Editing Video - Tips Tricks and Pitfalls

[bonner1040]

I wanted to start a thread on editing to share things that I do and learn from others.

Disclaimer: I use a Mac.

Jack mentioned that optimizing/loading the video into iMovie was taking longer than actually taping it. I had the same problem until I found a good solution recently. Instead of optimizing/uploading the bulk files in iMovie I will open the individual clips in Quicktime. From there, selecting the 'edit' menu and choosing 'trim'..


..will bring up the 'Trim feature'. From here you can easily pull a segment/clip of footage that you want and save it in a much smaller file.


When you have the desired clip, just hit trim on the right or X it out and choose save. Make sure to name it something different than the original file to avoid an over-write/loss scenario.


When I make video I have one of three things: A lot of short clips, one large clip, or a combination. With small clips I will edit out all of the extraneous stuff using Quicktime. With the big files I will pull out whatever individual segments I need using quicktime.

Once I have those files saved I will number them in the order I want them to appear in iMovie (otherwise its alphabetical which can screw you up.) and THEN optimize/upload to iTunes. This can save you tons of time, like hours!

 

[MasterBlaster]

Cool. PC, here.

 

[Porkbrick]

nick, do you not use imovie? that is what i used for the last two vids i did. coming from a pc and windows movie maker, i movie was a real pain to figure out, but much less glitchy and slow (like so many things mac).

 

[bonner1040]

Uploading HD stuff into iMovie can be a real pain. Especially with helmet cam footage where you might have 60+ minutes or whatever but only need 5-10 to edit down. The trick of using Quicktime to pare it down works really well for me!

 

[lumberjack]

Computer speed makes a big difference also. FCPX streamlines the import process. It imports and transcodes in the background.

I shot 250+gb of video yesterday. It'll take my computer several hours to transcode it all.

 

[Oldmilltreecare]

PM Ian Flatters, he's on here sometimes and often on Arbtalk.
He's really good at it.

There also threads on Arbtalks video forum for just this subject.

 

[Koala]

I don't use a Mac but I'd like to do it.
Don't know if this can help , but I had a lot of trouble trying to find a good freeware program able to convert AVI file to FLV.
Usually AVI files are too heavy to upload on the internet so you have to convert them to flash video.
After a long hard struggle I've found this program who seems to work well.
The program is Freemake video converter.(for Windows)

here's a link to download it: http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/

I'm not an expert at all,...resolution , bitrate and all this kind of stuff still make me go crazy :what:

 

[lumberjack]

I save all my edited videos as .mp4 in .h264 codec.

I also suggest backing up your edited videos. I'm also planning to archive the raw footage. I would like to archive the transcoded media (Transcode to Pro Res 422), but that quadruples file sizes which gets expensive quickly.

FWIW, final tally from yesterday was 270gb of video. Final Cut Pro X is a world better than iMovie, although it has a myriad of things to learn as well as a $300 price tag.