You will quickly learn if you are outputting video for a client who is bound to feed back and expect changes to adapt an editing technique that allows you to go back, find footage you might have deleted from the timeline, jump to another camera angle at a certain point or reconnect audio that you had discarded. Often the people making the decisions do not understand the choices you made and insist on something else, for this reason it is important to take a photoshop technique to editing in a way that is non destuctive. Here’s a few tips.
At capture stage be sure not to be too precise with your timecodes, always capture with ample handles and this sometimes means shooting a little more at the begininning and end of each clip, this will not only allow for better constructed transitions but also save the annoyance of not being able to extend the clip that extra little bit to fit to the timing of the edit.
Always keep you original files as raw and unedited as possible. Do not apply effects on the camera or work on the footage in another program and save it down, keep your editing options as versitile as possible.
Re order! Don’t delete! I often shoot a presentation on two cameras and sync the two. If you have made a decision about which camera the viewer will see, keep the unused clip but place it on the layer below in the timeline or on a hidden layer. There’s always some who might say, can we have this camera at this point? Just because they can!
If you are working with graphics then Adobe Premiere Pro is great for importing images or projects both psd’s and aep’s directly in the timeline but be sure when you right click and edit in Photoshop or After Effects you don’t make irreversible changes, always make a backup copy and work in layers so you turn on and off elements at will.
There are many little tips and tricks to speed up your repetitive editing processes but one of the main things I find is to get used to working in numbers for resizing, scaling positioning etc
One of the major pluses to editing using premiere pro is the ability to drag and drop different video formats straight into you project and then on into the timeline, no rendering and no re encoding video to a specific .mov file but this means you’ll often need to re size clips. You can set this to automatic as you bring it into the timeline but I often like to do this manually and refreme the shot too.
I work with a notepad in front of me and any values I think I will repeatedly need in that project I jot down. This is also a good tip for scaling over time, timecodes, clip lengths and color values. It might seem obvious but on a large project it’s amazing the amount of time and frustration it can save. I’ve included a screen grab where you might find this useful in the video effects tab.
This was a request I had recently for a presentation style video. We shot voice overs in the studio and the request was to highlight certain keywords in a paragraph of text in time to the voice over. This is a simple concept but there is an inefficient and an efficient way of going about it.
Lets start by creating your title and finalise your text font and layout. Right click in the Project Pane and select New Item > Title and name accordingly. Pick up the text tool and click where you would like the text to appear in the window. I like to adjust my font, size etc previously and then paste my text in. Refine your layout and the close the window. Now duplicate the title you just created by right clicking and selecting duplicate. I usually name it with a .1 suffix or the word that is will highlight. Open up this title and highlight the first word you wish to appear in a different colour and change the colour. Close this window down and this time duplicate the .1 version of the title. Repeat this until all your words are highlighted in the new colour. Play the voice over in the timeline and pause at the beginning of the first word you wish to be highlighted in the paragraph. Refine using the arrows on your keyboard. Drag the second title you created down to the playhead and repeat until all highlighted words are timed to the VO.
If you are used to using Final Cut Pro you will no doubt prefer to control your audio channels in the timeline rather than on the effects tab. At first this appear difficult if you use the button to the left of the timeline depicted here you shall reveal further controls in Adobe Premiere Pro.
This will allow you to control the levels from the timeline over time which is very handy if you have a soundtrack or voice over that needs to be taken in and out during your edit. Often these level changes will be clip dependent, meaning that if you move the clip around the point at which the levels need to change will remain the same. Sometime these changes in sound level will be relevant to the edit and if you move certain clips you will still require the levels to change at that point. Using the drop down here you have access to show clip toggles or show timeline toggles. Remember that clip levels works on that clips audio independent of the timeline and the timeline audio works on the timeline audio independently of the clips.
Add keyframes at the playhead using the black diamond next to the track or by using the Pen Tool.
The fundamentals to producing good chroma key are choice of background colour and flat lighting. You will save time and effort at edit if you spend an extra 10 minutes on this before a shoot. I often bounce light of a wall or flag the lights so as not to produce harsh changes in colour, I then monitor the colour through the camera display to ensure I produce a flat and even blue or green.
I shall talk about the controls I use in Adobe Premiere Pro as it is my current edit suite environment but controls the the video effects are much the same in Final Cut. For greater detail I would use Adobe After Effects to produce perfect results.
If you have produced an even background and once you get used to the controls you will be able to knock out the background in seconds. Apart from the Key Color / Eye Dropper used to select the colour you wish to remove, the three main controls are Color Tolerance, Edge Thin and Edge Feather. Select the tone roughly in the middle of the range of colour you wish to remove, I have often placed my new background in the video timeline under my clip so as I can see what I am doing. Adjust the Color Tolerance until the majority of the chroma has been removed. There will usually be a thin line left around the subject. Use the Edge Thin to remove most of this by increasing the value. The line is still pretty harsh so now tidy the effect up using the feather tool again by increasing the value, this will soften the change in color.
