Hi to all!
I’m new in video editing, so maybe the question is silly, but I just want to be sure I’m doing it correctly: If you have 10, 20 or 30 big GoPro files, how are you handling them? Do you just drag all of the files to the Time line and than edit them, or you drag first file and edit it than add 2nd file and than edit it, than…?
Does it make a sense if I open individually the files, one by one, edit and save. And THAN use it in the Project?
Thanks for any help,
Afan
It really depends on what kind of final video is being made.
For simplicity, let’s replace gigabytes with hours. Let’s say files are being added to the timeline that are 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours in length. With those three clips, we now have a 6 hour timeline. (Of note, Shotcut will probably start lagging when the timeline gets over 1.5 hours, so this is a consideration for the workflow too.)
So the question becomes… is your final video almost 6 hours in length because it uses nearly all of that footage? Or does 6 hours of source footage get cut down to 15-20 minutes of finished video?
If the finished video is 6 hours, then it is what it is… drop all the files on the timeline and make whatever tweaks are necessary.
But if the finished video is a small selection of clips from a pile of source footage, then I tend to bring a long clip into the Source viewer, find the start point of a segment I’m interested in, hit the “i” key to mark the In point, find the end of the segment, hit the “o” key to mark the Out point, then hit the “a” key to append just that segment to the timeline. Then I keep playing the Source viewer to the next segment until I’ve added all the segments I want onto the timeline. This way, the timeline is never cluttered with source footage that I don’t care about. The timeline also stays under 1.5 hours so that Shotcut doesn’t lag from the sheer size of the project.
Once all the clips I care about are on the timeline, I make a new track. I then move clips up to the new track in the order I want for the final video. This is my chance to rearrange the clips, add other sources, and make final in/out point adjustments.
When done, I remove the original track and export.
Hi Austin,
My “plan” is the 2nd example, “… finished video is a small selection of clips from a pile of source footage…”
I didn’t know you can “reduce” the video in the Source viewer. And searching a bit more about it on YouTube I found it’s one of the basic “functions”. Obviously I have to watch the tutorials again, before I start the project 
By the way, is it possible to extract 2 or more sections of the same video file in the Source Viewer?
Thanks,
Afan
Yes, it’s possible. That’s what I meant by:
The i/o/a key combination can be done multiple times on multiple segments of a clip that’s in the Source viewer.
Awesome!
Thanks Austin, I really appreciate it!
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