Digitial Video: Make Your Own Home Videos
presented by Harold Adams, Adams Technical
OVERVIEW: This month's presentation on digital video was by Harold Adams, whose web site company produces videos for online use, as well as videos on CD and DVD (visit www.sblife.com to see some online examples). He covered the basics of how to take digital video and prepare it for several different purposes: as a tiny clip to attach to email, as a larger format QuickTime movie that can be played from a CD or web site, and even an introduction to VideoCD and DVD, both of which can be played on most modern DVD players. Harold used an iMac and the iMovie and iTunes software that came with it. These concepts can be applied to other platforms as well.
Notes from presentation:
Harold Adams demonstrated a practical guide to making your own home videos. He showed us parts of the 18 minutes of raw footage of a basketball game in which his son was playing. He then proceeded to go through a variety of editing processes that eventually reduced the footage from 2.5 GB (18 minutes) to 400 MB and rendered the footage into a brief 2 minute movie which can be streamed live on the web.
I. EQUIPMENT, SOFTWARE AND MEDIA:
Digital Video camera: Canon Elura II. It is the smallest digital video production camera available and able to make full quality video. $900 price range. It takes 30 frames per second of full quality digital video. It is easy to use handheld as well as mounted on a tripod. Being lightweight you do have to deal with problems of your own shake and wobble when using it handheld. It has a Playback mode which allows you to see instantly how well your video came out.
Firewire cable between the digital camera and computer. Harold pointed out that one of the conveniences of using an iMac computer is that everything comes in one package,--the right amount of hard drive space, Firewire cable with a port for the Firewire cable, and the software to edit and create video clips. IEEE firewire is a high speed cable. You plug the 6-pin end into your computer and the 4-pin end into a digital camera's DV-in socket.
PC users have to add an IEEE ("I - triple E") 1394 cable and install a card to receive it in their computers to connect to the digital camera and transfer video taped images. [An aside: PCI Firewire cards currently available include: (1) ADS Technologies PYRO Basic DV, priced around $69; (2) Oreangemicro OrangeLink PCI card, about $59; and (3) Western Digital PCI Firewire adapter $49].
Computer Hard Drive disk space: a minimum of 12 GB of free hard disk space is required for one hour of digital video images. If you have 5 hours of video, then you should have 60 GB of hard drive space available to receive the transfer of images. It takes about one hour to transfer one hour's worth of video tape from the camera to the computer. You will learn very quickly that it is important to keep emptying the Trash/Recycle Bin as you delete images from your video. It frees up hard disk space that you need.
When the digital video camera is cabled to your computer and the iMovie software is loaded, the camera is controlled completely by the video software on your computer. If you click on the Rewind Button on screen, then iMovie will rewind the digital video tape inside your camera.
You can copy a finished movie by playing it through the digital video camera connected to your computer, but be aware of the fact that this is not comparable to transferring data from a floppy disk onto your computer. As long as you keep the file as data (i.e. not as a playable video), you can change the type of transitions or their length. But once you save the video as a Quick Time (i.e. playable) video and put on DVD, VideoCD, or back to digital tape in the camera , you cannot tweak the transitions or readily move the clips around in the QuickTime video. The resulting video "can" be re-edited, but in the sense the raw video was edited -- you can cut it apart and move things around, drop out sections, add new sections, and add new transitions, but you cannot change the type or length of an old transition because the original data from which the transition was made no longer exists in the movie.
QuickTime video is not particularly tweakable but it is very compact. If you save the iMovie project files you can tweak the video to your heart's content, but the files are huge and eventually you want your hard drive space back.
II. SOFTWARE: Harold used the iMovie and iTunes software that came with his iMac. It is downloadable for free from the web. Only the more recent Mac's can use it though. iMovie is the video editing software he used. iTunes is a music editing program that provided the royalty-free sound bytes that he mixed in with the movie.
A member of the audience commented that Windows XP comes with software that is comparable to iMovie. Harold mentioned that Microsoft doesn't make hardware interfaces which means that pc users still have to install an extra piece of hardware (card for IEEE 1393 cable) to be able to use this feature. The SONY VAIO does come with "Movie Shaker" which is a video editing software and IEEE 1394 firewire.
III. MEDIA FOR OUTPUTTING YOUR VIDEO:
Various types of media can be used for outputting (storing) your digital video. You can use not only DVD-R but you can also output it onto VHS (& vice-versa). You could store it on your hard drive, but it's not a good idea to do that for a long period of time. You need the space.
Harold uses iDVD software to burn DVD's. Digital video can be stored and played from a hard drive or on a DVD cd. The DVD cd can be viewed via a DVD cd unit on your computer, or it can be played on a DVD player that connects to your TV. DVD players range in quality significantly. It played very well on Dana's Panasonic DVD player and TV. All monitors and display units differ in the quality of the image, color, brightness and contrast. The powerful overhead projector washed out the colors and detail a bit, unlike the TV screen or Harold's computer monitor where the quality and color were excellent. The quality of the image partly depends on the vehicle through which it is displayed.
A DVD-R cd costs about $7. It is long-time storage. It is a "one time only" burn, not a multi-session cd, so you should have everything you want to have on the cd ready to go before you burn it. Most DVD-R cd's carry a maximum of 60 minutes, but with the iDVD software you can push the limit to 90 minutes.
IV. MAKING YOUR OWN HOME VIDEOS:
Digital video can be used to collect movie content that will become a family heirloom. Harold demonstrated, step-by-step, exactly how he transformed 2.5 GB (18 minutes) of raw video footage of a basketball game into a 400 MB, 2 minute, fast-paced video on his DVD cd of "The Adams Family Vacations, complete with title and background music mixed in. He noted that DVD is non linear. It has memory. You can stop a DVD movie anywhere and be able to come back to that point later on.
