Need Advice Prepping for Large Jog

Hi you guys,

Up until now, the longest show I've ever edited has been 15 minutes.

I just got this huge project editing a documentary with a final running time of 1-1.5 hours.

There are 500 gigs of hi def (1080p60) footage on an external Firewire drive.

Can some please give me advice on workflow for a project this size?

Can I even work from that firewire drive with these high resolution files?

How do I organize my project for the best workflow? For example I know I can't have an hour-long timeline.

Should I create separate project files for each section of the doc or just different timelines within the same project.

Any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

I thought it would be wise to ask the experts rather than learning the hard way.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Shelley

Shelley
MacBoo Pro 2015
16 GB Ram
OS X 10.13
Premiere Pro CC

With 1920x1080 at 60p, you'd probably want at least a RAID 0 for speed. Given that it's a two-hour documentary, you should be working from a RAID 5 or RAID 10 with redundancy. The cost in time and manpower to restore 500GB of footage would be considerable. For that much footage, I'd say you need three copies -- active, backup 1 and backup 2, updated and documented regularly. Three copies of 500GB would mean 1.5TB of footage, and that's not counting project files, render files, graphics, imported elements, exported elements, contingency free space, and possibly camera masters.

Twenty minutes per reel (Sequence) is pretty standard. It doesn't have to be that rigid; organize Sequences to be 18 to 24 minutes long each, adjusting for where the scenes and story land. If you're not very experienced with the format, you should hire an experienced assistant editor who knows how to troubleshoot.


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