There must be a simpler way ( from start to finish ). .

Question

( I did a search, but the keywords must have been too broad )
What i describe below worked, but i know a more experienced editor would smile at the unnecessary amount of effort . . .
At a recent School Centenary I was contracted to spend the whole day collecting stories
I kept some rough paper notes on the start and stop times of each group interview sessions over 6 tapes
so
To reduce wear and tear on the camera transport I captured each tape as low grade clips of about 25 min each ( equated roughly to each interview session )
from there I:
a - set up a sequence named as Seq # and dragged only each 1 long clip into it
b - used the razor tool on THE TIMELINE to cut each clip containing one anecdote per slice
c - deleted stuff that was obviously unusable
d - set up a bin titled something like "session #"
e - dragged the whole of the remaining clips in that sequence # into the bin
f - repeated the above steps 10 more times .
so then :
g - I set up about 20 bins, named to match categorizations that the anecdotes could be "collected" into
h - took one slice ( from b ) at a time from each Interview session into THE VIEWER
i - trimmed the in and out points closer to where i wanted them
j - dropped them back into one of the 'subject' bins set up in (g) according to content
k - there were some that needed markers to cut away long pauses, flights of irrelevancies etc, and i made a sub-clip of each
l - spent some time renaming clips, filling text in log note and label fields in case things went awry later
then for recapture:
m - I set up a new sequence named for each category to match (g)
n - dragged the whole contents of each of those bins on to it
o - did the media manager cut down thing
p - opened the original bins at (d) and made all the [ now discrete ] clips offline
q - re-captured that tape.
at the end of all that ( 11 times over ) I did the final polish and went from there.
It looks long, and in a sense it was, but I was trying to avoid problems that I usually have with relying too much on Sub-clips.
Indeed, between steps (p) and (q), some clips had different In/Out points but shared media start and finish, so I manually added offline clips, and with some fancy dancing, got them to replace the disobedient clips that were sending my deck into infinity.
You'll spot a better way to do things, and no doubt it may involve a different handling of Sub-clips.
suggestions, anyone?
thanks
~rob v

Answer 1

sorry not to get back sooner - I've been too flat busy
Mostly after creating subclips from markers, when time came to recapture, they would run the deck (cam) over and over the same parts of the whole clip for just their little extent to be lifted, even though their defined regions were not overlapping and indeed nowhere near each other. I also remember a tim ewhen they'd recapture the full amount of the parent clip anywaywith the I/O markers set as per prior to recapture.
In essence, what i've described in a very verbose manner from (a) to (l) above is all the stuff along the way of rough cutting. Admittedly i didn't need to do (m) or (n) and could have done the recapture after Making Clips Offline without the need for setting up sequences in parallel.
As it was when i did do the deed from the different tapes, they all nicely uprez'd in their positions in the sequences i wanted them - so in that regard i did do it all in one swoop.
What I choose to do however is always have my work at such a self-explanatory stage so that if my assistant or even i get interrupted for a few weeks on something else and have to return, we dont want to spend any time readjusting our head-space to what we were were doing ( and risk a costly mistake if we interpreted wrongly where the project was at )
And besides i never trust any machine, code routine or whatever other smarts presented before me. I like things where i can keep track of what the programme is doing in the background, in case i need to snaffle the very thing from the disk cache manually. Its happened! and I didn't lose time or money. I'll pay the price of doing things the long way round.
however i will take advice if there is a more elegant way of being so-minded.