Editing Your Video

Dush/WRD 377 EDITING YOUR VIDEO Software Options • Professional video editors use software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or Sony Vegas. These programs cost between $300-$1000. • Home/Amateur video editors often use ‘lite’ versions of these full-featured applications, such as Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas Movie Studio. These programs cost about $100. • Journalists and digital story makers looking for a desktop solution often use Soundslides, the most useful “Plus” version of which costs $70. • Most computers also include free video editing software with their operating system: MovieMaker on Windows machines and iMovie on Macs. • A new solution for individuals and organizations that have reliable Internet access is WeVideo, which is substantially less expensive than any of the above options. It’s a Flash-based tool, which lets you edit right in your web browser. Pros and Cons of WeVideo Pros • Easy-to-use interface, with enough options to create a robust story but not so many options that a novice editor will be overwhelmed. • Can do all media editing in one software interface: clean up photos, edit audio, create text slides. • Allows for collaborative editing and easy sharing of media. Great option when staff members at an org want to work together on a project, or when clients will build rough cuts that then will be polished by staff or consultants. • Allows story-makers to work wherever they have an Internet connection: no need for lab access. • Because all media is uploaded to WeVideo’s servers, a lot of complicated file management issues that typically cause headaches are eliminated. • Projects autosave, reducing the possibility of catastrophic project losses. Cons • Can’t do anything without a connection to WeVideo’s servers. This means that without an Internet connection, you’re sunk. • The editor is built on Adobe Flash, which is a technology with a nebulous future. • Your media lives WeVideo’s servers. Although we’re becoming more and more comfortable with our important stuff being stored in the cloud, some organizations may bristle at the idea of personal media being stored on the servers of a small company like WeVideo. 1 Dush/WRD 377 • There is a 500 MB file size maximum for uploads. While this isn’t a problem for most photos and short audio files, it is for video with minimal compression (for example, 500 MB would let you upload <2 minutes of HD video from a DSLR camera). You can work around the limit, to some degree, by chopping up video into smaller segments, but this limitation makes the software inappropriate for full-fledged video production projects. Overall, though, for digital stories and short web-based videos, WeVideo has a lot going for it. Production Flow with WeVideo Step 1. Gather your media. You’ll likely have 1-3 unedited voiceover files, plus 20-30 digital images, selected through a storyboarding process. Your voiceover will ideally be in aif or wav format; your images can be jpeg, png, gif, or tiff. For a full list of supported file formats, see http://tinyurl.com/m85adpf. Typically, you’ll wait until later in the editing process to find a music track. Step 2. Visit the “WeVideo Academy” on YouTube, at http://tinyurl.com/ka52rnb. Watch “Create a personal narrative with WeVideo” for a very helpful orientation to the editing process: http://tinyurl.com/leqn3pz. As you move forward with your project, the videos in two playlists on that channel—WeVideo Quick Tips (Advanced Timeline Mode) and General Quick Tips—will be useful. Note also that you can access these videos as you work by clicking on the help icon at the bottom of the screen. Step 3. Set up your video file in the Projects area. • In WeVideo, go to the Projects tab in the top menu. • You’ll see a project titled with your name in the left-hand column. Click on the project with your name, and then click the green “Create New Video” button. When you’re presented with options, select “Education” as your sector and “A lot” as your degree of video knowledge (your selection for this second prompt determines whether you’re presented initially with the Storyboard editor or the more robust timeline editors.) Step 4. Upload your media. Click on the Upload tab in the top menu and upload your photos. Your voiceover files will be visible in the Project Media area in the left-hand column of your video file. Step 5. Give the video a unique name. Return to Projects, click on the Rename button that appears when you hover by your project and enter a name, something like, Lisa-v1. Then, hit the Edit button to begin video editing. 2 Dush/WRD 377 Step 6. Set the story theme as “No Theme.” Do this by clicking on the “Themes” tab in the menu bar and selecting the No Theme template. Step 7. Edit your voiceover. Be sure that you’re in Advanced Timeline mode, which you can check by looking directly under the WeVideo logo at the top left of the screen (if you’re in a different mode, click the drop down arrow to switch). Also, be sure you have headphones on when you start audio editing. 1. Drag the voiceover track into the Audio 1 track. 2. If you have additional tracks, drag them into tracks below Audio 1. If you need to make additional tracks, click the timeline settings icon and select Add a New Track. 3. Mute all tracks you don’t want to listen to by clicking the mute icon, and Listen to each track with a pen in hand, noting times that you’d like to cut/keep. 4. Begin to edit your audio. There are two basic moves you’ll make to do this editing. One is to split tracks by positioning the playhead close to the start of where you’d like a cut to happen and, being sure the track is selected, hitting S on your keyboard; the other is click and drag in the ends of a track, effectively removing any audio that you drag over. 5. As you work, be sure to zoom in to make tight edits. Zooming toward the plus sign will allow you to see more clearly where waveforms start and end. 6. A few notes: be sure to leave about 3 seconds of ‘room tone’ at the start of your voiceover, for the title card to play over, and about 5 seconds at the end, for your credits to play over. It’s also useful to have a separate clip that contains a bit of room tone at the end of the file, which you can duplicate (by holding the SHIFT key and dragging out a copy of the clip) and insert into places where you’ve hurried through the voiceover. 7. You can fade audio in and out by enabling “Show clip volume” in the timeline settings and then clicking on the green volume line to add adjustment points, which can be dragged down (lowering the volume) or up (raising the volume). 8. Once you’re relatively happy with your edits, lock the audio tracks by clicking the unlocked icon on the left side of the track to locked. Step 8. Begin placing your images in order. • The Main track in WeVideo is “gapless,” meaning that it won’t allow you to leave gaps where you’re not certain of your image choice. For this reason, you have two 3 Dush/WRD 377 options. You can lay your images in a different video track (e.g., Video 3) and when it’s complete, drag the images one-by-one down into the Main track (clips need to be in the Main track for you to add transitions to them). Or, you can lay your images in the main track, using a placeholder like a black slide for places where you’re not sure of your image. You can then return later, size your replacement image in the track above the Main track to match the black slide, drag this new image to the Main track, and delete the black slide. Either method works. • Be sure that you’ve left room for a title card and a credits slide. • Don’t be too obsessive about getting the timing perfect. When you add your transitions, you’ll throw the timing off. So any work you do to perfect timing before adding transitions will be lost. Step 9. Ask a classmate or your teacher to take a look at your rough cut. Before you begin to make finesse edits, it’s good to get another set of eyes on your project. Often, people who are not as intimately familiar with your story will give very helpful advice at the rough-cut stage, especially about speed and pacing. Step 10. Begin to make finesse edits to images. • Polish images: double-click images that do not fill the frame or that need to pop a bit more, then click the Transform button to scale the image, or the Color button to adjust the brightness and saturation. • Add pan-and-zooms: double-click an image, click the Effects button , click kenBurns and set your Start and End points. Step 11. Add transitions. • Click the Transitions button , drag a transition between two clips, adjust its size/duration as you would adjust any clip, by dragging out an edge. Note that transitions will throw off your timing, so you’ll need to readjust that. Step 12. Add music. Find a music track (see separate handout on how to do so), upload it, drag into an audio track.

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