maurits6814

Q: Organize years of old family videos.

Hi there,

 

My parents made a lot of videos of me and my brother growing up. Especially of our birthdays, holidays and special events. I am 19 years old now and never really saw all the footage. This was because it was shot on VHS-C and MiniDV and we did not have the gear to play it back. I got really into it and researched how I could digitize all of the footage and I did. I have VHS-C recordings from 1993 to 1999 and MiniDV recordings from 2000 to 2006. I found a way to digitize it and I imported all in to FCPX. I made a library named ‘Old tapes’ and events of all the years I have footage of. Now I want to create movies of all the different events that happened during my live in this period. Before I create projects, I really want to think over what the best way to do this is. I want a system that allows me to organize every video with tags, like names of family members, locations, etc. I know when you export a project in FCPX you have the ability to add tags. However, I never got this system because I don’t see the tags back in the exported movie in Finder. Then I taught of the Photos app, but I’m not sure if that is the right way to go. Besides, it will make my Photos Library significantly larger. I do think using the Photos app gives me a more structured and more visual appearing experience than just having video files in Finder folders.

 

So my question to you: what is the best way to organize all of my old video tapes and what would be the easiest way to find back certain videos just by searching for tags.

 

Thank you.

 

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Posted on Jul 3, 2016 12:17 PM

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Q: Organize years of old family videos.

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  • by David Bogie Chq-1,Helpful

    David Bogie Chq-1 David Bogie Chq-1 Jul 3, 2016 3:53 PM in response to maurits6814
    Level 7 (25,772 points)
    Video
    Jul 3, 2016 3:53 PM in response to maurits6814

    GGood luck with your project. You are doing your family a great service.

    start by researching keywords in the FCPX help system and then heading to the web and YouTube for additional practical advice on using keywords. Editing this stuff is difficult because you need to remove the junk without deleting moments that are precious to others but perhaps meaningless to you.

    tagging video is exhausting! takes weeks.. creating a taxonomy of your tags should be done first and carefully. For instance, is Chistmas a holiday or an event like a birthday? Is a car camping trip the same as backpacking? Be sure to use terms that are peculiar to your family and they will recognize.

  • by maurits6814,

    maurits6814 maurits6814 Jul 3, 2016 3:52 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Video
    Jul 3, 2016 3:52 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

    Hi David,

     

    Thanks for your reply. My family does in deed really appreciate the work I'm doing. It is going to take months or even more than a year to make all the videos I want, but it is so worth it. I did some more research on Keywords in FCPX and started with my first clip. I created keywords for locations, persons and other stuff I found interesting. Then I organized the Keywords into folders. Now I know how this works, I can do this for the whole library. Doing this, will make it easy to create compilations, for example all birthdays, by using smart collections. However, I still have my doubts on having such a system for the exported content. If I export a final project into a Finder folder, all of the magic of the keywords and smart collections will disappear. Importing the videos into Photos would make it possible to add tags and locations again, but this would be double work. So is there a way to have these organization options for the final, exported content?

     

    Schermafbeelding 2016-07-04 om 00.39.31.png

  • by Alchroma,

    Alchroma Alchroma Jul 3, 2016 4:21 PM in response to maurits6814
    Level 6 (18,926 points)
    Video
    Jul 3, 2016 4:21 PM in response to maurits6814

    There is more than one way to organise and find particular clip sections you choose to use in Projects.

    When dealing with large amounts of them making Favourites, Keywords, Smart Collections etc. are ways FCP X organises this.

    Once you learn how to manage the info it will make organisation a breeze.

     

    David's keyword suggestion is a good place to start.

    There are other methods, t's a matter of finding which one works for you, have read here:

    Re: Marking segments of clips as favourites IN timeline?

     

    Al

  • by lauhk,

    lauhk lauhk Jul 4, 2016 2:15 AM in response to David Bogie Chq-1
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jul 4, 2016 2:15 AM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

    Hi,


    I have video clips from almost 20 years. I used to store all my clips in a FCPX library, until the library got so bloated it became a chore to use FCPX. Then I moved all the original clip media into a dedicated Photos library.

     

    Now, I use the Photos library to browse the clips. Only transfer those clips that I what to use in a project into FCPX. This give me a much more fluid workflow when compared with using FCPX to do it all.