Editing Blog

Today in my class I learned about how to edit and film. First you need to check out a camera. We take an agreement form from a Cubbie at the front of the class and fill it out. Once it is filmed out we bring it to the door near the teacher’s desk. Write down your equipment information on your form. Your equipment information includes the number written on your camera. Then place your form in the class folder. The class folder can be found at the front of the room on a table. The next step is filming. When filming just open the camera and it will turn on. Press start and stop to film different takes. If the camera runs out of battery there is a charger in the bag that you can use to plug it into a wall. When filming around school make sure to write all of your group members name’s on the hall pass. If you are trying to hook up the camera to the computer, the first step is to remove the SD card from the camera. The camera has a door on the side where you can push it in and out. Put the SD card into the SD card reader and plug the USB into the computer.

When we go on the computer we need to make a file folder to keep ourselves organized. We will move all of our footage into that folder. We  cannot save it into the computer because as soon as we removed the SD card our footage will also be gone. Once we make the folder we will bring up our SD card and our footage will be organized based on the date it was filmed. If we can’t find our footage we will go to the private folder and click AVCHD then click again to whatever pops up and we will be in your stream. In the stream is everything on the SD card you are using. Once we access all our footage, we need to drag it into the very important folder. Take the SD out and put it back into the camera. Put the SD reader in the basket at the front of the room. When you transfer all your footage from the SD card to a computer it is called “dumping”. Every camera bag we are given comes with a USB cord that connects to the camera. We will be dumping into our google drive.

We are also importing from the desktop to Pinnacle Studios. It is important to move the files one by one and slowly because it can crash the computer. Once you’re in pinnacle studies go to import, desktop, your folder. Ms. Katz suggests that you import all of your footage and you can delete some later because you never know which take you will want. At the bottom of the screen you click “start import”. You will see all your takes and which ever take is highlighted by an orange box is the one selected. Go to edit and the editing window will open. You can edit your raw footage and build it on AV box 2. The titled edits will go above and the music will go below. Each different track is a layer in the film. Make sure that once you drag your raw footage to edit the loading bar must turn green. The red bar indicates what part of the film is playing. To play your footage click the space bar or press play. In order to cut footage select the area right before where u want to cut it and select the razor blade tool. It will select the excess footage and click delete. To undo something go to “edit” then “undo”. We learned to right click and open effects editor where we do all our transitions. If we want a specific effect on our film Ms. Katz will teach us how to achieve it using effects. In order to make a title we hit the “T” logo and type what we want. The side area will allow us to edit our font, size, and color. Place the text on the first track and adjust in the frame. You can go into motions and edit how the text will fade in and out. You can add music to your film. You can download music on the computer from youtube as an MP3 file. To remove sound from the video, you select the clip you want, right click, select detach audio. Your audio will detach it self from your footage and become its own track. Then you just select and delete the audio. When creating a voice over, detach the audio, and delete the footage. When saving your movie go to “file” then click “save movie as”. Move the file to your desktop folder and hit “save”. In order to export your work you click export in the right corner. In settings it will be a MP4 formatted video. Click “best quality” and “start export”. The video will be loading to prepare for export and DO NOT click anything. Exit out of the pop up ad and minimize Pinnacle Studios. Check your desktop folder to see if it was saved. If it was then you can exit out of Pinnacle Studios. Ms. Katz is very educated on how to use Pinnacle software in order to edit our films. I believe my group and I will be very prepared.