Part 2 - Introduction to Editing and Distribution

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Introduction

This class will teach participants how to use the revolutionary iMovie 3 digital video editor. iMovie 3 is powerful enough for professional editing studios and yet so easy that children use it.

Hands on.

Video Editing Programs

Other than the introduction, you can get more information on everything covered here by opening iMovie's help files. Open iMovie and go to the "Help" menu and select "iMovie Help". The in the Help Viewer application, choose the iMovie "Tutorial". The importing, editing, and exporting sections of this page are intended as a quick reference to the iMovie tutorials.

The Video editing is the act of moving video frames from one location to another. In the old days, video was edited by cutting the physical plastic film or magnetic and taping it back together or making a copy of it onto a second tape. This was called linear editing.

Now, with our huge hard disks, we can store the video right on our computers and edit it much quicker and easier. Editing with a computer is called non-linear editing. Getting the video from a camcorder to the computer is called "importing". Then you use special software to edit the video. Finally, you can publish, or "export" the video many places, including to the web, to a VHS tape, or to a DVD.

Editing software will import, edit, and export video. There are many video editing applications. In 1999, Apple released iMovie, the first free video editing application to become widely popular. Today it is still popular. Here is a cost comparison with other software (prices as of early 2003):

• iMovie: FREE
• Windows Movie maker: FREE
• Adobe Premiere: $549
• Final Cut Express: $299
• Final Cut Pro: $999
• Avid: $12,000-$53,000
  

iMovie
iMovie is credited with reviving interest in video. It is also credited with reviving interest in computers. iMovie is so easy to use, children can easily learn how to use it (children how have access to camcorders, of course). It is also powerful enough that some professional studios use it for many low budget productions.

Windows Movie Maker 2
Reviewers like iMovie more. WMM 2 lacks video CD or DVD burning options. It cannot paste stills, graphics or other video clips over existing video while keeping the underlying audio unchanged (a less used, but very powerful feature of iMovie). It also can not handle some complex editing tasks.

Everything else
There is no way to put this gently. None of the commercial applications are intended for consumers. PERIOD. If you are going to use any other video editing applications, you must get trained or read lengthy manuals.

Importing Video

Get a 4 pin to 6 pin firewire cable. The 4 pin is the small side and it plugs into the camcorder's Firewire port (aka DV-in/out, DV terminal, IEEE-1394, and iLink). The 6 pin plugs into the computer. If you have it turned the correct direction, it will slide in easily.

Get the camera ready. Put the tape in VTR mode, and rewind the tape 5 seconds before the video that you want to import.

Open iMovie (if it is not already open). Put it in camera mode. Click the play button, and then click the import button. Click the stop button when you are done.

Clips will appear in the Clip Viewer Pane. By default, the clips are separated where there was a pause in the recording. This can be changed in the Preferences window.

You can import video files also. Just choose "File" -> "Import" and find your mov, dv, or mpg file. However, files that are not the correct proportion will be stretched to fit the iMovie window. This is because iMovie works with dv format files, and the dv format does not allow video files to have a different size than what the iMovie window uses. There are workarounds for this, but they will be discussed in the third class of this series.

Editing Basics

Selecting Clips
Click on a clip to view that clip. Shift or command click on multiple clips to select more than one. To view the entire movie and not the selected clip, click on the background or select the menu item "Edit" -> "Select None".

Viewing Clips
Press the play button or drag the scrubber, or use the arrow keys.

Cleanup video
Trim video by selecting a portion of video with the crop markers and then pressing the delete key. Or you can select "Edit" -> "Crop" to delete the video that is outside of the crop markers. You can also split a video clip into 2 parts by moving the playhead where you want the split and selecting "Edit" -> "Split Clip at Playhead".

Undo
If you make a mistake, select "Edit" -> "Undo". You have 10 undos, unless you empty the trash, then you have none.

Photos
Use iPhoto to import picture files. In iMovie, open the Photos pane. Choose an album. Select a photo, drag the image to the Clip Viewer. To use the Ken Burns Effect, you must click "Start" and choose the desired start and zoom values. Then do the same after clicking "Finish". Then set the duration by dragging the slider with the turtle and rabbit.

Transitions

• Always add fade in and fade out at the start and end of a movie.
• Most clips should have no transition. Adding transitions between every clip annoys viewers.
• Cross dissolve is the most common transition. Other transitions call attention to themselves and as such are very distracting and so they should be used sparingly, if at all!
• Many transitions overlap video clips. This means if you have 2 clips that are 5 seconds long, and you overlap them for 2 seconds, you will have a 3 second clip, a 2 second transition, and then a 3 second clip, reducing the time from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. If you try to create a 6 second transition between two 5 second clips, iMovie will give you an error.

