How to Capture Your Footage

In order to edit your news story, you need to transfer your video clips from your tape to a computer hard drive.  If you recorded your footage to an analog tape (VHS) this process is called digitizing.  If you shot your footage on a DV tape, this process is called capturing.

1. Insert your tape into the tape deck.  Make sure tape deck is connected to computer with a 6-pin firewire cable and turned on before opening Final Cut Pro. This will ensure that your computer recognizes that you have inserted a tape.

2. Open Final Cut Pro and go to File --> save as… to save your project

3. Click File --> Log and Capture.  This will open up the capture window.

4. Cue up the first clip you would like to capture. (Remember, you do not need to capture your clips in any particular order.  You will place your clips in the correct sequence after they are loaded into the computer hard drive).

5. Hit the ‘capture now’ button to start capturing.  Press the escape key to stop capturing at the end of the clip.  Remember to capture an extra 5 seconds of footage at the beginning and end of each clip.  This extra footage is called pre-roll/post-roll and will ensure that you have enough media to insert transitions later.

6. Name the clip you just captured. For example: “reporter introduction: take 01” (instead of “untitled clip 01”) Remember to be as specific as possible.  An accurate name will ensure that you can retrieve your clip a lot faster during editing.

7. Repeat steps 4-6 until all your clips have been captured.

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