The iMovie software that he used is "intuitive." It does not come with a manual, but it does have a very good tutorial on screen to teach the viewer how to use the program.
You can use the program to import images of slides and photos that you have scanned and saved in a (640 x 480) jpg format. You can add jpg images taken by your digital camera. Conversely, you can make slides out of any still image (frame) in a movie, but do not plan on making prints,--the resolution is too low or coarse to produce a good print.
You can have a "motion menu" which is a Title segment with a movie playing behind it, perhaps with a more transparent opacity than the text in the title. The movie plays while the viewer chooses which item on screen to click on. All of the Quick Time movies displayed on Harold's sblife.com web site are fast moving, streaming videos that have a maximum length of 90 seconds. Web streaming of video is much more efficient and effective than emailing a 400 MB clip which might choke the email inbox of the computer at the receiving end.
Using the iMovie software: A Timeline of clips is displayed across the screen. Each clip is a segment of uninterrupted footage from the camera. The iMovie software senses each contiguous clip on the tape. It makes them into clips for you on screen. The advantage of this feature is that you can have iMovie transfer all the video from a tape in the camera (tapes are typically an hour long) while you go off and do something else. When you get back iMovie has not only transferred all the video to your hard drive, but has also broken it up into its constituent clips.
A clip can be dragged and dropped to a different location on the Timeline to change its sequence in the scene. Frames inside a clip can be highlighted and deleted either individually, or by the Click-Shift-Click method of highlighting a group, and then pressing the Delete key. Be sure to empty the Trash/Recycle Bin frequently to free up space.
Transition icons can be dropped in between each pair of clips on the Timeline. Clicking on a transition icon brings up a menu of choices:
Harold prefers to consistently use the cross-dissolve. Varying the type of transition a lot has about the same effect as choosing too many different fonts on one page. Select the type of transition you want from the menu and drag it onto the Transition Icon or area between a pair of clips. A Marker will now appear on the Timeline where the transition occurs.
Surprisingly enough, adding a Transition which overlaps one end of a clip with the beginning of another clip, such as a cross-dissolve transition, actually reduces the size of the file because it merges about 3 seconds of time from each of the 2 clips that are merged during the transition. If you have a lot of clips with cross-dissolve transitions, then this adds up. Think about the length of your transitions. You cannot put a 4-second transition between a clip that is 2 seconds long and one that is 12 seconds long. Preview them on screen to see what's it's like.
This shortening occurs only for transitions that overlap the end of one clip with the beginning of another clip, -- cross dissolves/crossfades and barn doors are examples. However, if you do a fade to black then a fade-in for the next clip, there is no overlap and thus no shortening of the video.
Making deletions and adding transitions, etc. is called "manually scrubbing your tape." When Harold was finished he had reduced the size of his digital video file from 2.5 GB to 400 MB; from 18 minutes to 2 minutes in length.
Q/A: It is possible to create slow and fast motion effects if you want to.
Next, Harold added a Title for his movie by selecting TITLES from the main menu. He made a "still" of black first. Then he selected a font and font size for his title. From the 3 choices of: (1) Bounce in to Center; (2) Centered Multiple, and (3) Centered Title, he selected #3. He typed in the title, "Basketball Movie." iMovie rendered the text over the black screen. He experimented with adding a 2nd black still to follow the title frame/still to create the effect of fading to black He previewed it and didn't like it so he highlighted and deleted the 2nd black frame. He replaced it with a cross-dissolve transition.
After every clip and transition was lined up precisely the way he wanted it on the Timeline, he added 2 music clips lasting one minute each. He overlapped them slightly in order to avoid having a silence between them. The steps he took are as follows:
Harold opened the iTunes program that came with his iMac. He sampled a few tunes in the directory of royalty-free music clips, and chose 2 that seemed to fit with the basketball theme of the movie. He dragged the 2 music files onto the Desktop and from there into the folder containing his iMovie, "Basketball Movie." [Or, FILE - IMPORT - [desktop/surover.mp2] - IMPORT.
The iMovie program provides 2 tracks for audio clips below the track for video clips on the Timeline. You can lay sound into each track with: (1) narration through a microphone, or other sound clip and (2) music clip. The 2 one-minute audio recordings of music were imported into the Track 2, leaving a few seconds of silence in between them. He experimented with importing a sound clip of applause into the Track 1 to act as a bridge in the silent space between the 2 recordings of music. He deleted the clapping after previewing it, and the silent space between the music clips.
In the final version he put one music clip in Track 1, the other in Track 2 with a few seconds of overlap. He added a cross dissolve between them. He put the applause clip back in, but at the end, and with a small overlap to the second music clip and a cross dissolve. He terminated the applause with a fade to silence that was timed to finish the same time as the fade to black of the video.
File formats: iMovie outputs to various sizes of Quick Time. FILE - EXPORT - TO QUICKTIME. (1) Web movie-small which compresses the video from 30 frames per second down into 12 frames per second; (2) Email movie-small; and (3) Streaming web movies in cd-ROM. Once your video is in Quick Time format, it can be saved for Realplayer, as *.mpg/mpeg, Avi, and in other file formats.
When he was finished editing his video, Harold proclaimed, "It's a wrap!" and he saved his video (iMovie "rendered" his video into a movie).
p.s. Barnes and Noble is offering a free online course in "Digital Video" on the web. Of course they are selling textbooks, but the textbooks are not required in order to answer the relatively easy quizzes. Lots of interesting information there. You have to register and login, and the trick is to confirm your login and password at the bottom of the screen 3 times. The URL is http://www.bnuniversity.com/.