Video Production - Part III - Post Production or Editing

Right after you've shot your 'raw footage', it is time to bring every little thing with each other into a coherent, entertaining, and motivating plan. Considering that we're living in the digital age, it is pretty most likely that you'll be editing your plan on your laptop. There are unique levels of editing computer software and because this is about generating a experienced corporate video, I focus on the qualified plan that we use at Video 1 Productions, named Final Cut Pro (FCP). It's only available on the Mac.

I've utilized Media one hundred, Premier, Pinnacle, and FCP editing application, and they all operate along related lines, be we favor FCP mainly because it offers us more bang for the buck and it has a relatively intuitive interface.

Though we use FCP, we use other software that specialize in certain tasks that are important for qualified editing and post production. We use Photoshop and Illustrator to develop graphics and manipulate still images that we want to import into FCP Soundtrack Pro and Sound Loops to create music and sound effects Live Type for text effects Right after Effects and Motion to apply particular effects to the edited footage and Studio Pro to author the DVD's that include the programs we edit.

Pixel Film Studios The 1st task is to get the footage you shot into the computer system by digitizing the footage into a useable file format. Generally, the material is transferred to your pc by means of a firewire cable which goes from your camcorder or 'source' deck to the computer. Attempt not to use your camcorder as your supply deck, to feed the footage into the personal computer, as camcorders have compact motors and are not designed to be used as tape players. Getting a player will add to your expense out front, but will save you funds if you do not have to replace your camera simply because you burned it out working with it for one thing it wasn't intended to be employed for.

When you digitize the footage with FCP, it gets converted into a QuickTime file. This file can then be dragged into the timeline so that you can edit your piece. The timeline is exactly where your video gets displayed and edited. It is the pallet of your video work of art so to speak.

There are a selection of tools you can use to move, reduce, slow down, speed up or do other items to the footage. You also have text effects tools, video transitions and a host of particular effects to enhance your video. I'm not going to give you a tutorial on FCP, but I will discuss some of the do's and don't of powerful editing.

Once you have acquired your footage, you can either digitize the footage your self or have a corporation digitize it for you. If you go the latter route, the enterprise really should digitize it to an internal difficult drive of theirs and then transfer it to your external tough drive. Then you can transfer the footage from your external tough drive to your internal drive. You in no way want to capture or edit to an external tough drive, as the throughput is not enough to move the video. If the throughput isn't fast enough, you'll get stuttering video or the system or computer may crash.

There are now external difficult drives that you can capture and edit to. But unless you have an external tough drive with a firewire 800 interface, play it secure and edit from your internal drive. Not to get as well technical, but your external drive requires a serial ATA connection and an IDE or Ultra ATA hard drive that goes at least 7200 RPM to edit video. If you have that mixture, you can capture and edit video on that drive with no challenges. Of course your personal computer need to have the firewire 800 interface and be rapid enough to deal with video as effectively.

Don't forget to max out on RAM. You in no way have enough RAM in your computer. And you'll need to have it to edit video.

If you're editing video to an internal drive on your laptop or computer, it is advised that you use one particular internal drive for your applications, method, and so forth. and an additional internal drive for your video projects. We've had the finest luck editing video on Hitachi internal drives.

No matter what drive you use, for optimal overall performance, and to avoid crashes, make certain you have at least ten% free of charge space on the drive at all instances. Internal tough drives are affordable these days, so get the biggest one particular you can. You'll be amazed at how fast you use up the space.

Let's talk about the video plan itself. Persons who are new to video editing generally go overboard. Do not go crazy with the unique effects, use of wild transitions, or feel that the text you use has to fly in just about every time. If something, error on the side of conservatism. If you don't, you run the threat of fatiguing your audience with overkill. And that's the last thing you want to do. In fact, employing cuts in among shots is often far more powerful than any transition, particularly a wild and crazy 1.

This is not to say that your video doesn't need to have to move along. In truth, a rule of thumb is that you must almost certainly have a new shot every single five seconds. Of course, it depends on the nature of the shot. If a person is giving a 20 second testimonial, probably you can dissolve up the them, and then maybe after five seconds, bring up some text in the reduced portion of the screen, identifying the speaker by name, title and organization. This achieves the impact of informing the audience as to who the speaker is and it adjustments up the shot to develop visual interest.

Read more: Video Production - Aspect III - Post Production or Editing

Speaking of text, make positive it is title secure, which is one more phrase for creating certain it fits inside the boundaries of the television screen. Your editing program really should have a guide somewhere in a menu that will show you how far the screen extends. When you're making text, the boundary can be superimposed more than the screen. This tool shows you specifically exactly where it's 'safe' to location text. If the text goes beyond the protected location, it will be chopped off and won't appear on the tv screen.

The final thing I'll mention is sound. You should make sure that the sound level is consistent all through the video. The viewer will surely turn it off if the audio is uneven. It must be consistently loud enough to hear, but low adequate to be continuous and not startling to the viewer. So no matter how extended the program is, go by way of the entire plan and tweak the audio, producing it louder or softer where necessary. Your system should really have tools to do this.