Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 250)

• Use a simple clip-naming convention: Final Cut Pro can handle long clip names, but
other systems often can’t. See “Choosing Names and Logging Information for Clips.”
• Identify the audio sample rate and bit depth of your tapes: You should always log and
capture your footage with matching sample rate and bit depth settings.
Keeping Track of Footage with Reel Names and Timecode
Clips represent media files on your hard disk, but they also represent sections of your
original tapes between In and Out points. If you accidentally delete a clip’s media file on
disk, you can always recapture it from the original tape. Being able to recapture your
media from the original tapes is critical for most post-production workflows.
Final Cut Pro can identify which portion of a tape to recapture using the following clip
properties:
• Reel name: This is usually the name written on the tape label during production or just
prior to post-production.
• Media Start and End timecode: A clip’s Media Start and End timecode numbers identify
the start and end frames of the clip on your tape. Timecode is the critical link between
clips in your project, media files on disk, and the footage on your tapes.
A reel name identifies which tape a clip comes from, and timecode identifies where on
the reel a particular clip is located.
Important: If your original tapes don’t have timecode, it is impossible to accurately
recapture your tapes because Final Cut Pro has no way of ensuring that you are capturing
the exact same frames each time. For suggestions about logging and capturing footage
without timecode, see
“Advanced Topics in Capturing Tape-Based Media.”
Choosing Reel Names
Older editing systems accepted three-digit reel numbers, starting at 000 and ending at
999. For maximum compatibility, this is a good naming convention to start with. Unless
you have over a thousand tapes in your project, this reel-naming convention should be
sufficient.
You can use the digits of your reel name to mean different things. For example, the first
digit can be used to represent a particular location, with space for 100 tapes per location.
100–199 could be used for tapes shot in Washington, D.C., while 200–299 could be used
for tapes shot in Los Angeles, and so on. Pick a consistent method, and if you have to
break your convention, have some numbers reserved just for this. For instance, you could
reserve 900–999 for miscellaneous tapes that don’t fit your naming convention.
250 Chapter 15 Overview of Capturing Tape-Based Media