Live ingest, chase editing and hotel bars

The Hotel

So, it’s 10:45pm and I’m chilling in the hotel bar at the Holiday Inn in Leeds, waiting for the edits for the day to upload, and I have a bit of time on my hands, so now is probably as good a time as any to write about the wonders of chase editing.

Chase editing is relatively new concept, made possible by the advent of live capture software that makes it possible to edit footage while it’s still being ingested be the computer. This is often referred to as “live ingest”.

There are a few bits of software out there that will allow you to do this, but we opted for Tools On Air’s Just:In which I found to be the best for what we do.

From using live ingest to do chase editing, here are the things I’ve learnt.

Live Ingest

Dealing with live ingest is pretty easy, but it would do you well to make sure you’re well prepared when doing the set up. A good UPS is essential to any live ingest station. A power cut will mean that you lose your footage, as your operating system only wraps your video files properly when you shut down.

Which brings me to my next point, reboot often. The last thing you need is for your mac to crash whilst the ingest is going.

Fast hard drives are an absolute must. A fibre channel raid is recommended, but something like a CalDigit HDOne will do the trick if you’re doing standard definition.

A good I/O card is the next bit of kit that is very important. The AJA do some good products, but at the moment I’m using a Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme and a Blackmagic Decklink Duo. The first is good for doing a single stream via component or SDI and the second is good for doing dual streams.

Apple Pro Res HQ is, as usual, my codec of choice.

And lastly, ALWAYS have a back up recording to tape. It’s too easy for a file to get corrupted, or a hard drive to fail. If you’ve got a time code locked back up on tape, you can just recapture and move on.

Chase Editing

This is the part that isn’t as straight forward as I first imagined it to be.

Firstly, when you’re doing chase editing with the eye on having a cut done as soon as the recording is done, you really shouldn’t be doing anything else. Just keeping up with the edit will take up all of your attention, and if you want to make sure nothing gets by you, you really need to pay attention to the edit.

On some jobs you may be required to keep an eye on the audio levels or the VT decks. Be sure to tell your client or production manager how this will negatively influence your turnaround time.

Make sure all the elements that need to be inserted into your edit are prepared and converted to your codec of choice.

The last step, and this is probably the most important part, is to KEEP UP!

I’d welcome any thoughts or questions on the topic.