Video Editing Tips

There are basically two forms of sound editing which can be done as the shoot is going on. The video recorder takes audio from an external source and then feeds it at the same time a scene is taken. Say a scene with background music playing fading into script. For a more complex sound effect, you would need an audio mixer which can take audio input from two sources and with a selector allow you to choose which audio source to use. These nifty gadgets can also have built-in faders which allow a fade away effect for your audio sources. Audio dubbing requires the adding of audio into a pre-shot video sequence. This can have the full audio track recorded with the video intact or totally replaced with one you provide say a narration of the sequence of events being portrayed.

With the advent of computer technology inserting titles has become an easy task which was unavailable to previous generations. This did not however stop them from doing so and they inserted titles in the most innovative ways. Remember those black and white films without sound, they used a piece of paper with the tile or scene descriptors and opened with those shots. It also allowed a period of pausing where it would be easy to insert a scene rather than to select a scene that was shot and re-shot and then combined later. There was also no sound and sometimes a little explanation was needed to discuss the actions taking place (think Charlie Chaplin). Another method is to paint titles directly onto glass panes and then shooting the scenes through it giving the effect of a title floating in your shots. Paper, onion skin and other materials can be used for such purposes so be creative and use the old style methods for original titles.

Sound effects are also in abundant supply which you might need as you get more adventurous and wish to make your videos more professional. One note of caution though, never expect to come up with studio quality videos if you work at home for these guys use equipment that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars so be realistic and accept the fact that the best you could do would be enough for your family to love and enjoy. The flaws and errors in your editing can make it more personal and even become highlights of the movie so do leave some in even if they seem a bit unprofessional (which you are not)

When you transfer your raw video onto your computer, it is usually converted into a format the software can use or understand. You can then cut up the video which is usually done by referring to the time and the frame numbers for more detailed editing. Scenes that are too long must be cut out to emphasize on the parts which have meaning or significance. It also allows you to cram in more interesting footage on a single disk for subsequent playback. There are tons of sound effects you can find online which are considered to be royalty free (meaning you won’t get sued if you use them and the owner gets pissed) and are free to use time and time again.

Most camera’s today have a connector for pc communications which can use either USB or DV which ever the connector you may have onto your camera, you will also need the same port for your camera to communicate with your PC. You’ll also need a piece of software that comes with your camera which allows you to download and save your video’s/pictures onto your computer’s hard drive for storage and editing. Saving it onto your hard disk allows fast access to your video (before we forget, editing videos on your PC would eat up a lot of hard disk space so check that you have ample space or you could cause a system hang-up in the middle of your edit and end up loosing all your work).

Most people think of video editing as costly jobs done by studios who specialize in such jobs, well partly yes and no. If one wants broadcast quality movies and sound all mixed up for a presentation for showing at a solemn event such as a wedding, that would be a great idea, but there are tons upon tons of resources out there that are available for free to aid you in getting acceptable video with nice sounds and effects out off the internet. Do a quick search of video editing tools and video editing how to and you get tons of tips and tricks from home movie makers like you and experts alike. You even get to download some of the best free stuff off the net from reliable download sites such as Pcworld and ZDnet. You’ll also need some time to learn them but no worry for there are tutorials that come with the downloads.

Now that you’ve decided to do your editing, it would be nice to know a little of the facts so you get the overall picture in terms of Video processing and the required space you need on your hard drive. Digital Video runs at a bitrates of around 3.5 megabytes per second so your input feed requires:

2 hours * 3600seconds/hour * 3.5 megabytes per second = more or less 25 Gigabytes.

You would also need to store your final MPEG-2 files on your hard disk before you burn them onto DVD’s and DVD’s typically have a 4.5 Megabit/sec bit rate for video and 0.4 Megabits/sec which sums up to :

4.5 Mbit/sec + 0.5 Mbit/sec = 5 Mbit/sec translating to 0.625 Mbytes/sec
2*3600*0.625= 4.5 Gigabytes

So 30 Gigabytes of hard disk space is needed for editing two hours of Digital Video and the subsequent DVD burning process and that is a lot.

As mentioned in the past post, the type of processor you might have on your computer can influence the success of your venture into the realm of video editing. The processor or CPU of your computer must be able to handle the many complex operations such as editing and rendering coupled with ample amounts of physical memory or RAM and hard disk space. Editing video requires the video editing software (which by itself uses a lot of ram and hard disk space) requires speed or else frames might be lost during the copy, edit and rendering process. Transmission of information from your camera to the PC through the Firewire cable runs at around 400/800 or 3,200 Mbits/second depending on the revision level your PC supports, it can support any of the aforementioned speeds.

If you do have a digital camera, chances are that you will have a port marked DV or Firewire port. This is a port that uses transmission control protocol that is optimized for transmission of video and audio information from devices such as digital still cameras and digital video cameras. The Firewire standard has long been favored by video enthusiasts and experts alike for it allows fast copy of video data from a recording device to a host computer. If your computer does not have the Firewire port, then you simply buy an add-on card that plugs into the expansion slots to give you the said capability. There are also other factors to consider when doing video editing and manipulation such as processor speed, memory and hard disk space which will all be discussed in the following posts. All of the above mentioned computer parts have the capability of making or breaking your attempts at successfully editing video.

There are several effects that your software may have asides from the usual conversion tools that allow analog video to be turned into digital format. These software usually have effects for transitions and fade in/out features and many more making the transition from shot to shot easy to transition. Without these facilities it would be like cutting and pasting video from the analog source to the destination and would be a waste of time. If you do have the time to burn, learn on how to maximize the software so you get the full potential and use of all the functions.