Alright, let me walk you through what I got done today, August 30th. It was time to finally dig into that raw footage I had sitting around.
First thing, I needed coffee. Can’t start without it. Got the computer booted up. Then I plugged in the external hard drive where all those video files were dumped. Seriously, that drive is getting slow, took its sweet time showing up. Need to think about replacing it soon.
Getting Organized (Sort Of)
Opened up the main folder… and yeah, it was a jumble. Just a mess of files named like `*4`, `*4`, you know the drill. No real organization from the get-go. So, I decided I couldn’t work like that. I quickly made a few basic subfolders:
- Morning Shots
- Afternoon Takes
- Indoor Stuff
- Outdoor Clips
Just dragged and dropped the files based on a quick guess. Wasn’t perfect, but it felt a little less chaotic than just one giant list of cryptic filenames.
The Actual Review Process
Okay, with that rough sorting done, I opened up my go-to video player. Nothing fancy, just something reliable. Started right at the beginning with `*4`. Watched it through.
Honestly? Mostly junk. Shaky camera work while setting up, focus pulling… pretty standard first-clip stuff. I opened a plain text file and started my notes. For that first one, it was simple: “Clip 1 – Mostly unusable. Maybe check last 5 seconds? Might be stable.”
Moved onto the next file, `*4`. This one was better. Found some decent sections in there. I started pausing more frequently now. My notes got a bit more detailed: “Clip 2 – Good wide shot from 0:15 to 0:45. Keep. Audio sounds a bit windy though, check later. The bit around 1:10 is usable too.”
And that was basically the rhythm for the next couple of hours:
- Watch a section.
- Pause if something caught my eye (good or bad).
- Jot down the timecode and a quick comment in the text file.
- Keep watching.
Sometimes I’d scrub back and forth if I wasn’t sure about a take. Some clips were super long, so I definitely skimmed through parts that looked boring or repetitive. Others had really bad lighting. Made notes like “Maybe try color correcting?” but for some, I just put “Too dark, probably trash.”
Wrapping Up the Raw Review
Ran into a couple of files that just wouldn’t open. Corrupted, I guess. Annoying, but it happens. Made a note of those filenames, maybe I’ll try to recover them later, but I’m not optimistic.
So, after grinding through that pile, I ended up with a pretty long text document. It’s essentially a log of all the raw footage, with timecodes pointing to the bits I think might be useful, and notes about why. It’s not an edit, not even close. But it’s a map. I now have a much better idea of what material I actually captured.
The main thing is, I know which clips have potential, which ones are definite ‘maybes’, and which ones are just not worth the effort. The next logical step is to actually import the selected bits into the editing software and start piecing things together. But that’s a task for another day. Today was purely about watching the ‘raw show’ and taking stock. Feels good to have that initial review done.
