend this blog by a ‚digital‘ category. If I do, I will write about the importance of this.

For now I close this toolbox entry. I keep you updated on the progress of the „Europastrasse“ video. Cheers.