Digitizing time

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Categories: Digital Basics

Time taken to record existing footage into a disk-based editing system. The name suggests the material is being played from an analog source, which is now rare. A better term is ‘loading’. Today the use of high-speed networking can enable background loading – eliminating digitizing time at the edit suite.

Digitizing time is often regarded as dead time, but it need not be. It can be reduced if some initial selection of footage has been made – for example by logging. Also, footage can be marked while loading and so be instantly available as a rough cut on completion, so speeding the final edit. The process is sometimes referred to as Triage, particularly where it is used to select and pre-edit clips from a live feed.