If you didn’t manage to achieve an even flat light you can use the Colour Key effect more than once in order to remove the rest of the colour but be sure to keep an eye on the shades on the subject to make sure nothing is removed. If you have chosen the background colour wisely this shouldn’t be a problem.
For Chroma Key in more detail using Adobe After Effects see this tutorial, very simple but great results.
Unfortunately there is no means to simply pause a video on the first or last frame to get that still to motion effect you often see when multiple interviews are shown on screen at once.
I have found the simplest way to achieve this in Adobe Premiere Pro is to create stills by exporting a tiff then re importing it into you projects portfolio.
Begin by aligning and resizing your clips on the timeline (see how to scale video here) in the order you wish them to appear. At this stage you will see black before and after the clip. Place the playhead on the first frame of the video you would like to begin on a paused / still frame. Choose File > Export and select tiff, be sure on the next drop down to export the tiff in the aspect ratio you are working in. It will make lining the image up a lot easier later. Export as usual using Adobe Media Encoder to the correct folder in your project folder (see setting up a project here) import the file back into your project and place it on the timeline prior to your clip. Adjust the length and play through to see the effect. If you need to scale the tiff do so to complete a smooth still frame to motion effect.
I had presumed that Premiere Pro would capture video from a device in much the same way as Final Cut Pro or iMovie. After having a lot of trouble with the quality of exports using Adobe Media Encoder, I had a look into videos captured by different programs to see if this could be effecting the final output. I decided to look at the same piece of footage from the same DV tape recorded from a Sony HVRDR60. I recorded the video and placed them side by side on the desktop. Below you can see the Premiere Pro Clip (Mov) on the Left and the iMovie clip (DV) on the Right. If I’m honest, I could not see much in it to the naked eye. The contrast might possibly be slightly better on the iMovie clip but even zoomed right in. As there was no differences to see I had a look at the figures, the DV clip captured at a much higher bit rate and produced a higher file size. This would suggest that if there was more movement in the footage then the DV capture would handle this far better than the MOV, although the file size would be almost double.
I am drawing no conclusions from this test apart from, if my premiere pro captured footage are ever not up to scratch then I shall turn back to Final Cut Pro or iMovie to capture my footage. Take from this what you will!
Comparing the .Mov footage and the .Dv
Premiere Pro / iMovie
Adobe Premiere Pro Captured Footage
Format: DV, 720 x 576 (768 x 576), Millions 16-bit Integer (Little Endian), Stereo, 48.000 kHz
FPS: 24.37
Data Size: 45.4 MB
Data Rate: 30.34 Mbit/s
Ireland 09
iMovie Captured Footage
Format: DV, 720 x 576 (768 x 576), MillionsDV, Stereo, 48.000 kHz
FPS: 25
Data Size: 97.1 MB
Data Rate: 57.60 Mbit/s
Ireland 09
For those used to editing their audio channels in Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro is slightly different. On the timeline the channels are merged into one track and not a left and a right. To edit the left and right you must double click the audio to bring it up in the Audio Mixer tab, here you will see this window.
If your edit requires further audio mixing make sure you change this setting at the point of setting up the sequence from stereo to 3.1, 5.1 etc
Your Audio Mixer tab will then look like this,
When setting up a project on Adobe Premiere Pro, the second tab on the New Project window presents you with the option to set your Scratch Disc. This is where all your supporting files including your videos will be saved to your Hard Drive or external drive.
Saving to your Documents folder only seems to cause issues. If you know you will have multiple projects open the files will get lost very easily lost or even corrupted. If you use a machine with multiple log ins then projects will not open when signed in as a different user. I recommend using the Same as Project option or if you wish to be even tidier create a separate folder within your project folder to separate them further.
This also means that if you need to move your project onto a different machine to work you can. All the relevant files can be transferred by copying one project folder without breaking any links to supporting files.
When purchasing a video camera or choosing your project settings in your editing software you may come across the dimensions followed by an i or a p for example 1080i or 1080p. This stands for interlaced and progressive scan.
The difference between the two are as follows. If you imagine you video is built like a brick wall, in layers known as fields. In an interlaced video each field is offset not dissimilar to the brick wall. You have probably noticed this during moments of fast motion where you see lines like a comb at the edge of the moving subject.
Interlaced video should be deinterlaced for your final product. In Final Cut this is done by applying a deinterlace effect, in premiere pro it can be done as your send your media to Adobe Media Encoder.
Progressive scan video already has the fields aligned resulting in a much crisper image and less things to think about at edit. Be sure if you are working with progressive video not to deinterlace your video when you export it. It will reduce the quality.
If you wish your final video to be displayed on a computer monitor then always deinterlace your video or use Progressive.
You can also De interlace video in Quicktime Pro, Window > Show Movie Properties > Video Track > Deinterlace
