I tried to go to bed tonight and I failed... It's hot! I just lay there and I couldn't sleep. I tried to count the cows in my head. I tried to count the stars through the window. I tried to remember my 2 weeks trip in Peru 3 years ago. But, it didn't work. Sometimes, it's just impossible to sleep...
So, I was watching for the second time the Machu Picchu centenary celebrations, and was asking myself why I took so many pictures of the Machu Picchu during my trip... All I need is one or two and I have thousands pictures. The answer is probably that I wanted THE perfect picture of THE perfect moment, and I always keep everything to be sure to have the choice. I prefer to waste my time watching every footage in front of my computer, even if sometimes I know immediately which one will probably be the best. I have the same behavior when I shoot a film. Then I found an idea that seemed good enough to make me write this message (for PROs and no-PROs).
Eureka! A TAGs button! Canon... I need a TAGs button... I would like a TAGs button on my 5D for videos but also for images. I think that it would be quite simple to put such a button on the bodies of the next generation cameras and it would help people win time everyday...
How could this TAGs button work? I don't know exactly but here is the idea...
When you press the button and keep it pressed, the camera records your voice and creates an audio file next to the last file you created. For instance, the audio file will be named "001.MP3" if my last recorded video is named "001.MOV". If you want to tag a video which is already tagged, the additional content is appended to the beginning of the audio file. When you play and see your footage on the camera, you can also press TAGs to add tags afterward. If you want to create a tag before recording, it should also be possible to do that by pushing the button 2 times very quickly.
In my opinion, TAGs are useful if you want to do a quick overview on the camera and if you want to focus on what you think is the best, and I'm sure that I don't need to convince you about the interest of TAGs and keywords in the NLE softwares like FCP...
Cameras may provide drivers to make it work on computers, a TAGs decoder which would be a simple speech-to-text analysis. We only need a simple speech-to-text mechanism because manufacturers could recommend to use intelligible words. We don't need complicated things. Let's take a simple example. I have 3 shots of my next feature film's first scene. The first one is NOT GOOD, the second one is MAYBE GOOD, the third one is PERFECT. I have 3 tags here and I think that there is nothing more easier than to say NOT GOOD, MAYBE GOOD, or PERFECT just after recording. I could take many more examples but you get the idea.
I hope you like this idea, don't hesitate to say me what you think about that... It might exists... Maybe the Magic Lantern open source firmware has already a cheatsheet like this somewhere… And finally, help me to share this idea if you like it because I'm really interested to know if it could help many people.
Now I'm tired, it's time to go to bed...
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