Video Editing Tips

If you wish to have some archival footage included with your digital video, then you might have to do some copying from the old VHS player to your choice of either using a video capture card or your digital camcorder as conversion and recorder. The process has you setting up your VHS player to send out the composite signal sending it to the video and audio into the input jacks on your PC or camcorder. The nice thing about using a camcorder is that you end up with digital video and audio after you record the input from the tape masters with no more conversions for the PC sending it through the Firewire port ready for editing.

Effects and many more sounds can be used easily and audio conversion tools are widely available. Audio files can come in WAV, MP3 or other digital forms that may be too hard to manage so get a couple and convert them one day when you are not doing anything and save them onto a CD for quick retrieval. If you are doing a lot of commercial or business video’s, better get some free stuff or you’ll end up in the slammer for Intellectual rights violations. There are a lot of easily downloadable volumes of audio files that come straight off the net or you could order them for a fee. The good thing about the ones you order is that they are generally categorized and grouped saving you time as you look for appropriate tracks to go with your video.

Editing can be so enjoyable that most often than not, the basic act of saving your work is forgotten and a power spike that trips the surge suppressor sends your editing work in progress into video heaven. Save your work as often as you like and you can even set your program to save your work from time to time. If you have a ton of available space on your hard drive, you can save the work in progress in two files (one is the backup and the other is the copy of the last save). After importing the file, it would also be wise to have a copy so don’t have to re-import the file if you end up messing up your work. The back-up saves you time and it would also be nice to back-up unfinished work onto a RW CD or DVD so you have a spare of the one you have on your hard disk.

The software you choose as your platform may have a lot of hidden features that may escape your attention the first time round. Learning to do the basics such as cutting and pasting scenes is good but for effects, each and every editing software product has their own strengths and weaknesses. Try to learn something new about the software as you get confident with it. Some have transition effects that allow the insertion of other scenes to gaps and some allow you to totally change the type of footage (removing elements from the frames say an ugly flower in the middle of a perfect shot replacing it with something from another shoot or photo libraries). These types of operations can be maximized better for video camera’s already come with nifty effects (black and white, panoramic, time lapsed, fast action settings and more). Your software too has a ton of these features that allows shifting from shot to shot better and softer, not giving you that jarring motion that shocks you every time you shift from shot to shot.

After finishing the editing process, you then have to translate so-to-speak, the raw video into the format you wish to become your final product. In the case of DVD’s which can hold up to 4 Gigabytes of footage data along with all the support files (audio and others) they have to be converted to the DVD format which takes from as little to 4 hours to 10 hours depending on the length of film. In doing this, disable all background tasks such as anti-virus and disconnect you internet connection so you disable all the distractions that can cause spikes in the processor use. The conversion/encoding process takes a lot of computing power so any disturbances to the processor during this critical step results in hick-ups or gaps in the final product.

After you have downloaded your video from your video camera, you need to first convert it into a format that would allow you to edit it such as the MPEG format which is most common in video circles. There are also a myriad of choices of codecs that allows conversion of one format to the next(CODEC coder-decoder) allowing the copied software to be converted to the editing format then to the desired output format such as for use on DVD’s. They are readily available form wither the software developers (the guys who made your editing software) the hardware manufacturers (the guys who made your video card) and many more. Some are paid for, some are free so do an extensive search. TIP, do get your stuff from the reliable sources as we have mentioned above for most of the free stuff you find on the internet are loaded with attached malware that can trash your computer and your work.

After investing in all the necessary hardware and equipment, you need to determine the software you would wish to base your work on, they come in several versions from dedicated ones or so-called proprietary formats and general or free ones that are free for all to use. The best software might be to expensive for the home video buff so invest in a manageable piece of software that is easy to use and easy on the wallet. Decent free ones are found from the internet that even have free updates available for download on regular intervals. There might be a bit of trial and error when you begin which is okay for it familiarizes you with the capabilities of your system.

Ask any professional videographer and they would always tell you that for a 2-hour length of processed video, they would have taken more than twice that and from all the best angles. Also, most videographer work in teams from two to more depending on the price for they allow the coverage of events from all angles, a relevant and important shot may suddenly have the subjects move in a way that the view of one camera is obscured with another to take over giving the shot continuity. You can overcome this by combining video with still shots as fill in’s to prevent gaps or jumps from scene to scene and venue to venue. There should also be a lot of shots of the background and venues well before the event for not even the celebrants get to see the in their full splendor.

Just as DVD recording equipment has rock bottomed, out comes Blu-ray. Blu-ray is a newer disk technology that uses blue lasers to read and write disks. It has more than double the capacity of DVD’s (which stands at about 4 gigabytes). Double-layered disks can store 8 times that capacity. The commercial versions of the burners are also out on the market and are hailed as the successor of the DVD disk. Another standard that competes for the same market is HD-DVD which was ousted or rather thrown out when retail stores selling video re-stocked their shelves with Blu-ray disks ending the competition silently. The high data density feature of the technology is its biggest strength and they are slowly getting into homes slowly (they are still quite expensive).

New generations of computers will make editing of audio and video very much easier with more processing power and at much faster speeds. The release of multi-core microprocessors will increase editing considerably along with a proposed release of a new type of memory module which has already been announced by Intel. These along with better video capture technology that already has built-in video capability is making it easier for all of us to edit, copy and convert our precious memories for future generations to enjoy. The advent of High Definition Video and Television sets make for one very visual rich video. Digital video camcorders are also becoming standard as the Hi8 system (digital 8mm) enters its last breaths.