Add a transition by dragging the desired transition in the Transitions pane to the Clip Viewer. You can continue to work while it renders. To remove a transition, click on it in the Clip Viewer, then press the delete key or select "Edit" -> "Clear".

Motion Effects
To reverse a clip, select the clip, then select "Advanced" -> "Reverse Clip Direction". To speed up or slow down a clip, select the clip (or desired portion of clip), open the Timeline viewer, then drag the slider with the rabbit and turtle on different sides (you have to guess which direction makes it faster and which direction is slower...).

Video Effects
Select the Effects pane. Select a clip or portion of a clip. Change the settings for effect, and then click "Preview" to see, then "Apply" to add to the movie. To delete an effect, select the clip and choose "Advanced" -> "Restore Clip". You can not delete effects if you save or empty the iMovie trash.

Titles
Select the Titles pane and the desired title type. Type your text and set the font and other options. Add it by dragging the title icon to the Clip Viewer. If you check over black, the title will not appear over the video, but will be over a black background. QT Margins changes the text margins. QT refers to QuickTime, and it uses the full video size to display text. Otherwise, it will bring all of the text inward because on TV's the edges of the video are cropped off. To delete text, select the clip with the text and press the delete key.

Chapter Markers
Chapter markers make DVD chapters using iDVD. To create a chapter, move the play head to the desired chapter beginning, and click "Add Chapter" button in the DVD pane. Set the name. Chapters are marked with a diamond in the Timeline viewer.

Audio
Finish video before working on audio. You will regret it if you work on audio and add video, because it will almost always unsync any modified/added audio. To try to avoid this, be sure to use the "Lock Audio Clip" menu item in the "Advanced" menu.

All audio editing is done in the Timeline viewer. There are 2 audio tracks in that view.

Audio layer in video
Every video clip has an audio layer. You can change the overall volume of a video clip. To do more editing, you must extract the audio layer by clicking on the clip and selecting "Advanced" -> "Extract Audio". The extracted audio will appear in the Timeline viewer below the video clip in the 1st audio track. The video clip will automatically mute, but it will still have the audio layer. If you unmute it after you split it, you may run into problems.

iMovie sound effects
Select the Audio pane, and select the "iMovie sound Effects". Drag the desired effect where you would like it.

Compact Disc
Insert a CD and select the CD in the popup in the Audio pane. Drag it to the Timeline viewer or click "Place at Playhead" button.

iTunes
You can use iTunes as a source of audio as well. Use it exactly the same as the CD, except you need to select "iTunes" in the Audio pane popup. If you have iTunes playlists, they will appear in the popup menu as well. You can use AIFF, MP3, or WAV files.

Record your own audio
You need a microphone. Most are USB now, and cost about $50. Move the playhead to the desired location. Click the record button in the Audio pane. Click stop to stop.

Move audio
To move an audio clip, just click on it and drag it where you want it. The first frame of the audio clip is shown in the monitor as you drag it. You can drag it to the other audio track if you want. It makes no difference which track it is in. Audio clips can overlap as well.

Delete/Crop Audio
Editing an audio clip is the same as editing a video clip. But just to review, here it is again. To delete an entire clip, click on it and press the delete key. To split an audio clip, select it, then drag the playhead to the desired location and select "Edit" -> "Split Selected Audio Clip at Playhead". To delete the middle of an audio clip, click on the crop markers at the ends of the audio clip and move them to the desired location then select "Edit" -> "Crop".

Volume
To change the computer volume, you can click on the speaker in the top right corner of the screen and drag the blue bullet up or down. In the iMovie window, there is a volume slider that will change the volume for the entire movie. In the Timeline viewer, at the bottom, there is a volume slider for each video and audio clips. You can also mute the 3 tracks with the checkboxes at the right side of the tracks.

Clip volume envelope
You can edit the "amplitude envelope" of a clip by selecting the "Edit Volume" checkbox. A long horizontal line will appear in each audio track. This represents the volume envelope. To change the volume at a specific location, click on the line at that location. A yellow dot will appear. Drag that dot down or up to change the volume. To change how fast the volume change occurs, drag the smaller dot. To remove a dot, just click on it and press delete.

Exporting Video

Save for iDVD
Open iDVD pane and click "Create iDVD Project". Wait for the export to finish, open iDVD and burn (assuming you have a DVD-R drive aka Superdrive).

Export to DV tape
Connect camcorder to computer. Put a DV tape in and rewind it. Put the camcorder in VTR mode. In iMovie, select "File" -> "Export" and then select "To Camera". Set the seconds to wait and black time and then click "Export". Wait. This is a 1x process, meaning, if your movie is 10 minutes, it will take 10 minutes to export.

Export to file
Select "File" -> "Export" and the "To Quicktime". Select the format: "Email", "Web", "Web Streaming", "CD-ROM", "Full Quality DV", or "Expert Settings". Expert Settings will be covered in the next class.