Unit 16: Assignment Brief 2: Task 3: Editing Evidence

The first step to editing this task was to upload the images to the computer so that i was able to add them to my composition. I also done this so that i did not need to bring in the camera whenever I wanted to edited the footage and it would always be on the computer ready for use. Once I uploaded the footage onto the computer i then needed to arrange it so that i would easily be able to select the clip that i wanted without having to navigate through every piece of footage. To do this I created a new folder called trash which was where the footage that i would not be using to go so that it was not cluttering the area with the proper footage. However, I did not delete this footage as I may have made a mistake when selecting the clips so I would easily be able to find the other clips from the trash folder instead of uploading the footage again from the camera.

The next step in editing was to start putting the editing program and put in the first piece of footage that I was going to use for editing. The part of this clip as not needed as it was other attempts at filming the first shot we needed so was not needed and therefore was cropped using the crop tool. 

The next screen shots show the footage has been sliced from the original footage so that they are now two separate clips. After this is the part that i now longer want being selected and then deleted so that i was left with the part that I was going to use for the continuity task. 

I then had to repeat this process with the other clips so that I was left with the rough sequence without added sound or transitions. The next thing that i needed to do was to edit the audio as in its state The speech was barely audible. To do this I first needed to was to make the audio of the footage editable and to do this i needed to select the button that looks like mountains in the bottom left of the screen.

Once this was selected the audio line should go from blue to pink which means that it can now be changed. Because i wanted to increase the volume of the clip i would hover over the pink line that was going to be changed and then drag the line up as shown in the screenshot below.

After I done this to other clips that were too quite I then went about adding the music which would play underneath this task. After obtaining the music I imported it into final cut express, the editing software that I used. At first i was unable to import the music file as it was not supported in the program so i converted it using iTunes and after this went onto file -> import -> files.

Once I done this and then selected the file that I wanted it was then put into the section where all of the other files were kept and i placed it into the composition underneath the audio from the actual video.

However the audio clip was too long so I cropped it and lowered the volume so that i was still able to hear the speech in the clip. This file needed to be rendered before it would work so i needed to press cmd+R.

After inserting the audio and editing it so that it went with this task i then needed to add in a transition at the end to show that the clip was finished and also so that it was smooth and not an abrupt ending. To do this I first needed to select the edge of the clip in order for me to be able to add the transition. It would not work if I selected the whole clip as it would not know where to add the transition.

I then went to Effects -> Video Transition -> Dissolve and selected the transition that i wanted which was the addictive dissolve so that it would fade out to black. 

Once i had completed editing the video i then needed to export it by using the right setting to ensure the maximum quality of the video. For this i needed to was get onto the export settings which i done by going onto File -> Export -> Using Quicktime Conversion. After i done this a pop up window appeared to which i had to select options in order to change them.

After i clicked on options this menu popped up to which there were two menus, one for video and one for video. The first changes that i made to the settings were the video options. Editing the video enables me to change the quality of the video and the file type. Doing this will enable the video to be compatible with different websites and make the file size smaller.

Once i clicked on setting in the video menu this pop-up menu appeared which gave me more options to modify. The first thing i done was to change the file type and i done this by selecting the drop down menu bar next to "compression type. I then changed the file type from H.264 to MPEG-4 Video.

This then changed the options i was allowed to change such as how the video would be encoded and reordering frames. However for what i wanted to do this did not affect me. The next thing piece of information that i needed to complete was the quality of the video. In its current state it was normal and i changed it to best in order to get the most out of the video. 

 After i finished changing these settings i then clicked on ok and the previous pop-up menu appeared. From this i did not need to select a filter so the next stage was to change the size and a new menu come up.

This menu was to change the size of the video and the resolution. If this was not changed then no matter what i done to the other settings the video quality would be limited to 632x356. Once i clicked onto the dimension settings a large menu come onto the screen to which i had to select the correct dimension for the video to enable the best quality. Because we used a HD camera when recording i was able to select the HD quality for the video. I then did not need to change any of the other settings in this menu so clicked ok which, yet again, took me back to the the menu. I did not need to change the sound settings as they were good at their default. 

The last thing that i needed to do was to change the name of the file so that i could find it easily on the computer once it had rendered.

Once I pressed on save the video then started to export out into the settings that i selected in the previous screen shots.

Once the video had been exported i needed to download the video to tape and this was done by selecting File -> Print to Video which then resulted in a menu appearing to give a variety of options to insert.

I did not need to change any of these settings either so all i had to do was to choose ok and it then downloaded to the tape.