A clip is said to be too technically flawed if it has no chance of making it to the final product whatsoever. This does not, however, preclude its use throughout the post-production process; for example, part of a clip in which the director describes his vision of the talent’s facial expression in a particular scene is never going to make it into the final product, but is invaluable in classifying the scene. In this case, the most reasonable place to put the clip would be as a multimedia note referenced by all takes/angles of the scene it refers to.

As mentioned above, flawed video doesn’t necessarily mean flawed audio or vice-versa.

An "interesting" clip is one that has potential — either as a metadata piece (multimedia note, talent briefing, etc) or footage (for the final product OR intermediary step). The main goal of the application is to find and classify interesting clips of various types as quickly as possible.

Many people, accustomed to different interfaces and work styles, should be able to work on the same project and add interactive metadata at the same time.

The project is organized around a distributed content management system which allows access to all existing materials at all times. Content narrowing allows for a more digestible amount of information to process, but everything is non-destructive; every change to the clip structure and layout is recorded, preferably with a reason as to why it was necessary or desired.

With all of the information of an entire production available from a single application, information overload is easy. Content narrowing is designed to fix that by having parts of individual clips, metadata, or other files be specific to one aspect of the overall design. This allows for much more successful use of the related information and a cleaner, streamlined layout. As an example, metadata involving file size has no effect whatsoever on the vast majority of most major decisions — the answer is almost always "whatever it takes." Thus, it would not appear most of the time. Content narrowing means that it is easy to add back footage — "widen the view" one step, add it back, and "narrow the view" again.

There is no need to export a final cut from this application; it merely is the first step in the post-production chain. It is the missing link between receiving raw footage from the camera and adding the well executed scenes to the timeline. What should come out of the application is a classification of

This is VERY powerful. The first step to using the application is to mark which scenes are the same in all source clips — where same means that they contain sections which would both not run. This can include multiple takes, different microphones or camera angles, etc. The key to fast editing is that the application can edit metadata for the situation (what is actually going on IN THE SCENE), take (what is actually going on IN THIS SPECIFIC RUN), and instance (what is actually going on IN THIS CLIP). If editing a situation, the other referenced clips AUTOMATICALLY add metadata and relevant sections. This can be as precise and nested as desired, though rough cuts for level one editing (first watchthrough after technically well executed clips have been selected) and more accurate ones for higher levels is the recommended method.

This came up on the discussion list for Lumiera, and it will be supported, probably as a special tag.

This is not meant to be a final interface design, just something I wrote up to get ideas out there.

key commands mutt/vim-style — much faster than using a mouse, though GUI supported. Easy to map to joystick, midi control surface, etc. Space stop/start and tag enter Tab (auto pause) adds metadata special Tracks have letters within scenes — Audio[a-z], Video[a-z], Other[a-z] (these are not limits) — or names. Caps lock adds notes. This is really, really fast. It works anywhere. This means that up to 26 different overlapping metadata sections are allowed.

Prompting Prompting for metadata is a laborious, time-consuming process. There is no truly efficient way to do it. This application uses a method similar to KPhotoAlbum. When the space key is held and a letter is pressed, the tag that corresponds to that letter is assigned to the track for the duration of the press. (If the space is pressed and no other key is pressed at the same time, it stops the track.) For example, suppose that the following mapping is present: o = outside x = extra p = protagonist c = closeup

Then holding SPACE over a section and pressing one of these keys would assign the tag to the audio AND video of the section over which the space was held. If instead just the key is pressed (without space being held), that tag is assigned to the section over which it is held. This is very fast and maps well to e.g. PS3 controller or MIDI control.

If LALT is held down instead of SPACE, the audio is effected instead. If RALT is held, just the video is effected.

In order to support scenario/take/clip tagging: The default is situation. If the keybinding to x is: x = t:extra ; effect only take x = ts:extra ; effect take and scenario x = c:extra ; extra only visible in this clip! x = tc:extra ; this take and clip show the extra etc

Other keyargs (the part in front of the colon) can be added to account for other uses (e.g. l = all taken on the same location).

Tab is pressed to add metadata mappings. Tab is pressed to enter metadata edit mode; this pauses video. Then press any key to map; and type the tag to associate (with space, multiple tags can be added.). The following specials are defined: [:keyarg:]:TAG is special tagging for scenario/take/clip. !TAG removes TAG if it is present. This is useful because it allows huge sections of the clip to be defined as a certain tag, then have parts removed later. a:TAG applies TAG only to the audio. v:TAG applies TAG only to the video. p:PATH adds a link to PATH as a special tag.

(This will have a nice GUI as well, I just will always use the keyboard method so I am describing it first. Mapping configurations can be stored in a separate file, as a user config, or in the specific project.)

If ESC is pressed, all currently ranged tags are ended.

Finally, if single_quote is pressed without SPACE or {L,R}ALT down, it marks an "interesting location." Pressing SHIFT+single_quote goes to the next "interesting location" and pressing CNTRL+' goes to the previous "interesting location." This allows for very quick review of footage.