Friday, September 20, 2013

Inside the Editing suite


OK folks.  For weeks and weeks, I was trying to figure out the best way to relay how all the editing stuff worked for the videos.  I have learned all sorts of lessons, mostly hard ones.

There is not much in the way of tutorials for this software, and it can be pretty arcane to figure out.  That is not a huge surprise, really.

My apologies for the fuzzy pics, but the program does not like other programs to be open at the same time, so snapping pics was the easiest way.  I took these a while back while working on a basing video.

Here are the opening credits.  This alone took many hours to construct, and I had to keep tweaking it so that it could be more easily repeated 53 times.  Using still images turned out to be far easier than the original idea of using rotating footage of minis

Thank goodness I didn't, since that would have taken a huge chunk of additional storage space!  It would also have added many hours of rendering time.


This is how all those individual clips are entered.  First, I constructed the entire film by linking these pieces together.


These next few steps show how those clips are brought together, with titles in between...


Here is the text block mechanic.  I will be seeing this in my nightmares for years to come.  It is a lot like the interface for the kickstarter text blocks.  You can only see a portion of it, which makes it incredibly difficult to manage!!!  

Making typos is shockingly easy.  In fact, when I go back in to try and fix those, I usually make two more.


The timing of these breaks is critical, and all the fades have to be determined by watching them.  Over and over.  And over.


Resizing them can be tough as well, since the preview window is small, and it will lag in playback when you have text blocks with shadows.  Unfortunately, the shadows are a must given how much is going on in each frame (all the paint colors, etc.)


This shows the small title sitting above the video and sound layers.


Another big surprise was the camera, which breaks up segments that are a certain length automatically.  It might be a memory management thing... I don't know.  It might only happen when filming in HD.

Sadly, this has created countless extra hours for me, as I have to merge these pieces in editing.  For whatever reason, the sound can be impacted a bit, while the picture is fine.  very frustrating!


Now we get to the closing credits.  It took 2 days to construct this template.  Again, once it was done, it could be repeated through each video.  Sorry, folks, the music choice is the same for each one, because I would have smashed my face into a wall if I had to do this again!


12 comments:

  1. Very interesting! What kind of camera do you use? DSLR have pre-built record limits built in having to do with something about taxes and movie cameras or something to that effect.

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    1. It's file size related - most camcorders/cameras can't do files larger than 3 GB as its a ton of data to move around while still adding more on the end.

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    2. That is what we concluded. It is a bummer, that's for sure!

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  2. Regarding the text block mechanic. If you have longer sentences, which you say can be difficult because the window isn't large enough, why not just type it out in Notepad first and then copy it over into the text window?
    That way you can see the whole text and correct any typos before putting it in the video.
    You say that it's not fond of having more programs running, but Notepad is hardly a memory hog (especially since you're only typing a few lines at a time. :-)

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    1. It does not like any programs running, not even that. Also, the formatting of type size, shadows, etc., would be lost, causing me to spend an incredible amount of extra time to re format it. Believe me, many things were tried :-)

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  3. hahaha James :D

    you know you can simply do a printscreen, right? :D

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    1. Tried that... didn't work. Again, the program does not want any other programs active, and it takes a long time to reload the 100 minutes of footage :-) Believe me, it was attempted.

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  4. Frankly, the interface you describe is poorly designed by programmers. An application on a computer should not feel like you are using an Android phone (with small windows and hard to view/hard to use screens). Good luck with the rest of your work

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    1. Thanks :-) I knew it would not be easy. It's not as if Photoshop or pagemaker were dreams to work with all those years!

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  5. Gah I'm really sad that I missed the Kickstarter, I can't wait to see these videos. Is there a way to get them now that the Kickstarter is over? Love your work :)

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    1. Thanks! Once the official KS videos have been sent out, then I can start having them available to everyone. Just stay tuned here for news!

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