BestVideoMaker

Non-linear digital video editing tips

Video editing was revolutionized by the invention of digital video and FireWire. FireWire is a cable (also known as IEEE 1394) that connects DV cameras to your computer for the purpose of transferring data from the DV tape to your hard disk. The beauty of FireWire is that the data transfer is lossless. This means that when you record your edited video project back to the tape via FireWire there is no loss of quality.

Perhaps more importantly, the real significance of the DV revolution is that it introduced non-linear editing, which is massively more efficient and quick than traditional linear video editing. Non-linear video editing systems allow you to edit your video project with drag-and-drop mouse movements. Although non-linear digital video editing systems can appear daunting at first, they are in fact quite intuitive. This article is based on my own experience with digital video editing.

The first thing to do before you start editing your video project is to optimize your computer for digital video editing. Video editing places very high demands on your computer's resources and it is therefore vital to configure it properly before you start editing your video.

Having optimized your computer, you are ready to capture the video footage. This is the process by which the footage on your DV tape is copied onto your computer's hard disk via the FireWire cable. The captured video is saved as an AVI file. These are your source files, which you will edit with your non-linear video editing program (such as Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 or Apple Final Cut - I'm a Premiere fan myself, but it's a personal choice).

1. Preparing for video capture

Editing begins with reviewing all of your raw footage and choosing the shots you want. In theory this means choosing the best take of every shot you filmed; in practice, for top results you have to identify the best part of each shot in different takes. For example, you might decide that the best beginning of a shot is in take three, whereas the best ending of that shot is in take seven. For best results you should capture both takes and use them to assemble your project.

Do not be tempted to start capturing video before you have carefully chosen the shots you want and carefully noted their timecode.

Before capturing video onto your hard disk you should defragment all of your hard disks and reboot your computer. Capturing video is very CPU-intensive and your computer needs all the help it can get.

2. Capturing digital video

It goes without saying that you should not simply transfer the entire tape onto your hard disk as a single file. This huge AVI file would be a nightmare to edit. Instead, you should capture shots individually and you should name them according to a well thought-out rationale. A good naming strategy for your source and video files is to start with the character name, followed by the shot size, followed by the take number or any other identifying detail. For example, “Jane CU café 3” (third take of Jane's close-up in the café scene). If you stick to a similar rationale when you capture your shots you will be thankful you did so when the video capture is over and you have 200 or 300 individual video clips that you need to edit into a coherent film or video. For very complex projects, such as feature films, you might want to go a step further and create a series of folders (e.g. a folder for every major sequence), thereby adding a hierarchical level to your shot nomenclature.

The details of the capturing process differs for every non-linear video editing program, but in essence what happens is that you control your DV camcorder or DV deck from your editing program, which will record the video stream from the tape via the FireWire cable onto the hard disk. You should start the tape at least five seconds before the shot you want and you should start capturing at least two seconds before the beginning of the shot you want. I strongly recommend that you enable the “abort on dropped frames” function of your video editing program, or its equivalent: it will ensure that video capture is aborted if a frame is dropped during capture. It will save you from having to keep an eye on the frame counter.

You should defragment all of your hard drives again after capturing 5 or 10 minutes' worth of video.

3. Editing your project

What you should now have is a selection of carefully-named shots in a folder somewhere on a dedicated hard disc. At the end of the process the hard disk should still have plenty of free space on it.

Depending on the video editing program you are using, you might have to import your shots into your project; however, if you captured video from within the project the video clips should already be in the project bin, ready to be dragged onto the timeline.

The timeline is where you assemble your film or video. You simply drag shots from the bin onto the timeline and start editing your project. The performance of your computer is still an issue, and to this end you should make life as easy as possible for your video editing program by, for example, disabling video clip thumbnails and any other bells and whistles that drain RAM and CPU resources.

Remember to save your project at regular intervals and to back it up on another hard disk or burn it onto a DVD at the end of every day. Video editing programs tend to have their own archiving system, whereby they save a distinct copy of the project at regular intervals, so that if your main copy becomes corrupted you can rescue most of your work by opening the next most recent project file in the project archive.

