With the advent of consumer camcorders in low cost and low cost (or even free) software for video editing, it is now very easy for anyone to put together the kind of movie that was impossible just a couple of years ago.
The top of the range of editing programs are now the same that professionals use to produce films like 'O brother, where if' and the like.
But if it all seems too much for you and you want to put together some simple archiveyour holiday, what should you do?
There are three steps for creating a video (assuming you have actually gone out and shot the movie with the camera)
1) Get your movie on a PC
2) the sequence of footage together to form a film
3) output the movie in a format that can be displayed
What follows is not based on any particular piece of software, but hopefully that will identify steps that can be taken on the software
1) Obtain the images on your PC.
This is otherwise known as 'catch' the movie. In past years this meant to connect the camera to the PC via a firewire card and the movie plays on the computer's hard drive. However, there are now cameras that capture video on solid-state cards that can be read directly from a PC, as well as cameras that record directly onto DVD. Whichever method is used to capture the footage will need to finish as a set of files on your PC for editing. Somesystems allow you to name your file to make it easier to identify them later, others assign a serial number for each clip. If possible, make sure to collect similar clips together, for example in a folder, so that they can be easily identified "Family at Sea World," "Jimmy playing on the beach", etc.
2) Sequence movies together to form a film.
This is the heart and soul of video editing. By taking the raw footage and massage in a format that peoplewant to see. This is done through the creation of a project.
Here are some tips to help you make better videos
a) watch all the movies before you start editing. This will give you an idea of what you have and what you have. It 's easy when shooting footage to forget that sometimes you need just a few clicks to help your revision. For example, when you went to Sea World and Shamu shot movies did you remember to get a shot of main entrance with the "Sea World" logo? I betdo not have. Make a note of stuff you missed.
b) Identify shots that does not appear in your video. These are the ones where the camera whips around quickly, where the emphasis is wrong, where there is nothing, but zooming and panning. These will make your audience sick. Also identify those areas where there is a lot of repetition between the waves and Jimmy race is interesting again once or twice, but not 8 or 10 times. identify the best shot of the sequence and use that
c) Look'Reaction shots' - ie shots that show people who look at things or discuss things and be honest. These are useful to fill gaps in the action later
d) Cut out late and soon. By this I mean only the use of a shot that shows only the tip of your interest and once the interesting part is finished, cut off. So if you have videos of Jimmy on the beach, throwing a frisbee, throwing the frisbee show. Do not see screaming to move to the left and'To go in depth'. Do not let him do a few practice shots or stop watching the game of the dog in a tidal pool. Just show the shot. Once the Frisbee is thrown out and is suddenly cut off.
Once you have identified the movie - along with a list of shots but did not need - get to your editing tool and bring all your movies a. Working with a start in a logical sequence to delete the shots in the timeline. Do not worry about titles, transitions and effects, just arrivedhistory of work. Remember, ideally you should have something that tells a complete story from beginning to end. For the long shots that are boring (or do not want to hold things in the movie), use your editor trim 'function to cut off the bit at the beginning or end of the shoot. In some publishers may need to drag the same clip in the timeline several times to allow you to take pieces of it.
Now watch the movie. He wants to tell a story? He flow? If each cut out and turned in latesoon? There is repetition. Remember that although you might find interesting to watch jimmy throw a frisbee 15 times on a beach, everyone else will probably get bored after a while.
Now you can return to the movie and do a few things.
a) Add titles Many publishers have the right tools as part of their characteristics. Use what you have. If your editing system does not have an owner, do own securities. Use a word processor, print out the pages, movies and add themin
b) Add transitions. Sometimes a good transition can be very useful. In general I find that there are only two types of transitions that have a meaning and a dissolve, a fade. A dissolve is whether a photo become another in a period of time and a fade is when an image disappears (usually black) and the other is therefore out of the black. If you use too many transitions will distract your audience (unless your video production of a groovy pop!).
c) Add to the reaction shots. If you havethose shots that show Aunt Nelly laughing at something, or the whole family to watch the fireworks, add those shots in a couple of other shots. This breaks the flow and allows you to make a change that would otherwise appear wrong - say, for example, has a shot of Shamu in the foreground and you want to switch to a shot of the whole tank Shamu's, if you add a shot of reaction people who watch the show between the two shots that will make change work! This is also the linkadd to those shots that did not at that time. If you need a shot of the logo of Sea World, look on the Internet. Check out Flickr and search for Creative Commons can be used to insert the movie.
d) The sound is an important part of a good video. I've had movies where I have basically just added the music to cover everything under the video camera some terrible audio. This works. Try it and see
3) out the video in a format that you can use:
Whenare completely satisfied with what you have (had added in the transitions, titles and audio) are then ready to create a movie project. Remember to save the project in an instrument will actually create a movie, only a record of what is in the project. Creation of the film (or rendering) involves identifying how you want to transfer the project in a format you can watch.
A number of tools to deal with this in different ways, but all will allow you to create a finished productfilm in a specific format. This could be a QuickTime movie, AVI or MPEG or even a. Regardless of the final product, most instruments will ask you to specify things like bitrate or file size. Do not worry about that. Because video files are typically huge, playing wherever they need to be compressed into something that can be processed by computer. All files created by film editing software will be compressed to reduce its size. Just remember a couple of goldrules
1) A high bit rate will result in a larger file, but will need a faster computer to play without vibration
2) creates a smaller file compression artifacts (ie those square blocks that you see when playing video)
So usually the creation of a film is a compromise between the size of large files that require powerful computers and smaller files that have compression artifacts. The right decision to do this depends on where you want the final movie to prove. If youintended to Youtube then a smaller file size is acceptable. If this is going to DVD then you need bigger than a file as possible to keep the compression down to a minimum because the creation of the DVD can compress the file again and then reduce the quality further.
The process of compressing video file is a sort of black magic, with people trying to get the highest quality from the minimum size of the file. All you need to know is that with most of the tools available today, especially for freeinstruments, there will always be a compromise between file size and quality.
If you want a DVD of the movie is created by the need to take the movie editing software (which should be as high as possible) and pass it through an authoring tool DVD (DVD-Something like Flickr) and this will be designing and create your DVD for you. Obviously you'll need a DVD player capable of writing discs as well as reading them.
Summary
This article is full of hopehelped to understand the steps necessary to move to make home videos interesting and useful. The thing to remember is that it is not complicated if you keep the basics in mind.
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