This is probably a bit of an aged question, but has anybody here attempted editing with a splicer? If so (or even if not), is it possible to splice miniDV film?

MiniDV film? Ummm. I wouldn't recommend cutting the tape. You'll probably kill your camera or deck if you try to play it.

That's how they used to cut video in the early eighties I think. 2 inch videotape and a spicer.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

NEVER!!!!! EVER!!!!!! EVER!!!!!!!! SPLICE VIDEO TAPE

Especially digital tape.

does that give you your answer?

Yeah, I supposed not. But while I'm here I'll ask another question. Do you need a lot of space on your computer to run a good editing program, because I don't think I've got that much(hence the splicing).

quote:

Originally posted by Studentfilms.com:
That's how they used to cut video in the early eighties I think. 2 inch videotape and a spicer.

No, splicing video tape was never a common practice. They splice audio tape. But never video. You'd never get clean cuts because of the way the information is stored. You gotta have t/c or a control track running throughout the video. Otherwise the video will 'roll'. You must be thinking of a/b roll edits and linear editing. They did that on everything from 1/2 inch to 2 inch. Those systems aren't completely dead, either. At the tv station I worked at two years ago, some of the spots were sent to us (from ad agencies) were on 1" reels. We would dub them, then send the reel on to the next tv station they were buying time at. Kind of a weird system.

You don't need THAT much space on your comp to use a NLE. Now when 100 gig hard drives are 70 bucks now. You'll probably need 300-900 megs for the basic app. But all the extras can add up. FCP with all the add ons takes 13 gigs

With the single app FCP, it's 160 Megs on my computer. Not with LiveType, Compresser, Cinema Tools, and Soundtrack.

Yeah, I'd say just buy a big external firewire drive. I saw a nice 300GB one for $250 today. Storage is cheap. Thats less than $1 per GB.

Nah, I've cut on linear and a/b roll tape systems. That's how I learned to edit.

I could have sworn someone told me that they used to splice videotape at a tv station they worked at in the eighties.

I teach Avid here in Hollywood occasionally...and I'm pretty sure one on my students said that they used to do that. I could very well be mistaken though.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

you could always edit from your minidv to vhs if u have problems getting access to a good enough computer/editing program, not the best way to do it, but it works, and you'll learn alot about planning out how to shoot ur film and edit it, i know I learned alot from editing in camera when i first started (dogme)

Chris, there's this way that they used to do instant replay where they had reels that would record segments of video from the tape master, and then they would have to roll it by hand back and forth to show the "instant replay/slow motion".

maybe he spliced those tapes together to show instant replay loops?

pretty sure video tape can/used to be spliced, its an analog format so the control track can be slapped together in any order, unlike DV where the timecode would freak deck out. Cutting video is somewhat like cutting analog audio tape. Like chris said, you can cut audio tape, likewise, you cant cut a DAT.

Plus i would think that handling the DV tape would be more damaging to the content than with an analog format. handling analog tape yields duller audio and blurry washed video, whereas handling DV would get either dropouts or totally unviewable video for at least a second or two.

I'd stick to trying to do it via comp. or like HDK said, the family vcr.

Not to sound like a complete amateur (I am), but how exactly can you edit through your VCR?

You just need to plug the video camera into the VCR's video in port. Then you play the camera, and record onto a VHS tape in the VCR, stopping where you want to cut.

they splice video tape to salvage a reel/cassette when sections of the tape are damaged, but they never, ever edited by splicing tape for the reason I listed before.

Jeff, in the analog system, NTSC (and PAL for that matter), there is a control track that tells the cathode tube when to start a new field of video. If you were to splice video, wherever the splice is, the control track will be spaced irregularrly and cause the video to jump or roll. It's like if you're live editing/switching two video sources that aren't synced by a TBC or black burst generator. when you take the cut, the video will roll. To splice video without the jumping/rolling, you'd have to have nanometer precision and cut perfectly along the zenith. It's prety darn impossible.

Editing through a VCR is called crash cutting because it yeilds the same result as splicing, at the edits, the video will jump/roll. Again, it has to do with the controll track changing.

Ya, it will jump/roll, but if u press pause (rather than hitting stop) at each cut, doesn't that eliminate it?

Ah i see joren - does this hold true for all analog formats or just VHS?

Also - i thought the control track was specific to the tape, and not transmitted across the signal output, i.e. there would be a new control track written if vut to a seperate deck, thereby eliminating jump/roll? No? So how would you edit tape to tape then w/out roll?

HDK, if you are cutting on a deck that can do insert edits, that will hold true. But if you're just using a VCR, pausing won't matter because you gotta give the tape time to get to speed before recording. That why there's preroll.

Jeff, technically speaking, VHS isn't a format but a medium that the analog NTSC format is on. So, yes, it's still true. NTSC is an analog format. It always is. It was created in the 1930s and really hasn't changed since. Yes, color was added, but the NTSC decided they'd rather have crappy color and be backwards compatible to B+W TVs, so they didn't really modify the standard. Instead, they used far less than a quarter the bandwidth that is used to carry the luminance information (the black and white signal) to carry the chromanance info (color).

I actually thought the history of the NTSC is very interesting. Kind of dorky, but whatev.

Oh, and the only time the control track isn't sent with the video and audio is when you're doing an insert edit. ...or if you pass the video through a TBC, but then the TBC generates a new control track that is sent with the audio/video signal.

AH! ok, thank you. Makes much more sense now.

DV footage take up 13GB per hour of footage. You can get a 100Gb hard drive for well under $100 at teh local computer store. That's enough storage for over 6 hours of raw footage and your finished 90 minute production.

Gary
Videoguys.com

you should have more than 6 hours of footage if you're doing a 90 minute finished piece.

but anyway, when you're editing that much, you might as well just use lower quality video and once your editing is complete, redigitize youre timeline at a high resolution, then it'll only take up 90 or so minutes of full resolution video.