I don't use any particularly fancy software. I know SMP and DragonFrame are incredible tools and every day or two I wonder which one I should hitch up to but until I can pull the finger out I'm still using Monkeyjam which does the basic job rather well.
I shoot everything on twos i.e. each movement lasts for two frames - this works out as a peculiar 12.5 frames per second (FPS) in the European 'Pal' video standard of 25 FPS.It sounds like a cop-out but the difference is barely noticable unless the animated movement is very quick. Then I can switch to singles - one frame per move - for a half second or so and switch back. You'll never see the change, and fewer frames means less hard work. So that's what the computer does for me; keeps track of all my inconsistencies.
The camera meanwhile is recording each frame in 3675 lines... or some other indescribably big number, I can't remember. This is RAW format which is the digital equivalent of a film negative. Every percievable bit of light is recorded on the file so that if, on a whim, I decide in post production to stage the scene at night, I can process the final video to look how I want. (I'm not joking, I had to do this once and while it's basically impossible to do it with Standard Definition Video, shooting in RAW makes it rather easy)
Then comes the sequence assembly. I go through the exposure sheets - generated by the computer at the shooting stage - this lists how long each picture holds on screen (usually either 1/25th or 2/25ths of a second - very occasionally 3/25ths, never more) and I line up the frame numbers with the dialogue soundtrack. This takes ages.
