Reducing raw footage to trimmed clips for future edits?

[Dspace]

I’d say for about every 20 min of raw video footage I will get 5 to 10 usable trimmed clips totaling 3 min or less. Before I even start to do a full edit I’ll get a bunch of these usable trimmed clip locations identified over something like 60 min of raw footage. The other 51 min of that 60 min is dead weight eating up storage space and giving the cpu a full workout.

I’ve always thought about pre-editing those usable trimmed clips into a file and dumping all the dead weight well before I get to the final edit stage. For example, if I’m on a trip it would allow me identify my usable footage and dump the gobs of unusable footage, freeing up lots of storage space at the same time. Those clips could also be used for a future project unrelated to the current one.

Rather than use separate app for this, why can’t I just use my primary editor to output (render) those trimmed clips in the same format, save them to a set of folders for future final edits, then delete the original untrimmed footage? Does anyone else work this way, or do you just save it all? Just seems like I have a rapidly growing amount of dead weight footage that accumulates over time

 

[4wd]

It sounds like extra work to do that though.
You can easily enough make 'bins' in Adobe premiere from short clips which have been pulled out using in/out commands. Then just save the bins
I tend to delete most of the old stuff if not used in a rendered video after a month or so.

Surprisingly windows 10 photo viewer has the option to save sections from a video as new files

 

[Dspace]

It sounds like extra work to do that though.
You can easily enough make 'bins' in Adobe premiere from short clips which have been pulled out using in/out commands. Then just save the bins
I tend to delete most of the old stuff if not used in a rendered video after a month or so.

Surprisingly windows 10 photo viewer has the option to save sections from a video as new files

Interesting. I know it’s extra work, but even without the extra step, I spend a lot of time filtering out the usable clips. Maybe I’m an odd case that way. I do like to hang onto some older short clips for future use. Switched to the dark side recently (Apple) and I’m working with Luma Fusion on an iPadPro. Rendering these short trim sections goes really fast. No idea whether it’s as fast/easy as a trim and save function or bin function (which might already exist with this software and I just don’t know it).

 

[Xtreme Drone Pilot]

I'm of the same philosophy. Sifting through footage over and over again to find gems wastes a lot of time, so throwing away garbage as early as possible is key to sanity. I used to trim my GoPro footage with MPEG Streamclip:
Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows

Haven't tried it with 4K yet, though.

 

[Mfpullen]

Just use Adobe Premiere. As you roll thru your raw footage hit 'I' to mark the in and 'O' to mark the out. This defines your clip. Then hit ctrl-U. This will let you save and rename the clip you just defined. I saves it in the same bin with your raw footage.

 

[Dspace]

It would be great to use Premiere or Final Cut on a MacBook Pro, but that won’t be happening any time soon. I’ll keep muckin with Luma Fusion on an iPad Pro. I can save trimmed clips in a photo app folder. Probably not as fast or clean as the big boys, but it gets the job done.

 

[Kilrah]

I do this as well (although I tend to pile up raw clips for a while before going through them in one go every few months). You can use Windows Photo editor on Windows or just the Trim function of Quicktime player on Mac OS.

You should NOT use Premiere/Final Cut or another actual editor and export the clips since that would reencode the video thus losing quality in the process, while the solutions above are a straight data copy that retains full original quality (as well as taking only seconds per clip instead of rendering time).

Just use Adobe Premiere. As you roll thru your raw footage hit 'I' to mark the in and 'O' to mark the out. This defines your clip. Then hit ctrl-U. This will let you save and rename the clip you just defined. I saves it in the same bin with your raw footage.

But it doesn't free up the space used by the unused portions of the file which was one of the main goals. After a flight session I come back with 8-15GB, after selecting what I actually might reuse I retain probably about 2GB.

 

[OzoneVibe]

Handbrake (PC/Mac) is a great tool for clipping out parts from a longer original vid. It can replicate all aspects of the original file format without ANY processing ... literally copying the required section. Free, too.

 

[Dspace]

That’s a good point Kilrah. This IOS editor I’m using, Luma Fusion, has a companion sub app, Luma Clips, which I use to trim and save. No idea if I this app is still reencoding upon export with a subsequent loss in quality, or whether there is another IOS 11 compatible “trim only” app. Much to learn!