The secret to making life easier for yourself during post-production is to be extra tidy with your timeline, and to be completion-focused throughout the editing. This means that you should double-check that there are no empty spaces in between the shots immediately after cutting a sequence. You should lock the shots when you have assembled them into a sequence and applied video effects. This ensures that you will not accidentally move clips or change their settings. You can always unlock them later to tweak the cuts or the video effects.

Getting into the habit of completing a sequence neatly and locking all clips will ensure that you will not get paranoid about having left gaps or tiny mistakes when your project starts to become complicated and unwieldy near the end. In other words, stay focused on “proofreading” your project from the very beginning and when the time comes to seal the deal and export the project, things will be a lot easier.

Tips for editing sound with your digital video editing program: video editing programs have a very useful feature that allows you to view a visual representation of the sound clip's waveform by expanding the track. This visual representation of the audio file is extremely useful in the editing process, and is also useful in synchronizing words and sounds that you took from cleaner takes with the video of your chosen take (see producing a seamless soundtrack.)

A great way to improve your computer's performance during post-production is to import all of the source files into the project and re-export them as low-quality AVI files into a separate folder, making each AVI file keep its original name. You use them to edit your project, and then replace them with the original full-quality files when the time comes to render and export your video by transferring them to the folder where you kept your temporary files. This will work like a charm, because clips on the timeline are nothing more than references to source files in a folder; therefore if those files are replaced with files with identical names the video editing program will be none the wiser. This is a nifty way to cut your project with a minimum of computer crashes and other performance-related problems.

You should have a good video monitor connected to your computer's video output and you should watch every sequence on the monitor as you cut it. Do not trust the computer screen with this, as computer screens are not designed to reproduce interlaced video faithfully, and you will not be able to make frame-accurate judgments about the quality of your editing.

4. Backing up your project

You do not want to lose your work. You do not want to have to re-edit your project from scratch and you do not want to have to recapture the footage. For this reason you should save all of your source files onto a DVD right after capture, and you must also save copies of your project at regular intervals on an independent hard disk or on a DVD. In this way if anything happens to your source files or your project file, you can simply recompose the project by saving your backed-up project file and the copies of your source files into exactly the same locations on the hard disk. Corrupted project files and hard disk failure are always ready to pounce on editors that did not take appropriate precautions during the edit.

5. Rendering your project

Rendering is the process by which the computer implements all the video effects and audio effects you applied to the clips – effects such as color correction, slow motion, or a black-and-white filter, for example.

The computer will produce files that are exact copies of the shots referenced on the timeline, but with the effects you applied. These files are called the preview files and they are AVI files just like your original video shots, so they occupy quite a bit of space. Before rendering your project you should delete old preview files, defragment all drives and reboot your computer.

6. Exporting your completed video

When you have rendered your project and saved it you can export it. In theory you can export the project back to a DV tape via FireWire, but in practice there is little reason to do this nowadays. The first thing you should do after you have rendered your project is defragment your hard disk again and export the project as a full-quality AVI file. You can then use this file to produce copies of your video in a variety of other formats, such as QuickTime or MPEG-2. The only real reason to export your project on a DV tape as well is if you have to deliver the project in a high-end tape format that is not available to you (such as Digital Betacam), in which case you can take the DV tape to a video duplication house and dupe it in the required format.

7. Archiving your project

You should save the project file, all the source files and the master AVI file onto a spare hard disk and/or blank DVDs. In this way if you ever need the project again in the future you can quickly reassemble it by copying its constituent files onto the appropriate folders on the hard disk.

________________________________

The introduction of non-linear digital video editing has made editing video pure creative fun. It is much faster than the old tape-based linear editing methodologies and allows you to be more strict and ambitious with your editing. However, non-linear digital video editing has its own pitfalls and potential nightmares if you do not tackle the process with organization and discipline.