Old Days of Onsite Video Editing

I remember in 1997, we offered our big client the ability to do live onsite editing for playback right then at their closing event in the hotel ballroom.  Sure, we had done some betacam editing, linear style in a few rare instances, but this time, we’d be playing back on our relatively new non-linear editing computer.  We had a crew of 8 or so and felt we could do it.  It was scary– the computer had a propensity to crash or to fail and we would not have time to output to tape.  But it all worked that night.

In 2000, it had become even more simple.  I took a laptop to a clients event and ingested the tape footage and played back a video– all as a one man crew.

On Site Video Editing Today

Today, on site editing has become a mainstay for many corporate clients who hold tradeshows, conferences, or sales meetings.  Technology has made it quick and reliable.  I’m on the floor at the Heli Expo 2012 editing live for one of the large helicopter makers.  Footage comes in on P2 cards, CF cards and memory sticks, all are flying back and forth.

The interesting thing about the videos, destined for daily facebook updates for the international client, is that wide variety of footage.  It used to be different sizes and frame rates would crash systems faster than anything.  But today, I’ve got footage shot in 1080 50i from our European friends, 720p 24 frames from one camera unit… and then 1080 24p from a DSLR.  And it all meshes together well.

Technology has come a long way.  The next big improvement for on site editing will be faster processors– the biggest setback on site is the speed of ingesting the footage and converting or compressing the footage.  The actual editing is pretty quick.