Browsing and logging media in Video by Zaweba

Good editing starts before the first cut, with knowing what footage you have. Video by Zaweba has two tabs for that groundwork. The Files tab lets you browse your drives without leaving the editor, and the Metadata tab lets you look at a file's details and log what is in it.

The Files tab

The Files tab is a media browser built into the app. It shows your drives, keeps a list of favourite places, and lets you type a path directly when you know where you are going. That last one is quicker than clicking through a long chain of folders on a big project drive.

Add the folders you use often as favourites: the project's media folder, a library of music, a folder of logos and lower thirds. Then any of them is a click away while you edit, and you are not switching to Windows' own file browser and dragging between windows.

The Metadata tab

Select a file and the Metadata tab shows its details, the technical facts about how it was recorded. It also holds logged metadata, the notes you add yourself: scene, shot, take, a star rating and keywords.

Scene, shot and take follow the way drama and many documentaries are organised. Filling them in as you review footage means you can later find the third take of a particular shot without playing everything again. Stars are a fast way of marking quality, so your best takes stand out. Keywords catch everything else, such as a person's name, a location or a kind of shot.

Saving notes beside the file

Save XMP writes the logged metadata into a sidecar, a small file kept next to the media. That keeps your notes with the footage rather than only inside one project. If you open the same media in another project, or hand the folder to someone using software that reads XMP, the logging goes with it.

Keep sidecars with their media when you copy or archive folders. Separated from the media, a sidecar is just a stray file.

A logging pass that pays off

For anything longer than a short clip, set aside time to log before you edit. Play through each file, give it a star rating, fill in scene, shot and take where they apply, and add a few keywords. It feels slow, but it makes the edit itself much quicker, because you can find things instead of hunting.

Be consistent with keywords. Decide on one spelling for each person and place and stick to it, or searches will miss half the clips. A short list written down at the start of a job helps.

Stars are most useful when they mean the same thing every time. One common approach is to keep the top rating for takes you would happily use and a low rating for anything with a technical fault.

How it fits

These tabs sit at the start of the chain in Video by Zaweba, after camera card import and before the timeline. There is also a Logging workspace among the built-in workspaces, which arranges the panels for exactly this kind of work. Combine the two and reviewing a day's footage becomes an orderly job rather than a scramble.